Citigroup, which announced Prince's resignation on Sunday, had said it may write off $11 billion of subprime mortgage losses, on top of a $6.5 billion write-down already reported last month.

Robert Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs partner and U.S. Treasury secretary who chaired Citigroup's executive committee, was named chairman, after Chairman and Chief Executive Charles "Chuck" Prince quit.

The L.A. Times reports that the write-off underscores the fact that, almost a year into the sub-prime crisis, the brightest minds on Wall Street still are unable to get a handle on their companies' financial exposure.

Earlier, Merrill Lynch & Co ousted Chief Executive Stanley O'Neal following a $8.4 billion write-down that was more than 50 percent higher than the investment bank had forecast.

So the "brightest" minds are unable to get a handle on this? This just proves what I saw some years ago on college campuses; the two easiest disciplines for receiving a degree were in education and business. I remember dozens of business majors as frat boys who measured success by the number of kegs consumed and the ensuing vomiting. So, perhaps these are the "brightest" minds now in charge. No wonder we have problems; they missed the classes on responsible lending. Of course, I am just whining because I didn't take those easy courses and go into a business where I could run a company into billion dollar losses and "retire" with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. Luckily, I am not one of the Nevadans facing foreclosure in the foreclosure capital of the U.S. who "benefitted" from those "brightest" minds.