“Citigroup” on The Daily Caller

Amazon may be piling its chips on the table in a bet on smartphones. (more)

Fairholme Capital’s Bruce Berkowitz got hit with a big wave of redemptions last quarter. (more)

NEW YORK (AP) — A new book offering an insider’s account of the White House’s response to the financial crisis says that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ignored an order from President Barack Obama calling for reconstruction of major banks. (more)

Gary Foster, a former Citigroup Inc. vice president accused of embezzling $22.9 million from the bank, pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. (more)

Citigroup scrapped a keynote speech by political commentator/actor Ben Stein after they received a complaint that he made sexist jokes about women at a private-equity conference in Texas earlier this year. The decision was made after a woman emailed vice chairman of Global Banking Peter Orszag (who was President Obama’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget) and said Stein had been “offensive and irresponsible” at a March 2 Dallas event, reports Bloomberg. (more)

Citigroup Inc.’s first-quarter profit fell 32% as shrinking loans and poor trading results pressured revenue while expenses surged. (more)

Wall Street’s biggest banks, rebounding after a government bailout, are set to complete their best two years in investment banking and trading, buoyed by 2010 results likely to be the second-highest ever. (more)

The U.S. Treasury set plans to sell the last of its Citigroup Inc. common shares in a $10 billion offering that would cap the government’s biggest bank bailout of the financial-market meltdown. (more)

Wells Fargo & Co. has agreed to pay $100 million to Citigroup Inc. to settle a dispute related to its acquisition of Wachovia Corp. in October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. (more)

NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup Inc., one of the worst-hit banks during the financial crisis, posted its third straight quarterly profit in a sign that major banks and their customers are starting to find their footing. (more)

– ”While the general consensus seems to be that Warren will get the chance to head the consumer-centered agency she claims to have come up with, it has not gone unnoticed that the Obama administration appears to be dragging its feet on her nomination.” TheDC’s Amanda Carey can tell you why: Warren is an obnoxious human being. “[She] has gotten major criticism in the way she’s carried out her duties,” George Mason law professor Todd Zywicki told TheDC. “There are serious concerns about her impartiality and that she uses these jobs as a platform for self promotion.” A bankruptcy attorney who worked with Warren on the National Bankruptcy Review Commission added his own anecdotes to claims that Warren is only in this for the chance at a daytime talk show. For example: When it came time for the committee to draft its report, Warren hijacked the process, substantially rewrote several sections, and told everyone else involved in the project to suck an egg. Such was their ire that the rest of the commissioners wrote a dissenting report correcting Warren’s version. Then again, Warren will fit right in with the baby daddies, slum lords, tax evaders, and mockers of the mentally disabled who currently pollute the White House.
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Citigroup Inc., 18 percent owned by the U.S. government, is testing a website to let millionaires’ children manage their allowances, while alerting parents and bankers when scions blow through cash too quickly. (more)

President Obama’s choice to be the government’s chief budget officer received a bonus of more than $900,000 from Citigroup Inc. last year — after the Wall Street firm for which he worked received a massive taxpayer bailout. (more)

JPMorgan Chase & Company kicked off earnings season for the nation’s big banks on Thursday with news of a strong gain in second-quarter profit. (more)

Topics – House Reforms, Derivatives Clarified, Treasury Profits, SEC Limits Political Contributions, Former SEC Leaders Advise Hedge Funds, AIG’s Dear Prudence, and Stocks Continue to Drop (more)

BP Plc (BP: 27.72, 0.67, 2.48%) has approached four major banks in an effort to raise money either through a private placement of debt and lines of credit, looking to raise as much as $10 billion sometime this week to help pay tens of billions of dollars in liabilities stemming from its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, FOX Business Network has learned. (more)

What’s the deal with Lady Gaga? (more)

U.S. Seeking Action Against BP – The Obama administration may require BP to establish an independently administered fund for reimbursing victims, which would remove compensation decision authority from BP.  White House officials on Sunday said they wanted BP to put “substantial” funds into an escrow account to cover claims by Gulf Coast businesses and residents affected by the spill. There are also calls to ban BP from business in the U.S., which would give BP little reason to participate in such a fund.  Bloomberg reports that Rep. Luis Gutierrez, (D-Ill.) will write Interior Secretary Ken Salazar urging him to ban BP from future lease sales because of the company’s “abhorrent environmental and safety record,” said Gutierrez’s spokesman. In addition to the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and sank in April, BP operates the Gulf platforms Thunder Horse, the second-largest producing well in the U.S. at about 300,000 barrels per day, and Atlantis, which produces 200,000 barrels of oil a day. BP also operates the Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska’s North Slope. (more)

Increasingly obvious perils of government debt have given rise to public concern, and even alarm. Though some people argue the alarm is exaggerated, there is a growing segment of the population that is thinking long and hard about the future of our country in ways we have not seen before. In this article, I discuss the principled basis for practical solutions. In particular, I argue the principle of subsidiarity should be central in our deliberations as we forge ahead. (more)

Debrahlee Lorenzana recently filed a lawsuit saying she was fired from her job at Citibank for wearing clothes that were too sexy for the office.  Citibank has countered that the suit is “without merit,” and that she was fired for other reasons.  Lorenzana begged to differ, arguing that her outfits were perfectly acceptable. (more)