Citi loses almost $10B, slashes dividend

by mtippett | January 15, 2008 at 01:27 pm | 493 views | 3 comments

Even with the endless services charges Citibank still managed to break the record books.

NEW YORK - Citigroup Inc. lost almost $10 billion in last year's final three months, the largest quarterly deficit in its 196-year history, and slashed its dividend and 4,200 jobs as it recorded a mammoth write-down for bad bets on the mortgage industry.

The nation's largest bank wrote down the value of its portfolio by $18.1 billion and said it was setting aside $4 billion to cover U.S. consumer credit defaults. It signaled further problems in its consumer businesses as deflated home prices, high energy and food costs, and rising unemployment weigh on people's ability to keep up with their payments.

For his efforts, Charles Prince, the CEO walked away with almost 20 million dollars. Welcome to corporate America.

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moonwolf

at 19:03 on January 15th, 2008

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Bernanke and the Fed are quietly pulling off one of the largest handouts of money to global banks ever in history. Can you say Corporate Socialism? These huge loans to keep the insolvent banks afloat will be paid back by hapless US taxpayers should the crisis in liquidity deepen and the banks renege. Bernanke admits as much in this article and more.

The Fed is taking the banks original bad paper as collateral on the loans! It's stunning and most Americans don't even see the setup coming or have a clue what is happening.

All the people who speak so spitefully about socialism and profess that the USA is a "free" enterprise system might look at this development and the giant upcoming "stimulus" boondoggle that Bush is about to implement and notice socialism is alive and well in the USA. Most of the largesse, however, is going into the pockets of failing corporations, and in the long run will do more harm than good.

New bad policies by the Fed stacked on top of the old bad policies by the Fed coupled with war-borrowing, outsourcing, sub-prime greed and other foolish fiscal policies from the Bush Administration, and individual debt are what brought this crisis on.

Who will pay for this fiasco in the long haul? You will!

America is the number 1 debtor nation in the world and will soon crumple under the weight of debt and unbridled rapacious greed and hubris.