US Banks to liquidate best assets

Crippled US banks need to sell their best assets as they relieve the strain of the credit crisis that they themselves created and on sold to many other banks.
Sell off and Sell off Early
The lesson to be learnt from this credit crisis has been to sell off assets and sell them early.
However, it appears that US bankers are setting out to make the same mistakes of the past 2 years again."
How low can the Market go?
The delusional belief that their stock prices were too distressed and did not reflect the true underlying value of their asset backing was wrong, and this has cost Merrill Lynch and Citigroup Inc., more than half of their per share capital.
In the case of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, they had no net value, so any price would have been a good result.
Rewarding Bad Behavior
Now US taxpayers became the default investors in banks as a result of the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Programme, which recapitalized the institutions, whilst much of these funds were used top pay "bonuses" to staff.
Discounted Assets Sales Ahead
Asset sales are certain to be heavily discounted just as initial bids for collateralized debt obligations and retail mortgage-backed securities were.
While it is never pleasant to sell one's 'crown jewels', the strain of this credit crisis and the overextending of many bank balance sheets will require that they sell what they can and perhaps not what they would like.
This has to mean major job shedding in the near term.

Citigroup says credit card loan losses will rise in the recession

Citigroup says losses in its credit card portfolio could rise between $US1 billion and $US2 billion each quarter from now through the first half of next year.
Citi's credit card losses could double over the next nine months.
Shares of Citigroup, which plans to slash 50,000 jobs worldwide, had declined 9.5 per cent to $US8.05 with just under an hour of trading remaining on Wall Street.
Citigroup also revealed its plans to change its accounting for a large portion of its risky, written-down assets. It will move about $US80 billion of the assets from its trading portfolio to either its held for investment, held to maturity or available for sale categories on its balance sheet.
Citigroup said that the company's capital position was strong and it was moving ahead with restructuring plans, which include an additional 50,000 job cuts.
Citi reported last month a $US2.8 billion net loss in its third quarter; its losses over the last four quarters totalled more than $US20 billion.