After mortgage write-offs, Citi still pushing them

Hal Morris, writing on his Grumpy Editor blog, notes that bank Citigroup hasn’t learned its lesson from its negative coverage in the business press in recent days related to its mortgage portfolio problems.

Morris wrote, “But the current Citi home equity pitch via e-mail headlines ‘Lower your monthly payments’ and ‘Use equity to invest in your home.’ The message suggests funds from a home equity loan can be used to consolidate debt and for home improvements.

“The e-mail mentions a 6.99 percent variable APR (while Citi’s Web site indicates current variable rate lines, a bit lower, starting at 6.74 percent).

“Also mentioned in the e-mail: ‘Enjoy a low fixed rate loan.’  (Deep in the 17 lines of small print at its Web site, Citi notes a fixed rate’s APR may be as low as 7.24 percent and as high as 12.24 percent.)

“As The Wall Street Journal noted in a front page article yesterday, a decade after prior CEO Sanford Weil ‘built the insurance-to-banking-to stockbroking behemoth through a run of acquisitions, his creation remains an often dysfunctional collection of businesses whose employees sometimes ignore or even compete against each other.'”

Read more here.