Citigroup (Citibank) Might Implode; Citi is in big trouble.

It is hard to say if Citi will be swept under the rug of reality. I sense that although we are seperated by our countries of origin, languages and background, we are still united in our hatred towards banks. Yet we still need banks,I will explain why.
See, when business was done quadrillion of years ago , it didn`t demand a plethora of knowledge or a special group of skilled people to accomplish some tech wizardry.Today, in order to build a single jet airplane, it demands 15 years of investment- financial and brain one too. So it is very unlikely that 2 johnies would bunch together and simply crank out a new Motorola ultrarazor. The return on ivestment is pretty obscure, as noone can actually predict if your product will be purchased by anyone. That is why you need large corporations to deal with multiple tasks like building a jet engine or car. As most of consumer goods and gadgets tend to get more and more complex, it is very unlikely that they would be built by amateurs. At the same time large corporations also need banks, as they quiet often borrow money from banks( investment banks) in order to pull through some new projects. And if you thing that large companies suck, think for a moment who will build a GE engine, who will build Caterpillar tractors and who will create AMD chips if not large corporations? If you wipe out banks, you wipe out large conglomerates that co-operate with banks for new projects to take place. In the end you end up with a country that makes only maple syrup and grannys jam for annual fairs, while the items of the biggest added value simply evaporate. What we need to consider is the greed of banks, but that is another topic.....

I don't live in the U.S , but yesterday received an invitation

from Citibank to open a credit card.....?!





....and by the way , the PTB cooked the golden egg laying goose

in 1991 , ....... ....so don't blame Barack.

reply to post by radarloveguy


I blame Barack for being part of the continuation of 96 years worth of policies that will continue to destroy every vestige of freedom and prosperity we have left.

His entire administration is filled with Wall St. and Fed insiders, and it has been showing for some time now..

Citi bank has a life line tethered to the Federal government. So long as the government stands, so does Citi. The fed has a 400+ BILLION dollar Backstop loan against Citi defaults (which has been untapped).

Even if Citi fell into a #storm of defaults, the backstop prevents collapse.. their back stop is 3 times larger than the entire AIG bailout!

IF Citibank were to collapse, it would destroy the World economy on its way down.. its size is unfathomable.. even if we survived the onslaught, the sudden instantanious vaccuum of wealth would have world wide effects.

But, with the backstop, its unlikely this will happen. And the FEDS will probably launder vast sums of money into the bank before this happens..

Imo, citi is safe..

reply to post by Rockpuck


CITI is only safe insofar as we can be held to account as tax payers.
And we're quickly getting tapped out.

Originally posted by Amagnon
There is so much toxic crap floating around that is still very much being shuffled to the bottom of the too hard basket.

$1.4 quadrillion worth of unresolved derivatives, with a real value of probably near zero are floating somewhere in cyberspace - they belong to someone - and many of them are CDO's - so they can hit multiple targets with one explosion.

I would expect to see new institutions formed - and all the death and mayhem being shuffled into them while they can still claim they have nominal value - lies, lies and outrageous lies.

Something is going to blow up.

Indeed. If anything "apocalyptic" is going to happen within the next few days, as some recent prediction posts here on ATS is warning about, it´s going to be related to this fiscal black hole that is literally 16 times the size of the fiscal Earth...measured in yearly GDP. What is even more unbelievable, the amount of CDO´s have actually INCREASED since the start of the economic crisis...inspite of all the bailouts, pseudo reforms, and calls of renewed fiscal confidence being blabbed by countless talking heads in the MSM.

Buy metal.

You mean there might be a chance that I wont be solicited by Citibank twice a weak via junk mail/phone/email anymore ?

Where do I sign-up!

Originally posted by projectvxn
reply to post by Rockpuck

 

CITI is only safe insofar as we can be held to account as tax payers.
And we're quickly getting tapped out.

Lol...

When funds run out, the printing press will tax us into oblivion. Don't be fooled that our debt can extend only so far, America still pays the smallest amount in taxes of all industrial nations.. they can tax us another 15+% if they wanted, and inflation will tax us the rest... all and all, Citi is safe.

Its a Zombie! .. you can shoot a zombie, burn a zombie, stab a zombie, cut its arms and legs off but you cannot kill a zombie. Its already dead...

reply to post by Rockpuck


In the environment we're in right now, all that would do is cause a run on the dollar. And we all know where that goes.

Anyone who hasn't read Wall Street's Naked Swindle by Matt Taibbi should do so immediately (warning: some strong language).

A few choice quotes:

Heading into 2008, there were five major investment banks in the United States: Bear, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Today only Morgan Stanley and Goldman survive as independent firms, perched atop a restructured Wall Street hierarchy. And while the rest of the civilized world responded to last year's catastrophes with sweeping measures to rein in the corruption in their financial sectors, the United States invited the wolves into the government, with the popular new president, Barack Obama — elected amid promises to clean up the mess — filling his administration with Bear's and Lehman's conquerors, bestowing his papal blessing on a new era of robbery.

To the rest of the world, the brazenness of the theft — coupled with the conspicuousness of the government's inaction — clearly demonstrates that the American capital markets are a crime in progress. To those of us who actually live here, however, the news is even worse. We're in a place we haven't been since the Depression: Our economy is so completely f****d, the rich are running out of things to steal...

...The major players on Wall Street, who for years had confined this unseemly sort of insider rape to smaller companies, had begun to eat each other alive.

