Thursday, June 25, 2009

Yves Smith on "C"

Yves Smith (YS) has a 5 June 2009 post at her Naked Capitalism citing a WSJ piece about Citigroup and Sheila Bair's recent comments about it. I have believed "C" insolvent for at least two years, the Fed's recent "stress test" results notwithstanding. Here's a link: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/06/fdic-keen-tto-ciits-rating-change.html.

YS writes, "inquiring minds wonder whether the Journal has been spun a tad, since the piece also make clear that the bank believes Bair is overreaching. ... The reason I have some sympathy for the FDIC is that the US has violated the best practices playbook for dealing with troubled banks. ... [T[he article spends even more time on the turf war charge, which makes it sound as if the FDIC is significantly, if not primarily motivated by the desire to make a land grab". I got this sense of the story too. Here are some of my prior comments about "C" 24 June, 7 and 17 July 2008, 7 January 2009:

http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/07/schwartzman-and-mcteer-on-accounting.html.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Authorities ordered Citibank's Japan unit to suspend all sales operations at its retail banking arm for one month after it failed to improve anti-money laundering measures that target crime syndicates and other shadowy groups.

The order Friday is the second time in five years that the Financial Services Agency has reprimanded Citibank Japan Ltd. of Tokyo for insufficient monitoring and control of "suspicious transactions."

Dirty money/dirty bank.