Citigroup Inc is reported to be close to paying about $7 billion in fines to resolve a U.S. probe into whether it defrauded investors on billions of dollars worth of mortgage securities in the run-up to the financial crisis, reported News Daily. The USA has discovered a cash-cow and the banks have paid now over $100 billion in fines. Their activity is starting to bite them in the ass because the cost of government rises and there is now a competition among agencies to bring in money through fines and penalties to prevent job cuts.
The US prosecution has always gone after people not in New York, This trend has been serious internationally as they took down the Swiss banking system destroying most small banks, then they were after France’s BNP, and Germany’s Commerzbank, which now faces a fine of 500 million euros for illegal transactions with Iran, Sudan, North Korea, Myanmar and Cuba. Meet Americans with this punishment not only the bank. The severity with which the Americans punish breaches of their world politics, is also a slap in the face for Chancellor Angela Merkel.
This comes at time when the financial crisis of 2007 is still taking its tool. We are in a 13 year bear market there and this is bottoming in 2020 taking liquidity with it. The “bail-in” policies in Europe are now migrating to Canada. Even Moody’s has warned that Canada could be in trouble because the government that is moving to the same European directives of using bail-ins – just taking the money from Canadian’s bank accounts.
US real estate is a sanctuary for Canadians with money. The nice quiet Canadians who live under the world radar are actually the largest buyer of US real estate among all foreign nations. They own the greatest number of properties while China is the largest buy in dollar volume – trophy properties. Canadians buy more properties and that reflects not institutional, but retail investment.
Government is now milking the banks for everything they can get.
