Apparently the simple act of closing your account at a CitiBank can get you arrested. Watch as this nice woman in the business suit is manhandled and hauled away as she and some friends decided to close their CitiBank accounts at the same time.

Our elected officials have basically set up a political system that legalizes and facilitates bribery. And our failure to deal with that has created the most successful business model of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: maximize your profits by making bigger and badder loans that precipitate a “crisis” when they go belly up (which you fuel with a massive PR campaign), then you squeeze the government to make you whole.

The efforts to keep Wall Street and all its celebrated creativity intact could serve to make it easier for banks like Wachovia to engage in widespread money-laundering. That is, it’s not just shadow banking as it is politely understood, but banking for entire shadow networks, both our own and our enemies.

If there’s a social program left standing in the moonscape Obama’s Hamilton Project masters inflicted on America, Greenstone and the Project are there to ensure Obama nukes it. If someone you care deeply about depends on Social Security – or will depend on Social Security – call them up today and tell them you love them. Because Team Obama has targeted Social Security…and your loved ones are just the MOTU’s version of collateral damage. Deaths you can believe in, right?

Brooksley Born wants to know the effect of credit default swaps on the housing bubble and the Great Crash. Citibank representatives don’t think there was an effect. Yves Smith disagrees.

Why should the government support the failed business model of Sallie Mae and other student loan finance companies like Citi and JPMorgan Chase? Why isn’t that money going to help students pay for their education?

I’ve been saying for a while that when everything finally unravels, it will probably be revealed that Citibank has been playing the same function as BCCI–the bank that served as the means for organized crime, terrorists, and the CIA to launder money in the 80s–once did.