Citigroup Is Cooking The Books And The SEC IS Getting Involved (Gasparino Video)
Video: Gasparino updates on Citigroup, Mike Mayo and the SEC -- Aired today
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I wrote about DTAs, deferrred tax assets, back in 2009. The best stories for background are the following:
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Early this week, Charlie Gasparino broke the story that banking analyst Mike Mayo has been shut out by Citigroup executives after he warned that Citigroup, by law, must take $10 billion in losses from expiring DTAs.
An all-out war has broken out between Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and a prominent securities analyst who is saying that the big bank may be cooking the books by inflating its earnings through an accounting gimmick, FOX Business Network has learned.
The analyst, Mike Mayo, of the securities firm CLSA, has been telling investors that Citigroup should take a writedown, or a loss on some $50 billion of “deferred-tax assets,” or DTAs. That is a tax credit the firm has on its financial statement that Mayo says is inflating profits at the big bank by as much as $10 billion.
Then yesterday, Gasparino wrote the following story at Huffington:
The people who run the big Wall Street firms and banks have notoriously short memories, which is why, for all the mea culpas that came after the 2008 financial collapse and taxpayer bailouts, you know these guys are going to screw up again and screw the country again in the process.
Recently, I was reminded of just how short their memories on Wall Street are by two new stories. In the first one, Morgan Stanley thinks it's a grand idea to throw a lavish party for its past and present partners in mid-September at a place called the "Temple of Dendur," a swanky room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that gets rented out to the mega-rich and big profitable corporations that want to hold special events around artifacts of ancient Egypt. The event is supposed to commemorate Morgan's 75th anniversary as a firm even if it will be held on another important anniversary in its history: Nearly two years to the day, Morgan, along with the rest of Wall Street, received billions of dollars in bailout money from the American taxpayer.
OK, so throwing an expensive party on the anniversary of the bailouts may look bad, and may also require a police presence (so many former Morgan Stanley people viscerally hate the guys now in charge, and vice versa), but it isn't potentially illegal. But the second story underscoring Wall Street's memory loss involves something that could be.
As I reported early in the week on Fox Business Network, Citigroup, one of the most bailed-out banks in the history of bank bailouts, has the nerve to wage an increasingly vindictive war against a securities analyst named Mike Mayo for doing nothing more than telling the truth about the bank's questionable -- some would say illegal -- accounting practices.
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Aug 28, 2010 at 10:35 AM
Reader Comments (13)
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-mike-mayo-thinks-is-citis-cooking-the-books-2010-8#ixzz0xrnKalqJ
http://dailybail.com/home/2009/1/14/citi-will-never-stop-asking-for-your-money-ever.html
Probably one of the first 5 or 6 stories i wrote on the site...below is another one...
http://dailybail.com/home/the-three-stooges-locatedhint-somewhere-in-your-house.html
Both discuss Citi, bailouts, DTAs and other sundry material...
“They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.”
Frederic Bastiat
It showed in a speech the Fed chairman delivered Friday that carried a mixed message: He sees the economy improving next year, but he stands ready to take bold action if it falters.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/27/bernanke-at-jackson-hole-_n_696972.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-26/aig-s-greenberg-settles-investors-fraud-lawsuits-over-insurer-s-practices.html
If President Barack Obama needed any more incentive to go all out for Democrats this fall, here it is: Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.
Everything from the microscopic — the New Black Panther party — to the massive –- think bailouts — is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41506.html#ixzz0xukQrCRS
Russian submarines are hunting down British Vanguard boats in a return to Cold War tactics not seen for 25 years, Navy chiefs have warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/7969017/Russian-subs-stalk-Trident-in-echo-of-Cold-War.html
Earlier, two cars exploded outside the studios of the national TV network Televisa in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. There were no casualties, but the blasts added to a growing sense of fear in the aftermath of the worst single act of violence in the country's raging drug wars.
Meanwhile, investigators under armed guard continued the process of identifying the victims, with 20 named by midday on Friday, local officials said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/27/mexico-massacre-investigator-migrants
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8d0f5ec6-b1fb-11df-b2d9-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67Q5BW20100827
So much for separation of church and state.
The Obama administration came to power assuming that if they told the America people how bad the economy is without Bush bashing and bailed out the system instead of nationalizing everything then they would be thanked.
That was stupid.
Since almost 25% of the American population thinks Obama is a Muslim, I submit that we have sufficient proof that public education doesn't work. (Only 3% of the Iraqi population thinks Obama is a Muslim and they don't even have a public education system.)
59% of the Federal Budget is for the military.
4% is for education.
Obviously we need to eliminate public education and allow private education, including religious schools and home schooling to educate everyone.
Then we could spend 63% of the Federal Budget on the military.