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Citigroup Inc. said it is selling a huge chunk of its stock at a steep discount to raise the cash it needs to repay bailout funds and free itself from government support. But the government backed out of selling any of its 34 percent Citi stake, apparently due to the tepid investor response and the weak price garnered by the $20.5 billion equity offering -- described by Citigroup as the largest in history. Citigroup said it is selling 5.4 million common shares at $3.15 apiece, an 8.7 percent discount to yesterday's close. The bank is also selling 35 million tangible...

Deal made to recover bailout Firms exempted from rule when U.S. sells its stake

U.S. taxpayers could ultimately see a profit of $13 billion to $14 billion from Citigroup's payback of bailout investments, including dividends paid, a U.S. Treasury official said on Monday. That amount includes the gain on the government's 34 percent stake in Citi common shares , which was close to $5.8 billion as of Friday's close, as well as trust preferred securities with a $5.2 billion face value, received in a loss-sharing agreement backing a pool of Citigroup assets. The official also said the total also includes estimates of nearly $3 billion in dividends paid on the government's investments in the...

There comes a moment in politics when the blinders fall off the supporters of the other guy and they discover what you have known all along: He’s a fraud. The blinders just fell off Matt Taibbi, a writer for Rolling Stone magazine. He just now noticed that while 26% of the money Barack Obama raised came from “small” donors, nearly 3 times as much came from big donors, who ponied up a half billion bucks. Where the 26% saw Hope and Change, the 74% saw Invest and Collect. Wrote Taibbi: “What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the...

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired...

Congress -- and possibly Citigroup -- may be gearing up to start funding the organized crime syndicate ACORN again. The current federal funding ban expires Dec. 18. On Tuesday evening the House Appropriations Committee rejected on a party line vote of 9 to 5 an amendment offered by Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa) that would have blocked federal funding of the radical advocacy group. The amendment was needed because the Obama administration thumbed its nose at a provision in spending legislation that banned ACORN funding until the end of next week. In a ruling revealed late last month by the Justice...

The Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal report that Wall Street giants Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have been issued the swine flu vaccine for their "at risk" employees despite the fact that there are massive shortages of the vaccine nationwide. The rarity of the vaccine has made it a hot commodity, one in which movers, shakers, traders, and bailout recipients now have jumped to the front of the line when it comes to what President Obama declared to be a National Emergency in late October. Reaction to the news has been swift, fierce, and angry. Senator Chris Dodd of...

John Reed, who originally helped merge Traveller's Group with Citibank with Sandy Weill, is performing a mea culpa for creating megazombie Citigroup (C): Bloomberg: “I’m sorry,” Reed, 70, said in an interview yesterday. “These are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it’s not easy to see what’s happened." “I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships,” Reed said in the interview in his office on Park Avenue in New York. “If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking you’d have consumer banking separate...

Citigroup has advised NLPC that Senior Vice President Eric Eve has resigned for ACORN’s Advisory Committee. In a September 28 letter to Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, I asked that the bank sever its relationship with ACORN, including Eve’s membership on the Committee. In an October 29 reply, Citigroup also stated that it has “suspended our charitable financial support and program relationship with ACORN, and we are awaiting the results of the independent audit of ACORN activities now underway.”This is ominous, and certainly leaves open the possibility of continued Citigroup support for ACORN. The “independent audit” is no such thing. It...

Pay Czar Feinberg, Not Obama, Behind Decision to Slash Executive Pay White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg did not seek President Obama's approval to order steep pay cuts from bailed-out executives. Thursday, October 22, 2009 White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg was the driving force behind the move to order steep pay cuts from bailed-out executives, and did not even seek the president's approval before making his decision. The Treasury Department is expected to formally announce in the next few days a plan to slash annual salaries by about 90 percent from last year for the 25 highest-paid executives at...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has kept in frequent contact with a small group of Wall Street firms since taking the helm at the Treasury, speaking most often with top officials from Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.</p>

Taxpayer-Owned Citigroup Still Bankrolling ACORN Submitted by Peter Flaherty on Sun, 09/27/2009 - 18:59   Now that taxpayers are Citigroup’s biggest shareholder, owning 36% of common stock, it is time for the company and its foundation to end its relationship with ACORN and its affiliates.Citigroup has received $45 billion in taxpayer TARP funds. In addition, taxpayers are on the hook for the lion’s share of losses on the company’s $335 billion loan portfolio.According to the 2008 annual tax return of the Citi Foundation, it provided the ACORN Institute, Inc. with grants of $500,000 for each of the years 2006, 2007...

Many of the fake documents used by a leading Democratic Party fund-raiser to defraud HSBC and Citigroup Inc were made by his brother-in-law, U.S. prosecutors said on Friday. Authorities arrested and charged Shahin Kashanchi, brother-in-law of indicted fund-raiser Hassan Nemazee, who donated to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other leading Democrats over the years. Nemazee pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in Manhattan federal court to defrauding a total of three banks -- Bank of America was the other -- out of $292 million in loan proceeds. "Based on e-mail traffic between Kashanchi and Nemazee, Kashanchi was...

Corporations that have given ACORN millions of dollars over the years are now cancelling their donations in the wake of videotape revelations of employees of the infamous community organizing giving advice on mortgage fraud, tax evasion, prostitution, and child sex slavery. Bank of America is reviewing its grant program, while Citigroup is waiting for the results of on-going investigations. JP Morgan Chase had previously ended its relationship with ACORN. Bank of America donated 28 grants totaling almost $3 million to ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC), since 2005, financial records show. A company spokesman said the activity exposed on videotape prompted the...

HANK Paulson has admitted that he kept in touch with "market participants" on Wall Street when he was Treasury secretary. But did the former head of Goldman Sachs use his government position to enrich his friends during one of the most tumultuous times in US financial history? Paulson's phone logs, which I obtained after a Freedom of Information Act request, show that the Treasury chief kept in frequent touch with a virtual Who's Who of Wall Street's power players. But a half-hour block of time could prove to be the most intriguing bit of non-information in his schedule. Let me...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who was charged last month with defrauding Citigroup Inc is being sued by HSBC for deceiving it into lending him $100 million. The lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court in early September accused private equity firm head Hassan Nemazee, 59, of engaging in an elaborate scheme to make HSBC Bank USA believe that its loan was secured by collateral in the form of U.S. Treasury Notes when it was not.

UPDATED: ACORN, calling the actions of some of its employees "indefensible," has suspended advising new clients as part of its service programs and is setting up an independent review to see what happened.

As of a few moments ago Bloomberg broke a story suggesting that the US government would be selling off its stake in Citigroup stock. As much as I'm for the US Government and Taxpayer getting away from any of our illegitimate TARP children, Bloomberg's story is just off. here is no such thing as a profit on the sale of this stock when, as a nation, we are into Citi Bank for much more than what was placed into Citi Stock. Specifically, from Bloomberg's article and confirmed via Pro Publica there will be at least $25 billion in warrants left...

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The head of the committee overseeing how Uncle Sam is spending its bailout dollars offered withering criticism of the feds' handling of Citigroup's rescue, blasting regulators for their lack of transparency -- and the absence of any clear exit strategy. Noting that other companies that have received federal aid have served up proposals to pay back the money, Elizabeth Warren, chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, had harsh words about the lack of such a plan in the case of Citi, which has received $45 billion in rescue cash and is more than one-third owned by US taxpayers. "Too big...