Monroe Anderson

Citigroup's reverse bank robbery

 
 

I read the letter three times and still didn't see them. Where were the words "Stick 'em up!?"

I suspect Citibank intentionally left them off, writing instead:

Dear Monroe Anderson III,

We are making changes to your account terms.

To continue to provide our customers with access to credit, we have had to adjust our pricing. The terms of your account will be changing. These changes include increases in the variable APR for purchases to 23.99 per and will take effect December 29, 2009.

That .01 percent that Citibank isn't charging me on my credit card is what it gives me on my interest-bearing savings account. Citibank's generosity is awe-inspiring.

My tax money--and yours--mercifully bailed out the financial corporation and its incompetent top management. Citigroup was kept from going under by our TARP funds. So Citigroup shows its gratitude by doubling my interest rates, giving an AVERAGE of $6.2 million last year to each of its failing top executives.

Nice work if you can get it.

Something doesn't add up here. Usury laws in Illinois have a nine percent limit. In Sarah Palin country, the Alaska state legislature "has established the general usury limit on personal loans at a maximum rate which is no more than five percent above the Federal Reserve interest rate on the date that the personal loan in question was made," according to Usurylaw.com. Maybe Citigroup came up with its gold standard in Soprano-land, New Jersey, where the usury limit is a back-breaking 30 percent.

I don't know. All I know is that the Credit Card Act of 2009, which kicks in next month and is supposed to protect us from loan sharking banks, seems to be a day late and a few hundreds of millions of dollars short. In anticipation of the so-called credit card protection law, Citibank raised my APR rate from 11.24 percent to the Willie Sutton-like 23.99 percent.

Fortunately, I am able to take matters into my own hands against the notorious Wall Street Gang. Since Citibank seems hell-bent on emptying my pockets, I'll going to retaliate by emptying my Citigroup bank and equity accounts. 

And while I'm at it, I'm going to cut up my Citigold card, wrap it in newspaper and mail it back to them. They made me an offer I could refuse. 

May their business soon be sleeping with the fishes.

_{This post has also been published on Newsvine.}

AIG: Insuring that the rich get richer

Everybody's angry about AIG. The people are seething. The politicians are demanding a payback. Even Edward Liddy, AIG's chairman and CEO, says the bonuses are "distasteful."

Well, while you and me and most of the rest of America are mad as hell and not wanting to give it anymore, the bonusees are scowling all the way to the bank, proving once again that if you want to rob somebody the pen is mightier than the sword--or the gun for that matter. Bernie Madoff didn't even say "stick 'em up" as he hauled off a cool $50 billion. Nor did the AIG muckety mucks wield any weapons as they stuck us up for 173 billion in bail out bucks before slipping $165 million of our money to their executives for a job disastrously done.

This is a classic example of how the rich get richer and the rest of us get screwed.

Let's roll away from Wall Street and head to Motown. A tenth of the bailout money AIG got went to the folks that actually make something. In return for the $17 billion GM and Chrysler got, the auto worker's union and its members are being strong-armed into chucking their contractual agreements with the Big Two while chinning and grinning to show their gratitude that they will still had lower paying jobs.

Mind you, the UAW and its members had done nothing wrong. They built the cars that the car corporations designed. The GM and Chrysler CEO's, who had been stuck on stupid when they first came to the nation's capitol in their private jets, wised up, making commercial airlines their transportation of choice and choosing to pay themselves a buck a year. 

Meanwhile at AIG, there was the $440,000 conference last October at the St. Regis resort at Monarch Beach. That little extravagance turned out to be a pittance compared to the latest revelation that at least 73 employees from AIG's London-based Financial Products unit--the division that sold the derivatives that are responsible for the insurance giant's threatening collapse--got bonuses of $1 million or better each. Eleven of those London employees were received the so-called retention bonuses have already flown the coop.

Big time pay for a big time F-up. How would you like to have a job like that?

As the argument goes, we have to pay the bonuses because they have a contract and there's this magical, mysterious obligation to honor that legal agreement. Why there was no reason to honor the United Auto Workers contract remains a greater mystery--or maybe not.

We know how it works: white collar crime pays. Blue collar labor gets paid not so much.

(This post was also published on my cyber column at Newsvine.com, UK/EU Progressive and Agoravox.)