Collapse or Bush's Dying Swan Song...

...to big finance?

Conrad Lawrence

Anybody notice how these bailout payouts seem to happen on Sunday. Is collapse really imminent or is this part of the Bush Administration’s dying Swan Song to big finance?

This morning we woke to hear the now familiar cry that the government is going to give $25 bln to Citibank who just last week reported to it's employees that it financially health in order to keep it from failing. They don't give us any money figures so we can see or understand this cry of "bank failure," to understand who, besides investors, are at risks.

Given that it seems as if we have had a government that kowtows to big business I wonder what's going on. What does this matter of collapse mean. I am left with the feeling that Citi will put 53,000 people on the street and take money from you and me as taxpayers rather than tell shareholders that they will have to take a loss.

These clandestine weekend actions do nothing to alleviate these fears So what is the economic disposition of Citi? Can it service it's depositors? Can it meet it's debt obligations? I don't know and I looked. I went to Citi's web site, clicked on the link set to show their 2nd quarterly earnings and was met with an "error 404 page not found" message. If all is as they say, why would they hide this information
Available online in the Whimsical Surreality Gallery -- Click here.

We know that Citi can't keep it's shareholders happy. That's all we hear about in the news. Other than that whether or not it can cover it's depositors (main street) and debts. As a past corporate banker, I know that big banks use us (main street) for our deposits to generate capital for their loan and investment banks.

So, why can't us depositors be afforded the right of seeing the numbers ourselves?

A big picture showing of numbers would be pretty simple. What is a bank's assets vs it's liabilities, less those liabilities that are dividend payouts. As long as it can cover the accounts of depositors and loan debt, I feel it's fair to tell the shareholders to bite the bullet. After all they are the only ones entering this financial relationship realizing they were taking a risk.


When Chase took over Wamu, Washington Mutual still showed a positive asset balance of $309 billion dollars. They only problem was that their stock share value was plunging. Seems as if Chase leveraged the fear of financial crisis to implement a merger that the Treasury and Justice Departments had denied in the past as diminishing banking competitiveness.

So? What are the numbers? Why can't I find them and why as a taxpayer who will suffer the impact of this bailout, can't I be afforded the information to understand what is happening?