Yet more tales of the downturn.
And yet another reason why I am so very glad I shifted away from megabanks and have no intention of ever going back.
Yesterday Citi pulled our Line of Credit.
We had already used all our credit by January. The rainy day had come and it was still pouring. We used all the credit we had while doing painful restructuring. We were paying it back, interest-only as allowed in the contract. We were paying it back instead of taking paychecks for the partners in the firm. We were paying it back.
Citi gave us a shove towards the edge. The extra payments they are now demanding for early repayment of the loan will push us over the edge. We had just closed enough business to survive until June, now we won't make it beyond April unless we get some help.
I am about to lay off 15 people and close the shutters if our business can't get help. We bailed them out and they stabbed us in the back. Fifteen jobs lost because of their greed. When we needed them most they pushed us over the edge.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/27/713649/-Citi-tried-to-kill-our-small-businessLocal-bank-might-save-us
I'm sure some might argue that oh, Citi's just doing that to limit risks and conserve money in these tough times. To that I say: bullshit. Read the article and the comments. Citi's trying to gobble up as much money as they can, uncaring about the hardships that everyday Main Street people are going through, while at the same time suckling at the mega-billion-dollar bailout teat for all it's worth. I say, no more. If there's any way you can, shift your money away from Citibank, from Bank of America, from Wells Fargo/Wachovia/whatever, from the megabanks that are run by incompetent overpaid morons who bet other people's money on longshots and credit derivative swaps.
Then write your Congresscritter and say: screw the big banks. Too big to fail? That should be too big to exist. No institution should be so monolithic that even the hint of its failure pushes the entire national economy to the brink of catastrophe. They should be broken up, and antitrust laws strictly enforced, to prevent this kind of economic near-apocalypse from ever happening again. And this time, we write it in stone and carve it into the foundation blocks of Wall Street so that they never pull cause this kind of unregulated disaster again.
Yesterday Citi pulled our Line of Credit.
We had already used all our credit by January. The rainy day had come and it was still pouring. We used all the credit we had while doing painful restructuring. We were paying it back, interest-only as allowed in the contract. We were paying it back instead of taking paychecks for the partners in the firm. We were paying it back.
Citi gave us a shove towards the edge. The extra payments they are now demanding for early repayment of the loan will push us over the edge. We had just closed enough business to survive until June, now we won't make it beyond April unless we get some help.
I am about to lay off 15 people and close the shutters if our business can't get help. We bailed them out and they stabbed us in the back. Fifteen jobs lost because of their greed. When we needed them most they pushed us over the edge.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/27/713649/-Citi-tried-to-kill-our-small-businessLocal-bank-might-save-us
I'm sure some might argue that oh, Citi's just doing that to limit risks and conserve money in these tough times. To that I say: bullshit. Read the article and the comments. Citi's trying to gobble up as much money as they can, uncaring about the hardships that everyday Main Street people are going through, while at the same time suckling at the mega-billion-dollar bailout teat for all it's worth. I say, no more. If there's any way you can, shift your money away from Citibank, from Bank of America, from Wells Fargo/Wachovia/whatever, from the megabanks that are run by incompetent overpaid morons who bet other people's money on longshots and credit derivative swaps.
Then write your Congresscritter and say: screw the big banks. Too big to fail? That should be too big to exist. No institution should be so monolithic that even the hint of its failure pushes the entire national economy to the brink of catastrophe. They should be broken up, and antitrust laws strictly enforced, to prevent this kind of economic near-apocalypse from ever happening again. And this time, we write it in stone and carve it into the foundation blocks of Wall Street so that they never pull cause this kind of unregulated disaster again.