Tag: Citigroup
Since 2009, it has been compulsory for all major US banks to pass an exam called a stress test. The test checks the banks’ ability to withstand sudden changes in economic and financial conditions. Put simply, it assesses the banks’ ability to survive should America experience a financial crisis similar to the one in 2007-2009. In all the years of testing, the majority of US banks have received a rating of ‘satisfactory’, and even then with a stretch of the imagination. Some banks have had to retake the exam… The results of the stress testing shows that America is living on a delayed-action mine called the US banking system, and sooner or later this mine is going to explode…
…Here we can recall a study by specialists from the Zurich Institute of Technology in Switzerland, the aim of which was to reveal the controlling core of the global economic and financial system. In 2011, the Swiss specialists calculated that there were 1,128 companies and banks at the core of global finance at the beginning of the financial crisis (2007). An even denser core of 147 companies was revealed within this conglomerate. The authors of the study estimated that this smaller core controlled 40 per cent of all corporate assets in the world…
The largest banks of Wall Street, the London City and other financial centers of the West have always been considered «Too Big to Fail». Such big-name banks were categorized as «untouchables», «sacred cows» which were destined to exist forever. And that is not surprising; the demise of any one of the «sacred cows» of the banking world could plunge not only one country, but the entire world into the depths of crisis. After all, the «sacred cows» existed outside of the so-called market economy, with its fierce competition, high risks, bankruptcies and defaults. They lived their lives in the oases of «banking socialism»…