Bank of America may be shameless, but Citi seems to understand propriety.  First, reports are surfacing that the company is trying to find a way out of its $400m stadium naming rights deal with the New York Mets.  $20m a year may not sound like much, but for twenty years?  That’s like the world’s worst alimony settlement.  Both the Mets and Citi have stated within the past day that they are committed to seeing this deal through to the bitter end, which may be true or may mean the same as “The board of directors has full confidence in [insert CEO name here].  Also, this from Citi: 

According to the report, a Citigroup spokesman released a statement Monday saying that “no TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) capital will be used for Citi Field or for marketing purposes.”

This leads me to wonder if the TARP money is being stored in a different closet than the rest of Citi’s capital, or if interns spent the last three months marking each bill of TARP money (I like to imagine the TARP money being delivered by stagecoach, in giant money bags, in $50 denominations) with a highlighter so everyone knows it’s special.  So officially the bank is going forward with its cunning plan to reach that last guy out in Wyoming with whom they do not have instant brand recognition, through baseball.  But there’s still the possibility that they are at least marginally concerned enough with appearances not to spend nearly half a billion dollars to put their name on the home stadium of a team that hasn’t won a championship in over twenty years.

In more certain news of Citi win, the bank has agreed to take the novel step of using its TARP money to help it begin lending money again.  I know, right?  Crazy!

Before you get too excited and make a run on Citi to get a loan for something fancy and expensive, like a house (as if!), Citi isn’t going to be loaning the TARP money directly.  Instead, it will sit on the money as before, but actually use that to secure loans from some other mysterious source that has money, and loan THAT money out.  Citi has received $45b in TARP funds, initially plans to make $36.5b in new loans, and spend the remaining $8.5b on a glamorous office redecoration for everyone in the company.  Or something.

No, we’re making that up.  But the $36.5 figure is accurate, and will be handed out as follows:

$25.7 billion for mortgages, $2.5 billion for consumer loans, $1 billion for student loans, $5.8 billion for credit card lending and $1.5 billion for corporate loans, according to a report to be issued today by Citigroup.

From this we can determine that credit card debt is almost six times more important than a quality education.

And where’s the Bandit in all this?  Front and center!

“TARP capital will not be used for compensation and bonuses, dividend payments, lobbying or government relations activities, or any activities related to market, advertising and corporate sponsorship.”

Epic burn, Bandit.  Epic burn.