Free Republic

When the Biden administration announced $27 billion in environmental grants last April, it set the clock ticking on a predicament: how to get the unprecedented sums for the President's envisioned NetZero future out the door before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30? The task was complicated by the fact most of the money – $20 billion – would go to just eight nonprofits that, like the Environmental Protection Agency itself, had never handled such gargantuan grants. In hindsight, it’s easy to suspect that corners were cut, or laws were broken, or, at the very least, extraordinary measures were taken....

One of America’s biggest banks accidentally transferred more than $80 trillion (£64 trillion) to a customer’s account after a “fat finger” input error by an employee. Citigroup, one of America’s “big four” lenders, erroneously transferred $81 trillion to the account in April last year instead of the $280 requested because of a keyboard mistake by a bank staffer. The huge sum, worth more than 20 times Britain’s entire gross domestic product (GDP), was approved after being checked by two of the bank’s employees, before being sent to the customer account the following morning. The payment was only flagged after a...

The resignation of a top official with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington appears to be more partisanship by a longtime DOJ apparatchik tied to Democrats and a cover-up of a major scandal. In what has become the latest trend in #Resistance fashion, another government lawyer made a splashy exit from the Department of Justice this week. Denise Cheung, chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, sent a three-page letter to her boss explaining why she would have to quit rather than follow orders to pursue an investigation into potential wrongdoing tied to the Biden...

Obama's New Chief Of Staff Made Some Amazing Hedge Fund Investments At Citi Lisa Du Jan. 10, 2012, 3:50 PM Ever since it was announced that Jack Lew, current head of the Office of Management and Budget, would be President Barack Obama's new Chief of Staff to replace the departing William Daley, the media sphere has been abuzz with Lew's stellar political resume—having worked for several Congressmen and under both Bill and Hillary Clinton—and the fact that he is described as a "mild-mannered and steady technocrat," enjoying bi-partisan support. But the incoming chief has another facet to his work history—he's...

A former senior policy adviser to the Obama administration has appeared in court in Britain charged with child sex offences. Rahamim 'Rami' Shy, 46, who co-ordinated the US government's strategy to combat terrorists from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, is accused of arranging the commission of a child sex offence, court documents reveal. He is also charged with possession of two category C indecent images of children and possessing a prohibited image of a child. Shy, a US citizen, who lives in New Jersey, worked for the White House under president Barack Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was...

As Breitbart News reported last week, Zeldin discovered that the outgoing Biden administration had rushed $20 billion to the left-wing groups, via Citibank, last year before leaving office.Zeldin promised to recover the funds. But Denise Cheung, criminal division chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, refused to order Citibank to stop disbursing the funds, saying that they had been legally allocated under President Joe Biden’s so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” (which expanded government spending on climate).When Cheung was ordered to send a letter to Citibank telling it to withhold the funds, she resigned.

"As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been," the EPA administrator continued. "It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue."

A $20 billion Biden administration green-energy slush fund was collecting interest at a private bank and is being distributed without proper oversight, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin reveals in an exclusive interview. President Joe Biden’s EPA parked $20 billion at the financial institution, which The Post has learned is Citibank, as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. But the awardees weren’t announced until August 2024 and Citibank was not brought in until September — after Biden’s disastrous June debate performance led him to withdraw from his re-election effort in July, making for a very...

A $20 billion Biden administration green-energy slush fund was collecting interest at a private bank and is being distributed without proper oversight, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin reveals in an exclusive interview. President Joe Biden’s EPA parked $20 billion at the financial institution, which The Post has learned is Citibank, as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. But the awardees weren’t announced until August 2024 and Citibank not brought in until September — after Biden’s disastrous June debate performance led him to withdraw from re-election in July, making a very different race with Kamala...

acknowledging a "clearly disappointing" quarter marred by one-off charges that resulted in a $1.8 billion loss. ... in the middle of a multi-year effort to cut bureaucracy, increase profits and boost a stock that has lagged peers ... "The fourth quarter was very clearly disappointing," CEO Jane Fraser .. We know that 2024 is critical." ... layoffs from the sweeping reorganization, Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason ... Citi will also no longer count 40,000 jobs when it spins off and lists its Mexican consumer unit Banamex in an eventual initial public offering, eventually aiming to reach a staffing level of...

