Now that the Dow has reached 9,000 and the financial crisis declared over, it seems banks, just weeks ago causing the entire world to be a potential Economic Armageddon, are back to their usual tricks, as previously noted on EP.

In The Final Straw for Citi we have yet more details on high risk trading....:

ere’s the scoop on this latest bailout outrage: Citi is planning to commit at least an additional $1 billion in capital to a team of stock-focused proprietary traders, say people with knowledge of these strategies — a move seemingly at odds with Pandit’s earlier vow.

These traders buy, sell and short a wide variety of stocks, including telecom, technology, healthcare and consumer financials. And the profits and losses on those trades all go straight to Citi’s bottom line.

In all, I’m told that this team of nearly three dozen prop traders and analysts at Citigroup Principal Strategies will get to play with some $2 billion of house money.

Remember, Citigroup still has bail out funds and since we know there is no real accounting on what TARP recipients are doing....
it's possible we just had Citigroup throw down $1 Billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money on the great hedge-risk style glorified gambling casino roulette table.