Unlike the auto CEOs, who faced two days of scolding at congressional hearings before leaving Washington empty-handed last week, the head of Citigroup, Vikram Pandit, didn’t even have to put in an appearance, much less wait for a congressional vote. All of the terms for the bank’s bailout were negotiated behind closed doors with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and other senior officials.

While the auto executives were lectured about everything from their management failures to flying to Washington in private jets-and the media shrieked outrage over the “gold-plated benefits” of auto workers-no one grilled Pandit on how he could dare ask for a taxpayer-funded bailout as head of a crisis-ridden bank that awarded him a bonus of $30 million worth of stock at the beginning of this year, on top of the $165 million it paid him for his hedge fund as part of the deal to hire him. There were no sneering comments from the cable news “pundits” about how someone living in an $18 million apartment next to New York’s Central Park could come “cup-in-hand” to the government.

And, while Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress demanded that the auto companies submit “a plan for future viability” before they receive a dime, no such plan was forthcoming from Citigroup. All that has been released to the public is a half-page joint memo from the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and FDIC which announces the government bailout while committing Citigroup to nothing.

How is this blatant double standard and hypocrisy to be explained? Some have suggested that the Big Three deserve to fail because of gross mismanagement. But what can one say of the management at Citibank, which managed to lose more than 90 percent of the company’s value—from $244 billion to $20.5 billion-in the space of two years? More importantly, the source of these huge losses is largely the bank’s reckless speculation in the form of subprime lending and securitization-all in pursuit of astronomical bonuses for Citigroup’s traders and senior executives.

In the impending bankruptcy of the auto companies, the ruling elite sees an opportunity to carry out a massive attack on living standards, working conditions and social benefits, thereby forcing the working class to pay for the crisis.

The aim is to make an example of the auto workers, whose compensation historically has been a benchmark for the working class as a whole. This can be achieved either through outright bankruptcy and the potential liquidation of millions of jobs, or through a so-called rescue, extended in exchange for the decimation of wages, the ripping up of health and pension benefits for those on the job and the elimination of pensions and health insurance for hundreds of thousands of retirees.

Such an assault would be used as a precedent for similar attacks against every section of working people throughout the country.

You may not agree with the premise of class warfare, but only time will prove me right or wrong.  Remember!  I will have no problem telling you. “I told you so”.