Andrew Hall, one of the gamblers oil traders working for Citibank, wants the firm to pay him a $100 million dollar bonus for his performance on winning the coin toss bet prediction he made with taxpayer money.  From Mail Online:

Hall, 58, is in line for a $100million bonus from his employer Citigroup.

The bank wants to pay the money because it wants to hold on to Hall and his money-making expertise, which is reckoned to have reaped hundreds of millions of pounds in profits for Citi-group through its oil-trading offshoot Phibro.

But Citigroup – which was bailed out with £27billion of US government funds – is under pressure from the Obama administration’s ‘pay czar’ Kenneth Feinberg to cap payouts to traders who take big risks on behalf their bank employers.

Hall, a British-born graduate of Oxford University, lost money as a trader during the first Gulf war when oil prices fell.

The real question for Citibank, which is technically insolvent and living off of taxpayer donations, is what would be the fate of Hall had he lost the oil bet and squandered away hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process?  The answer is simple – more bailout begging, and more coin flipping gambles on the direction of oil.  Eventually, everyone gets it right, and eventually everyone gets it wrong.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the wrong sided bets were cancelled out with taxpayer funds, and all the right sided bets were rewarded?  That there is the essence of the financial world.