Most of the citi layoffs are in global banking, not in the US business. Citi is getting out of banking in several countries and actually focusing more on the US.

Basic problem is all these banks are ridiculously oversized dinosaurs with extremely large overhead carries and far, far too many people. They are all just too big. In 1985 BofA had 100 bil in total assets, now they have 2 trillion. The largest 10 banks have 12 trillion in assets. During the 80's and 90's the 200 largest banks went through an orgy of buying each other and became the 10 largest banks.

Even Sandy Weil (who was the CEO and architect of all the Citi mergers in the 80's and 90's) admitted a few months ago that all those Citi acquisitions/mergers were a mistake...and it might be best (for the stockholders) to break the thing up into pieces.

The most efficient banking structures we ever had were regional banks. But all over the country regional banks all got bought up in 80's and early 90's by the big ones. Same thing happened all over the county.

Banking in the northwest was dominated by regional banks up until the 90's..they all got bought up, SeaFirst, Rainer, Puget Sound Natl Bank, Peoples, West One, US Bank etc. US Bank has the same name it always had but in 1997 it was bought by First Banks out of Minneaplis but they chose to keep the US Bank name.

For economic issues the size of these big banks scares the hell out of me. It is such an enormous concentration of risk to out economy. Additionally, they are so inefficient they have to gouge the customers (us) or take insane risks to make money.

Thats one of our economic problems that politicians dont know how to address..our banking structure is still a mess.

Unfortunately, banks in other countries are just as screwed up, they are also too big. By our accounting standards, the banks in China are toast and maybe Europe too.