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Wall Street's most vocal critics of the new financial regulations aren't invited to the party. Neither Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein nor JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon were asked to attend President Obama's signing ceremony set for today in Washington. FinReg, as the financial sector overhaul is known, is likely to alter the state and style of business of Wall Street and, potentially, sap billions of dollars of revenues from some of the most powerful financial institutions in the country. The high-profile ceremony is expected to be attended by a few hundred guests including Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, viewed by...

As the deepening crisis of the catastrophic Gulf oil disaster continues to unfold, several oil spill stories of major importance have been virtually ignored. Even the conservative media have refused by and large to cover these stories. Conservative Examiner was among the first to break these stories, yet to this day not a single major media outlet has been willing to report them, not even Fox News or conservative talk radio. These stories are explosive, conclusive, factually verified, and of utmost importance to understanding what is truly happening in the Gulf and the scenario that led to it. First, on...

NEW YORK,- A New York woman's lawsuit against Citigroup says she was fired because bosses deemed her feminine beauty to be a distraction for male colleagues. Debrahlee Lorenzana, 33, said in her city Supreme Court lawsuit that she was ordered not to wear turtlenecks, pencil skirts, fitted suits or heels in the workplace because the tight clothing made her body "too distracting" for male coworkers, the New York Daily News reported Thursday. "Never did I ever show cleavage," Lorenzana said. "I like fashion, but I always dressed professionally." "I can't help it that I have curves," she said. "And I'm...

CitiFinancial said Tuesday it will close 330 branches in the U.S., including three in Missouri and eight in Illinois. Baltimore-based CitiFinancial, the consumer finance arm of Citigroup (NYSE: C), was not immediately disclosing which branches it will shutter, spokeswoman Shannon Bell said. As part of a reorganization plan, CitiFinancial is separating its U.S. business full-service branch and servicing segments, and will convert 182 of its full-service U.S. branches into servicing centers. CitiFinancial also said it would rename its business after the reorganization and by the end of the year. Full-service branches will continue to focus on loan originations and servicing...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert Rubin, the former financial superstar once lionized for his global crisis-fighting prowess, was scolded Thursday over the mortgage-securities disaster at Citigroup Inc. when he was a top executive there. His claim he didn't know of the risks piling up drew a sharp retort. "You can't have it both ways: You either were pulling the levers or asleep at the switch," the head of the panel investigating the roots of the financial crisis told Rubin at a hearing. Rubin expressed regret. Yet he insisted he didn't know until late in the game, when the subprime mortgage crisis...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert Rubin, a senior adviser to Citigroup Inc. at the time of its deep losses from subprime mortgages, said Wednesday that he learned belatedly that Citi had $43 billion in high-risk securities on its books. "I do not recall knowing before September 2007" that the bank had held onto the investments composed of repackaged mortgage bonds, Rubin said. In November 2007, Citigroup publicly estimated it would lose $8 billion to $11 billion in the fourth quarter that year from those securities.

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- New York businessman and prominent Democratic fund- raiser Hassan Nemazee was indicted Monday for allegedly defrauding three banks out of $292 million in loans. Nemazee, 59 years old, was charged with aggravated identity theft and three counts of bank fraud in the indictment. Each bank fraud count carries a term of up to 30 years in prison. A lawyer for Nemazee didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Nemazee, who was involved in various presidential campaigns and once served as finance chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was initially charged criminally in August related...

The image of banks locking their doors to keep customers from making withdrawals during a bank run is what immediately came to mind when we heard that Citigroup was telling customers it has the right to prevent any withdrawals from checking accounts for seven days. "Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts.

(CNSNews.com) – Citigroup, which received $45 billion in tax dollars from the federal bank bailout, will not rule out giving more money to ACORN, the liberal community organizing group under investigation in several states for alleged voter registration fraud.  Citigroup was one of the three major recipients of money from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to give money to the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) and its affiliates. The other TARP recipients were Bank of America, which also received $45 billion in loans from the federal government and J.P. Morgan Chase, which got $25 billion. ...

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>