Ten banks in the United States are working with the New York Innovation Center (NYIC), part of the Federal Reserve, to test the regulated liability network (RLN), a digital currency platform that will replace cash. RLN would use distributed ledger technology to improve financial settlements and would include commercials and central banks, the firm said earlier this month.

Ten members of the banking community are working with the New York Innovation Center (NYIC), which is part of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to explore the feasibility of the regulated liability network (RLN) — an interoperable digital money platform. The proposed RLN would use distributed ledger technology to improve financial settlements and would include central banks, commercial banks and regulated non-banks, the participating firms said Tuesday (Nov. 15) in a press release. “The 12-week PoC [proof of concept] will test a version of the RLN design that operates exclusively in U.S. dollars where commercial banks issue simulated...

Banks routinely snitch on customers and even deny services to people politicians don’t like. The House Judiciary Committee is investigating banks for sharing Americans' financial information with the FBI without regard for privacy concerns. In fact, there's no doubt about the threat to civil liberties posed by the government's leverage over the financial industry; that's long established. At question in this investigation is whether the danger to our freedom inherent in that cozy relationship is being wielded in political warfare between the country's political factions. But the larger problem should be fixed no matter what lawmakers discover. "Today, Chairman Jim...

While waiting on the February jobs report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), I noticed that the big 4 banks (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citi and Wells Fargo) are drowning in net realized losses as The Federal Reserve combats 1) too many years of loose monetary policy under former Fed Chair Janet Yellen and 2) too much spending under Pelosi, Schumer and … McConnell. At a micro level, we have Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) SVB Is racing to prevent a bank run as funds advise pulling cash. Panic is spreading across the financial world as concerns about...

For the first time in nearly 50 years, Great Britain’s inflation rate is expected spike beyond 18 percent, according to a dire new report from Citi. Benjamin Nabarro, the chief UK economist at Citi, told clients at the start of the week that the bank expects CPI inflation to reach 18.6 percent by January, in part due to soaring electricity and natural gas costs. (Related: The UK’s hyperinflationary track started to really become noticeable last year.) “Our latest estimate, updated for the further 25 percent and 7 percent rally in UK gas and electricity prices last week, points to a...

Citigroup told employees on Thursday that it would require vaccination against Covid-19 as a condition of employment in the United States, making it the first major bank to issue such a mandate. “It has become crystal clear that Covid-19 will not be going away anytime soon,” Sara Wechter, the company’s head of human resources, wrote in a LinkedIn post describing the new policy. Ms. Wechter cited two catalysts for the decision. First, because the bank does business with the federal government, it has an obligation to comply with President Biden’s executive order requiring vaccination for people working on government contracts....

The fact that America’s biggest banks (not to mention many of its biggest companies) have embraced virtue-signaling on issues like racial equality and representation is nothing new. But in the race to be seen as the most beneficent megabank on Wall Street, Citigroup appears to be pulling ahead. One year after releasing a 104-page paper purporting to analyze the impact of racism and inequality on America’s economy – the analysts ultimately determined, in a report that reads more like propaganda than sell-side research, that “systemic racism” has helped to destroy some $16 trillion in economic value over the last 20...

Bitcoin, that inexplicable cryptocurrency with mysterious origins, is gaining acceptance in Wall Street even as many other financial institutions remain skeptical. Companies such as PayPal Holdings, Inc., Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are now accepting the virtual currency, while Tesla Inc. is keeping some of its corporate treasuries in bitcoin. More than 12,000 bitcoins ATMs have popped up over the past year, while Toronto-based Purpose Investment launched the world’s first bitcoin ETF last month.....

UPDATE: @Citibank says it will “not support candidates who do not respect the rule of law” and will “pause contributions" to the GOP members who objected. It is the fourth major corporation to take such a step.

Citibank has a big problem: It mistakenly wired roughly $175 million to Brigade Capital Management, and the hedge fund hasn't returned the money. The US banking giant filed a lawsuit Monday in the Southern District of New York, seeking the return of funds that it said were transferred in an "operational mistake." Citibank said in court documents that it meant to send Brigade Capital around $1.5 million in interest payments on a loan the hedge fund made to troubled cosmetics company Revlon. Instead, it wired roughly 100 times that amount of its own funds to the hedge fund. Other Revlon...