Citigroup: Bankrupting Democracy

The Cost of Living Richly: Citigroup’s Global Finance and Threats to the Environment

by Ilyse Hogue

Flying low over a pristine rainforest region in the remote Urubamba region of the Peruvian Amazon, a helicopter brings supplies to a construction site. As the native birds scramble out of the way, the helicopter sets down on a patch of land cleared of forest as part of the Camisea project, one of Latin America’s largest gas developments.Across the globe in Papua New Guinea, a pipeline from the Gobe oil fields cuts through the forest land and small farms. Roads built to service the project are opening frontier forests to timber companies, increasing the threat of soil erosion that will load the rivers with silt and kill the country’s offshore coral reefs.Thailand’s Ratchaburi power plant lies just across the border from Burma’s ongoing human rights nightmare. The plant processes gas from the Yadana and Yetagun gas pipelines that are one of the main revenue earners for Burma’s military dictatorship. The pipeline, much of it built by forced labor, cuts through the largest, richest block of moist forest in Indochina. In the western hemisphere, the battle continues to rage over some of the last remaining old growth forest in the United States: Headwaters Grove in Northern California. While activists fight Pacific Lumber to save spotted owl habitat, the cutting continues. With it, so does the pollution of nearby streams and rivers, choking the spawning ground of the endangered Coho salmon.

At first glance, all of these projects have one thing in common: they damage what’s left of the world’s forests and, by contributing to fossil fuel burning and deforestation, they contribute to the worsening of global warming. But dig a little deeper and they also share a startling denominator. All were made possible through financing by the world’s largest financial institution, Citigroup. MORE>>

Predatory Associates: Citigroup, Predatory Lending and the Credit Crunch for the Poor and Working Class

by Jake Lewis

Power and prestige ooze from the corporate pores of Citigroup. Its board of directors resembles a “who’s who” of U.S. business executives. A former Secretary of the U. S. Department of Treasury — Robert Rubin — is a director and chair of Citigroup’s Executive Committee. Former President Gerald Ford lends his name as an honorary director. And Citigroup is probably the only financial services holding company that can claim a British knight among its top executives. Citigroup’s Vice Chair Deryck Maughan was awarded a knighthood by the Queen of England earlier this year in recognition of his contribution to British and U.S. business.

But don’t let this star-studded collection of corporate executives, high-level politicians and knights suggest that Citigroup doesn’t focus on citizens on lower rungs of the economic and social ladders. In fact, Citigroup has invested tens of billions of dollars in schemes to peddle various financial products to low and moderate income families and persons with blemished credit histories. MORE>>

Servicing Citi’s Interests GATS and the Bid to Remove Barriers to Financial Firm Globalization

by Antonia Juhasz

There may be no force greater in the drive to expand the reach and power of financial corporations world-wide than Citigroup. Born out of a merger between Citibank and Travelers Group that was only legalized after the fact by a rollback in the U.S. laws prohibiting combinations between banks and insurance companies, Citigroup is now prioritizing a deregulatory agenda for financial services on a worldwide scale

Citigroup –– which already maintains operations in more than 100 countries –– hopes to use the World Trade Organization’s General Agreements on Trade in Services (WTO’s GATS) to pry open new markets around the world while restricting the ability of governments to regulate their behavior. The result could be increased monopolization of global financial markets, decreased consumer and social protections, decreased access to financial services and increased global economic instability. MORE>>