Congress denies itself a raise

I’m a posting roll right now, so here is more outrage for you: a headline describing the $410 billion spending bill just passed the Senate caught my eye. Looking into some of the provisions, I see that Congress increased its own budget by 10%. Ten percent is a whopping increase. Last I checked, the number of people and employees in Congress didn’t change much, let alone by 10%. You really have to wonder where that money goes.

The Citi Rally

You may have noticed the market rallied some 6.4% today. Why such a big move? An internal memo from Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit was made public. In the memo, found here, Vikram extols the solid profitability of Citigroup so far this year. In fact, he says “we are profitable through the first two months of 2009 and are having our best quarter-to-date performance since the third quarter of 2007″. Well, that’s good news indeed. If Citi is on the mend, then the governments fixes may be working and/or perhaps the economy is not deteriorating as fast as feared.