Citigroup's Simple Recipe for Breaking Laws and Getting Away with It

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/citigroups-simple-recipe-breaking-laws-and-getting-away-it



In the second quarter of 2013, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, Citigroup, posted a 42% increase in profits which CEO Michael Corbat praised as a “well balanced” result of “cost cutting” programs, including the firing of 11,000 workers.

This big bank has a sordid history of predatory profiteering and criminal activity, not unlike all the other large banks. In the early 20th century, what was then National City Bank was the main bank for the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests. Over ensuing decades and mergers it eventually came to be Citibank, and in the late 1990s, Citigroup. At that time, the bank was dealing with accusations that it had aided in the laundering of roughly $100 million in payoffs by Mexican drug cartels.

In 2000, the mega-bank was accused of abusing borrowers and clients through predatory lending practices. The bank aroused further controversy by helping Enron evade financial rules which allowed the company to hide its real financial reporting from government regulators. In 2005, Citigroup paid a $2 billion settlement to Enron investors who had filed a class-action lawsuit against the bank for helping Enron hide billions of dollars in debt.

A 2005 report by Citigroup created the term ‘plutonomy’ to describe the modern state capitalist system in which there is only the rich “and everyone else”; an economy in which the rich increasingly become the consuming class, driven to a significant degree by “disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, [and] capitalist friendly cooperative governments.”

[malaise]

1. Interesting that we reposted that Citygroup plutonomy link on DU

earlier this week

[xchrom]

2. it's like a blueprint to the crime -- odd it doesn't draw more interest. nt

[malaise]

3. Notice how they removed it but others had saved it

[marmar]

4. k/r

[Quantess]

5. K & R

[randome]

6. I wonder if it would be a better idea to identify who was in charge at the time.

Instead of saying 'Citigroup' did this or that, more might come of these stories if a face and a name were put to it.

I worked for Citigroup for 4 1/2 years and I have to say it was one of best jobs I ever had. The people I worked with in the IT department were great.

It's the fools at the top who ruin it for everyone else.
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