Wednesday, December 5, 2012

CitiBank's True Colors

Dear Bleeding-Heart Liberal Readers,

Madame L does not wonder why none of you have written to ask for her opinion about CitiBank's announcement that it is firing 11,000 people:

Madame L knows that you know her opinion without asking. But she is going to say it anyway:

Madame L is sick of seeing those ads on TV lately about how CitiBank has been around for 200 years and is helping out with BP in the Gulf (yeah, right! like BP needs help ruining the economy and ecology of the Gulf)...



"We supported the Marshall Plan...and pioneered the ATM so you can get cash!" And so on.

Why should their anniversary matter to us, they ask rhetorically? Are you kidding Madame L? We care about this? We should forget about the college kids you sold credit cards they couldn't afford and didn't understand, leaving them in debt they couldn't discharge, and so on and so on? And about the people whose ATM fees rise so fast above their account balances because they don't realize they're paying usurious fees to you blood-sucking money-grabbing exploiters of the poor and uneducated?

Of course you can fire tens of thousands of people three weeks before Christmas! Because your stakeholders want more money. And you need the money to pay your new CEO his more-than-nine-million-dollar-per-year compensation. 

And you can count on the business community to support you, which they did: stocks rose by 6%  after you announced the firings. 

And you can count on the U.S. government to support you again, probably, like it (WE) did a couple of years ago, when our taxpayer dollars bailed you out to the tune of $45 billion.

So we all understand. And we care. We do care.

Sincerely,

Madame L

1 comment:

AskTheGeologist said...

Eeew. No sharp stick in the back. Just a finely-honed stilleto.

The REAL answer is for Americans who have ANY investments to avoid CitiBank like the plague.

Citi was a vicious predator on one of our kids as he started college... "gave" him a credit card with a mere 24.75% interest. I have avoided having ANYTHING to do with City since then.
~~~~~