Citi IPOs Jet...Er...Insurer

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Citigroup (C Quote) is unloading an insurance company it bought in the 1980s in part so former CEO Sandy Weill could have access to its Gulfstream corporate jet, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal Friday.

The company, Primerica Inc., sells life insurance and mutual funds, and is worth less than 2% of the $617 billion in assets in Citi Holdings, which contains troubled assets and others that Citi does not consider an essential part of its business, like its stake in its Smith Barney joint venture with Morgan Stanley (MS Quote).

Who is expected to buy this castoff from the giant corporate welfare recipient Weill built? Why, the public, of course.

There is not a small amount of irony in this. Weill craftily built Citi into a giant accounting-trick-fueled earnings machine while finding ways to buy himself perks like corporate jets in the process. His multi-million dollar salary wasn't nearly enough.

Weill got Congress to rewrite fussy old banking laws, like the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which were intended to prevent banks from becoming so large and all-reaching that their failure could threaten the rest of the economy.

And now, after Citi has gotten its bailout and has stabilized itself, it dumps all its trash back on the public again.

Of course we don't have to buy it. There will be plenty more yummy leftovers from AIG (AIG Quote), Bank of America (BAC Quote) and perhaps Fannie Mae (FNM Quote)and Freddie Mac (FRE Quote) if we're really lucky.