This is so heartwarming: Citigroup is getting a huge donation! Forty-five billion and counting of taxpayer money, along with a government guarantee to limit all future losses. Who can remain unmoved at the spectacle of this munificent federal government charity? Especially because many private citizens have been doing the same thing for years. Credit card interest, late fees, transactions fees – we've all been small but steadfast contributors to Citi. Some may give to Oxfam or UNICEF, but Citi has always taken a disproportionate share of our spare dollars.
With admirable consistency, unlike those other charities, Citi has never even pretended to do good. The brains at Citi helped bring us Enron, ruining tens of thousands and costing Californians untold billions in energy over-charges. Back when it was merely a bank instead of a 'Group' Citi was known for its telegram loans. That was also back when people sent telegrams. Latin American governments, invariably of the brutal and repressive variety, often found themselves short of cash. Torture and assassination on a sovereign state scale costs money, after all. So they simply sent a cable to Citi, collecting their what-me-worry? billions by return wire. Many of those loans defaulted when their borrowers' corrupt banana republic economies went bust. In one quarter of 1987 Citi wrote off a cool billion of bad South American loans. And that was when a billion really bought you something.
Enron and Latin American lending and so many other scandals through the years were only shaving nicks for Citi. Like Topsy the bank grew and grew, even as it had to dispense a billion here or a couple of billion there to pay off defrauded investors and bad debt. A company netting many billions each quarter could a afford such little stumbles from time to time.
Now, just in time for the holidays, Citi is throwing 52,000 employees onto the street. They recently mailed a minatory letter informing customers that credit card fees, late fees, and interest charges were all going up, up, up. Citi continues to act as it has always acted, as much like a deranged thug with a switch-blade in one hand and a baseball bat in the other as a giant multi-national possibly can. And instead of throwing the executive suite and board of directors in jail, the Bush administration is converting those bad boys into the biggest philanthropy of all time. The outlook may be a little bleak for everybody else, but for Citi it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.