CitiBank to lay off and fire 10.000 workers

Citibank is a major international bank, founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, later First National City Bank of New York. Citibank is now the consumer and corporate banking arm of financial services giant Citigroup, one of the largest companies in the world. As of March 2007, it is the largest bank in the United States by holdings

Citibank has operations in more than 100 countries and territories around the world. More than half of its 1,400 offices are in the United States, mostly in the New York City, Chicago, Miami, and Washington DC metropolitan areas, as well as in California.

Citigroup (C) plans to lay off and fire at least 10,000 people starting this week and to raise interest rates on millions of its credit-card customers, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Executives have told officials to slash their compensation budgets by 25%, the Journal said.

In addition, Citibank is going to announce steep increases in the credit card interest rates and I’m sure we’ll also see higher credit card fees as well. The goal will be to place more “innocent” land mines in front of consumers that they can step on to increase revenue for Citibank.

Consumers can opt out of the rate increase, the Journal said, and will be able to use their credit cards until their expiration. This follows a similar move by American Express
(AXP).

The Journal also mentioned that Citigroup called “completely erroneous” its report that the firm was considering replacing Sir Win Bischoff as chairman, but it said it stood by the article and that people familiar with the matter said the move was still being considered.

American Express to Be Bank Holding Company

American Express (NYSE: AXP), sometimes known as "AmEx" or "Amex", is a diversified global financial services company, headquartered in New York City. The company also has major offices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Salt Lake City, Utah; Greensboro, North Carolina; and Phoenix, Arizona. The company is best known for its credit card, charge card, and traveler's cheque businesses.

American Express agreed to Be Bank Holding Company

American Express announced today that the U.S. Federal Reserve has approved its application to become licensed as a bank holding company and to be regulated by the Federal Reserve.

Qualifying as a bank holding company will provide American Express maximum flexibility and stability in this challenging economic environment. It aligns American Express' regulatory status with other companies in the financial services industry, further diversifies the Company's funding sources and access to capital, and provides opportunities to expand its deposit-taking capabilities.

American Express had already operated a commercial bank and a savings bank supervised by federal regulators. But the bulk of its assets were not in those institutions. As a bank holding company, these assets are now under federal supervision, a move that expands the amount of financing it can request from the government. That means the bank could qualify for up to $3.6 billion of the Treasury Department’s money, instead of just a small portion.

His announcement came as American Express reported a 24 percent drop in third-quarter profit and said it would slash 10 percent of its work force as it prepared to write off a larger pool of credit card loans. American Express wrote off about 5.9 percent of these loans in the third quarter.

How Barack Obama to cure Subprime Mortgage Crisis

US citizens will face their election on 4th November 2008. Who will become the president? Barack Obama or John McCain ? Who will be elected, one thing sure to do is to solve the US Economy, including the subprime mortgage crisis.

What did Obama do to help create the subprime debacle? Well, Obama joined with a group of other Chicago lawyers who bullied and threatened area banks to loan money to poor minorities who couldn’t afford the mortgages.

Barack H. Obama is running around telling everyone that the housing mortgage market collapsed primarily because of some vaguely described “deregulation” that took place sometime under George Bush–or maybe under Clinton; I’m not clear on that. I’m not sure he is.

Whatever his claim is, it’s a lie.

The reality is that the housing market collapsed in large part because a coalition of race-baiting bullies brought very heavy pressure to bear on the banks to make more subprime loans on properties in low-income communities. Those who didn’t approve the risky subprime loans were accused of “redlining”–i.e., refusing to make loans on properties in those neighborhoods.

Who were these bullies?

Some of the bullies were out in Washington pounding the tables and screaming at bank executives about “redlining”.

At the same time, other bullies were stalking big city courthouses, filing frivolous and extortinate lawsuits against banks based on novel “disparate impact” theories of what might be held to constitute “redlining.” In other words, even banks which were making lots of loans in low-income communities were being sued if they weren’t approving just as many loans in low-income communities as they were in high-income communities.

Here is a short video from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in which he promises to create a ten million dollar fund to help keep people in their homes and a tax deduction for homeowners who do not itemize on their income tax returns.