Suppose That It Works

Right now the government is a 36% owner of CitiGroup, it has plunked down 45 billion dollars on it. Assume Citi survives the current clusterfuck, would the government come out ahead?

Here are some very rough back of the envelope estimations

Stock Price US equity
$5 $6B
$10 $20B
$20 $40B
$50 $100B
$100 $200B

So if Citi somehow gets itself back to $50 (a big if), the government can in theory sell off its holdings in the open market and walk off with a tidy $50B profit.