See link for full article.

This bank fear talk has to be taken in context.

I currently have a 0% balance transfer with Citi. They enjoy my safe cash flow. I've never missed a payment.

Things are not the same for everybody. How does it work? I'm not sure.

reply to post by Cabaret Voltaire


I was in the middle of paying off a 5% balance transfer on the card that they turned off, never missed a payment either... They were making money off me, so beware, they're not making any off u...

reply to post by XTexan


Hey maybe my letter is getting mailed out this week. Who knows. Banks do alright just getting your payment each month. Don't they keep the full loan amount on their books as an asset with only a fractional bit of the loan as a possible liability? They bank on the belief that you will pay it back in full, right? I really don't know. I'm stark raving mad.

reply to post by XTexan


When you say they turned your card "off" what do you mean? Did they stop you from adding additional amounts, and are you still paying your regular payments on the remaining balance?

Originally posted by Rockpuck

Originally posted by projectvxn
reply to post by Rockpuck

 

CITI is only safe insofar as we can be held to account as tax payers.
And we're quickly getting tapped out.

Lol...

When funds run out, the printing press will tax us into oblivion. Don't be fooled that our debt can extend only so far, America still pays the smallest amount in taxes of all industrial nations.. they can tax us another 15+% if they wanted, and inflation will tax us the rest... all and all, Citi is safe.

Its a Zombie! .. you can shoot a zombie, burn a zombie, stab a zombie, cut its arms and legs off but you cannot kill a zombie. Its already dead...

I'm with projectvxn on this one.

Citi may have incredible protection guarantees from the federal government, but the markets still react.
If Citi is even seen to be in trouble, it could cause the SHTF scenario just by the mass panic it would cause throughout the economy. It would be a sure sign to other nations that the $ is beyond help, and that the stability of it will not improve any time soon.

As for tax, Americans are already rising up. There is a breaching point, where states and federal government simply cannot tax the people enough to climb out of this hole. Economists know it, other nations know it, business leaders know it.

The last data I saw suggested that the debt of the nation equates to $30.000 per American. That's per person, not per working adult. If you discount the unemployed, the retired, the youth, I'd bet that in reality, for every working, taxable adult American, that figure is at least $50.000 per person.

The American government could (and are beginning to) tax the working adults to the hilt, in every respect, and it still isn't enough to improve the economy and raise enough income to climb out of this in the next decade.

And, as they continue to do this to the people, anger and protest will increase, which means the funds needed per state to deal with it will also rise, which means taxes will rise again. And there you have the downward spiral.

That's my opinion anyway.

No way is Citi in trouble, their executives are getting huge bonus:

Citigroup, Bank of America Paid Average $18 Million to Managers


Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. paid top executives an average of $18.2 million each last year as the banks accepted a total of $90 billion in taxpayer funds to survive the financial crisis.

Citigroup, based in New York, paid $390.2 million to 21 people, an average of $18.6 million each, records released Oct. 22 by Treasury Department paymaster Kenneth Feinberg show. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America paid $227.8 million to 13 executives, or $17.5 million apiece, according to Feinberg, who didn’t name them. The review excluded top-paid employees from 2008 who have since left.

Average pay for managers at the two companies, which have not yet repaid their rescue funds, was almost double that of the other five bailed-out companies reviewed by Feinberg. He ordered 2009 pay cuts averaging more than 50 percent for 136 executives at the seven firms after President Barack Obama said “it does offend our values” when company executives “pay themselves huge bonuses even as they continue to rely on taxpayer assistance.”

Overall, the employees whose pay was reviewed by Feinberg will get $339.7 million this year, or an average of $2.5 million. The totals for 2008 and 2009 were derived using figures Feinberg provided on the dollar amount and percentage decline between the two years.

www.bloomberg.com...

Originally posted by silent thunder
I cut myself loose from these clowns at citi earlier this year...despite an excellent rating and track record, they began to start "losing" my credit card payment checks or claiming I had made them later than I actually did, etc., in order to nickle-and-dime me on late fees and hike my rates.

You know whats funny, something similar happened to me, the payments were due on the 7th, suddenly last months payment wasn't registered and I payed at a bank branch, I called and luckily had the receipt.

When I called I was told my payment was due the 4th of the month, This bastards had changed the due date so I would make a late payment.

Originally posted by serph
reply to post by jacksmoke

 

Reread that 12%-10% equals 2% from KD again. He implies that they've been lying about their cash positions and geez anything is possible with any of our zombie banks.

Yup. my bad. skimming instead of reading

Oh the usury law. You know back in the day when Joey Two Times would charge you 15% interest it was considered loan sharking and the Feds would try to haul him away. I digress.

Each state has the own usury laws. Matter of fact some states don't have one and well think about which states these companies are based in. I can't remember the law, but the company abides by the usury law of the state that they are based in not the state that the consumer is based in.

Well, as long as its good for S. Dakota and Delaware, I am guessing those are two of the front-runners, since that where most junk mail seems to come from.

reply to post by Cabaret Voltaire


The account was closed, cant use the card anymore and was told to destroy it. I paid the balance off in full, not sure if I had to though (didn't ask)... So I'm not sure what, if any, interest rates applied to the remaining balance.

reply to post by XTexan


Why would Citi call the loan like that? I wonder what would make them think they could get the whole amount just like that.