http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

According to a report from ABC News, President Obama is not taking kindly to corporate greed, especially when it’s funded by taxpayer money. Read more from ABC here:

The high-flying execs at Citigroup caved under pressure from President Obama and decided today to abandon plans for a luxurious new $50 million corporate jet from France…

ABC News has learned that Monday officials of the Obama administration called Citigroup about the company’s new $50 million corporate jet and told execs to “fix it.”

On Monday, the news broke that bailed out bank was going through with its $50 million private jet purchase even though it had recieved $45 billion in government funds:

The New York Post’s Jennifer Keil and Chuck Bennett reported in Monday’s paper that Citigroup, which has received $45 billion in government bailout funds, is about to upgrade to a new $50 million, twelve-seat corporate jet.

The plane, the Dassault Falcon 7X, is a luxurious jet with a range of 5,950 nautical miles (meaning it can fly from New York to all of Europe and South America, as far east as Riyadh, and as far west as Honolulu or Petropavlovsk, Russia). The Post reports it has “plush interior with leather seats, sofas and a customizable entertainment center.”

Isn’t there talks of a new Air Force One? It’s not to be delivered for some time. Long after Obama is gone. Assuming he doesn’t become führer of the world by then. But still. The US government is 50+ trillion dollars in debt. It’s gotten its money through theft and borrowing. Why is it okay to spend $150m+ on an inauguration? Who knows how much the new tank limo to drive the supreme bureaucrat cost? What was wrong with the old one?

If the Obama administration wants to control what Citibank buys why don’t they personally buy up stake in the company, throw out the board, and put in their own people and vote on new company rules? Oh! That’s right…. it’s because these bureaucrats are little more then thugs with an aura of legitimacy and they likely don’t have the wherewithal to withstand life in the free market. They have to do all their “business” at the barrel of a gun. Oh and they can not give Citibank stolen money either. Then there wouldn’t be this dilemma in the first damn place.

Ahmadinejad to OPEC: Dump weak dollar

Speaking at a ceremony to open the 29th ministerial meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his proposal made about six months ago in a rare summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’s heads of states.

“The fall in the value of US dollar is one of the pressing problems of the world today,” warned the Iranian president at the conference in Isfahan on Tuesday.

He further expressed concern over the adverse effect of the dollar depreciation on the international community, especially energy exporting countries through increasing the price of commodities like wheat, rice and oilseeds.

Ahmadinejad said he warned six months ago in the summit conference in Riyadh that there were many indications pointing to continued fall in the value of the greenback.

“And we see that this continues to happen and the resources and wealth of OPEC member countries have been hugely damaged.

“I again repeat my previous proposal; we should have a basket of different international hard currencies as the basis or the member countries should come up and produce a new hard currency for petroleum contracts,” he stressed.

“They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” Ahmadinejad said earlier after the close of the summit in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

As I recall Iraq was threatening to trade in Euro’s before the US government invaded. Given all the threatening maneuvers the Bush administration has been making you’d think Ahmadinejad would be less boisterous.