Dealbreaker

Charlie Gasparino reports that Citigroup will be laying off somewhere in the hilarious range of 17,000 to 45,000 employees in the next couple months. It is unclear whether the severe to very severe measure is just for fun or an effort on C's part to do something about the fact that its stock price has become a punch line (several sources have told Gasparino that the "I just found out I've got AIDS" line in the old "horse with AIDS joke" has recently been replaced with "I just got shafted with 1,000 shares of Citi.").

In other news, some congratulations are in order-- Doubledown Media has named Chuck Prince the 94th "Best C.E.O." out of 100. How did he do it? Mr. Prince says that his Recipe for Success was "a third of a pinch of hard work, a sprinkling of good luck, and a dash of a dossier full of damning information (pictures, e-mails, the works) about each and every one of Citigroup's shareholders, which was unfortunately, very unfortunately, lost when [his] laptop crashed last month." Chuck's pearl of wisdom for next year's hopefuls? "You've got to back that shit up. They invented external hard drives for a reason."

Also on the list was Stan O'Neal, ranked at 54, and Jimmy Cayne, at number one.

Citigroup Plans Second Round Of Layoffs [CNBC]
The List Is Stellar, but a Little Dated [NYT]