Third round of bailouts for Citigroup

Daniel Greenfield Friday, March 6, 2009 http://canadafreepress.com/printpage.php

We are now seeing the third round of bailouts for Citigroup, after the US government already has taken a 36 percent stake in the bank. This makes the US government the largest shareholder of a bank, whose second largest shareholder is Saudi Prince Alaweed Bin Talal.

Currently American taxpayers are in hock for 45 billion dollars to bailout Citigroup, while the Treasury, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve cover 90 percent of Citi’s 335 billion dollar losses. The numbers are scary and since most financial experts predict that the bailout isn’t done yet, is likely to only be the beginning. It’s unclear how much US taxpayer will have to go into debt in order to bail out Citigroup. But in bailing out Citigroup, the American taxpayer isn’t simply bailing out Prince Alaweed Bin Talal’s bank, who actually increased his stake at the end of 2008 when investors were jumping overboard, or protecting the investment of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. We’re also engaging in a 300 billion dollar plus bailout of Sharia finance. Because Citigroup’s Islamic Banking operation represents the world’s leading of Islamic loans and Sukuk bonds.

Citigroup pioneered the big bank embrace of Sharia finance back in the 90’s. Citigroup co-launched the Dow Jones Sukuk bond index in 2006. Citigroup continues to help bring Sharia finance across the world with its wholly owned subsidiary, the Citi Islamic Investment Bank.

And the terrorist connections aren’t hard to find either. Citi Islamic Investment Bank is overseen by “eminent” Sharia scholars. For example Nazih Hammad, President of Citi Islamic Investment Bank’s Sharia board. Nazih Hammad is a board member of the North American Fiqh Council.

The North American Fiqh Council is another one of the Saudi front groups operating in America, one of whose trustees was Alamoudi, an Al Queda fundraiser. The North American Fiqh Council’s former President, Taha Jaber Al-Alawani, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case of Islamic Jihad leader, Sami Al Arian. And there was board member Sheikh Muhammad al-Hanooti, who had extensive Hamas ties.

Obama and Acorn Housing Works

Now to close the circle is the Obama connection. Citigroup provided half a million dollars to ACORN, essentially money directed for the Obama campaign’s Get Out the Vote fraud program. Citigroup partnered with Acorn Housing Works to provide a specialized mortgage program for ACORN, the exact sort of program that caused the economic disaster in the first place.

Meanwhile the American taxpayer is underwriting the investment of the Saudi Prince and maintaining the number one Sharia finance bank in the world, to the tune of a sum that may exceed a third of a Trillion dollars. That means the US government now officially owns a third of the largest Sharia finance arranger in the world, together with the Saudi royal family. The conjunction of Wahhabism’s quest for global Islamic domination and the US government come together again.

And we’re not done yet. AIG is next on the bailout parade. The American taxpayer will be kicking in another 30 billion for AIG, on top of an earlier 40 billion dollars for a total of 70 billion dollars. Meanwhile the Federal Reserve will kick in another 26 billion, in exchange for a stake in AIG’s foreign life insurance operations, which operate abroad. Naturally AIG is also big into Sharia finance, even fielding Sharia finance offerings domestically.

So not only is every American living today going deep into debt to underwrite the destructive mismanagement of major financial companies such as AIG and Citigroup, but in the process is becoming deeply enmeshed in underwriting and promoting Islamic Banking.

Islamic Banking uses a Sharia board to vet permissible investments. That Sharia board is much the same for Citigroup and AIG. It consists of Saudi or Saudi affiliated “religious scholars” who have to give their okay on financial products that can be sold by a bank. This has obvious political implications.

Ever since the 70’s, Muslims have been employing boycotts as a form of aggression. The more recent blowup over the Mohammed cartoons saw Danish companies being targeted with boycotts as a means of pressuring the Danish government. Under Sharia finance those boycotts can take a much more powerful form than burning down a KFC place. Instead the Sharia board of banks such as Citigroup can bar investments from particular countries and companies. Sharia finance therefore serves as a direct way for banks compliant with Islamic law to participate in Islamic boycotts. With the US government taking a third of Citigroup, and with AIG next on line, American taxpayers will be involved in conducting Islamic boycotts as a tool to pressure the uruly infidel.

That of course isn’t all there is to it, but it’s a destructive beginning. The US government hasn’t just bailed out Wall Street fatcats, but the centers of Islamic finance, rescuing the sizable investments of Saudi Arabia and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. And American taxpayers are now in the position of funding the world’s largest Sharia arranger, as well as the importation of Sharia finance to the United States through AIG.

Lenin used to talk about the capitalists selling him the rope with which he would hang them. He had no clue that we would actually be buying the noose of Sharia Finance with which we’re being hung, and paying through the nose for the privilege.