Our rallying cry from the very beginning was Nationalize, Reorganize, Decentralize. Nationalize meant to let the big banks fail if they were bankrupt anyway and put them into a process of Reorganizing, wiping out the CEO’s that got them into the mess and sell off the chunks in the market. Decentralize is keep the big banks small so they can’t take over the country’s economy and political system again.
Citigroup may be doing the Reorganize part.
REORGANIZE:
Last week, Citigroup announced they would break up Citigroup by selling 40% of the company and cut off a good chunk of their risk taking.
The chief executive of Citigroup told a government panel on Thursday that no financial institution should be too big to fail and that he was aggressively moving to break up the bank and rein in excessive risk-taking.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Vikram Pandit, the chief of Citigroup, told the oversight committee on Thursday, “We are selling 40 percent of the company.”
“We are selling 40 percent of the company,” Vikram S. Pandit said to the Congressional Oversight Panel, which is monitoring the use of federal bailout money. “We are breaking it up.”
Mr. Pandit used his testimony on Thursday to try to blunt criticism from committee members who held up Citigroup as the quintessential too-big-to-fail bank. The members also suggested that a government guarantee implied by the bailouts might encourage the bank to make imprudent bets.
In more than two hours before the five-member committee, Mr. Pandit sought to convince the committee that Citigroup had broken with its troubled past. “This is a different company,” he said. “You can count on me. You can count on my management. You can count on the board to manage this institution prudently.”

AIG is expected to do the same, and sell parts of themselves.
Taxpayer-controlled American International Group (AIG) said Monday it will sell its Asian life insurance business to British insurer Prudential Plc. (PUK) for about $35.5 billion in a move that will help AIG pay down the roughly $180 billion it owes the U.S. government.
AIG will receive $25 billion in cash and $10.5 billion in new shares and securities from Prudential for the sale of American International Assurance Group, considered the company’s crown jewel Asia. AIG is already expected to sell its American Life Insurance Co. unit to MetLife (MET) for as much as $50 billion, half of which has already been earmarked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
AIG was the single biggest recipient of federal bailout funds in September 2008, as a liquidity crisis threatened the sprawling insurer with collapse. Since then, it has needed additional financial backstopping from U.S. taxpayers, adding nearly $100 billion in potential commitments to the initial $85 billion bill; the government now owns nearly 80% of the company. The sale of the AIA business will help AIG pay back the U.S. more quickly, the company said.
“In considering two viable, very attractive alternatives to successfully monetize AIA, including an initial public offering, we decided that a sale to Prudential enables AIG to realize value on a faster track to repay U.S. taxpayers,” said CEO Bob Benmosche in a statement. “This transaction, the most significant milestone to date in our ongoing effort to repay taxpayers, also gives us greater flexibility to move forward with AIG’s restructuring.”
One small step closer to DECENTRALIZE:
Citigroup is selling off its risky investment side, and gets close to suggesting that all bank holding companies should be made to do so too.
In his testimony, Mr. Pandit advocated tougher federal supervision and called for broader powers to allow for the orderly unwinding of large financial companies that fail. Banks, he added, should not use their capital for speculative trading.
“I do believe that banks should be banks,” Mr. Pandit said, stopping short of endorsing the so-called Volcker Rule, which would bar companies that accept customer deposits from sponsoring hedge funds, private equity funds or engaging in proprietary trading. Citigroup has been trying to sell many of its remaining alternative investment funds, and has disbanded certain proprietary trading units amid heavy regulatory pressure.
The small elite may not want to publicly recognize that they failed and were insolvent, but the more we realize it, the closer we’ll get to reorganizing and decentralizing the industry. I’ve been reading 13 Bankers by Johnson and Kwak and it’s a pretty interesting read so far. It’s pretty clear that we can have a decentralized banking system that not only helps to lead to innovation and entrepeneurism, but also feeds and fulfills masses of people. First, Citi needs to see that they were too big and did fail.
Mr. Pandit, in an uncomfortable moment when C-Span’s cameras caught him grinning, asserted that Citigroup was “healthy” when it sought a second bailout in November 2008. He said Citigroup’s stock collapsed under pressure from short-sellers — not bad assets — although he eventually acknowledged that the bank’s weak financial position made it a target.
Despite near perfect recollection of most other events, Mr. Pandit said he did not recall if he had spoken to Treasury officials or other federal regulators regarding the second rescue.
The testimony left Damon A. Silvers, a committee member who is special counsel to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., incredulous. “Your memory seems pretty good to me otherwise,” he told Mr. Pandit.
Under similarly harsh questioning, Mr. Allison went to great lengths to avoid saying that Citigroup would have failed without receiving assistance. But he eventually conceded that Citigroup was in such fragile shape in November 2008 that bank executives feared “they could have difficulty funding themselves” as their borrowing costs soared and investor confidence evaporated. He said that Citigroup management had notified federal officials that “they were facing a serious situation.”
Mr. Allison’s remarks came after a frosty exchange with Mr. Silvers, who suggested that he also had not adequately responded to questions about Citigroup’s collapse. “I don’t understand why the U.S. government can’t admit what everyone in the world knows: that during that week Citigroup was a failing institution,” Mr. Silvers said.






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