Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Citibank, the insured depository bank of the global behemoth, Citigroup, was bailed out by the U.S. taxpayer from 2008 through 2010 with over $2 trillion dollars in equity infusions, asset guarantees and loans of under one percent interest from the Federal Reserve. The far flung financial enterprise was bailed out despite a serial history of abusing its customers – crimes for which its regulators have imposed large fines and little justice.
The undisputed reality is that the shareholders of Citigroup would be holding worthless stock today were it not for the company’s rescue by taxpayers during the Wall Street collapse five years ago. And yet, today, based on reports from coast to coast, the company is engaging in egregious abuses of struggling young college graduates who took out private student loans from Citibank.
The generosity that the U.S. Congress, and Treasury and Federal Reserve lavished on Citigroup is now being repaid with unbridled callousness and twisted schemes to exact as much pain as possible from its student loan holders according to court narratives and complaints filed with federal agencies. Citigroup has quickly forgotten how it survived its brush with death from its own imprudent debt loads.
As we reported in August 2012:
Citigroup was showing serious strains in 2007 but the meltdown came the week of November 17, 2008. On Monday, the firm called a Town Hall meeting with employees and announced the sacking of 52,000 workers. On Tuesday, November 18, Citigroup announced it had lost 53 per cent of an internal hedge fund’s money in a month’s time and that it was bringing $17 billion of off-balance sheet assets back onto its balance sheet. The next day brought the unwelcome tidings that a law firm was alleging that Citigroup peddled the MAT Five Fund as “safe” and “secure” then watched it lose 80 per cent of its value…
All told, Citigroup lost 60 per cent of its market value that week and 87 percent for the year to date. The company’s market value went from $250 billion in 2006 to $20.5 billion on Friday, November 21, 2008.
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