Spin Citi

The never-ending hesitation on the Citi case has been rattling the market, in spite of Bernanke's "no nationalisation" statements today. I don't want to cause further anguish, but those assurances remind me of the answer a chief executive of a soon-to-fail Icelandic bank when asked whether deposits were safe - you guessed it, the response was a cheery "Of course!".

Now, I'm not saying that depositors should pull their cash out of Citi (unless they are above the government guarantee limits, of course). But the assumption that the banks are even close to being out of the woods is simply pie in the sky.