I was channel surfing last night when I stumbled upon a couple of Citi commercials—or PSAs, since taxpayers own more than 30% of Citi—that offered viewers a number of depression-era, cost-cutting lifestyle suggestions. With the billions in bonuses Citi has paid out to their workers, the ads so brazenly mock Wall Street’s massive plundering of taxpayer wealth that it’s almost hard to believe that Citigroup had the guts to have them made—and bill us 30 cents of every dollar paid for production and air time costs. But they did.

The first one starts out with a white post-college hipster type who says he maps out the cheapest gas stations to save a few bucks. An African American yuppie dad says he buys everything in bulk, including movie tickets. A white woman in her 40s buys dog food with credit cards that gives her cash back. A voice over says Citi has ways to help us spend wiser, and then the screen is subliminally flashed with a scattered list of ways you can save: car pool, cheaper gas, buy in bulk, diversify investments, save 2% of salary, purchase off-seasony, buy generic, drive less, make gifts personally, debit cards with rewards, but most importantly: get FREE FINANCIAL ADVICE. That part is in bold.

The second one has, among other segments, an office worker talking about biking to work to save the money he spends on gas, and a woman who says she hasn’t bought shampoo in years because she takes hotel shampoo bottles when she travels.

Yes, Americans. Drastic times call for drastic cost-cutting measures, not to mention the use of predatory Citi credit cards and giving the power to Citi financial advisors to diversify your savings into personal bonuses.

As I watched these spots, I couldn’t help but think of the $5.3 billion in executive bonuses that Citigroup paid out last year, straight out of the $45 billion in bailout money we handed over to them. Then I remembered last week’s story about the Citigroup trader who’s fighting for his “right” to receive a $100 million bonus, which he is willing to sue Citi to get.

The man in question is Andrew Hall, an oil trader for a Citigroup subsidiary called Phibro. He’s being supported by Wall Street types because he’s seen as very important to Citigroup, meaning he’s made them a lot of money speculating on the oil market and will continue to do so. Hall is credited with “predicting” the price of oil would skyrocket and made hundreds of millions of dollars for the company.

Trader Hits Jackpot in Oil, As Commodity Boom Roars On

Mr. Hall Bet Early On Market Shift; Buoying Citigroup

One of the biggest beneficiaries has been Andrew J. Hall, an enigmatic British-born trader who, five years ago, anticipated an important shift in the way the world valued oil — and bet big.

Over the past five years, Mr. Hall’s compensation has totaled well over a quarter-billion dollars, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of securities filings and Mr. Hall’s compensation structure.

Who is Andrew Hall? According to New York Mag, he is “one of the few eccentric and wonderful folks who float among or above the wretched, amoral meatheads” of Wall Street. He leaves his office every afternoon to “to row or practice calisthenics with a ballet teacher” and is “also one of the world’s top collectors of contemporary art.”

But in reality Andrew Hall, who looks like a cancerous Billy Bob Thornton, is a hardcore insider gambler with a long winning streak. He works in a trading outfit that has a long history of market speculation by virtue of manipulation. Hall was one of the key players responsible for driving up the price of oil, creating a speculative bubble that spiked 700% in price and cost the economy an estimated $500 billion dollars just from 2006 to 2008.

A Secret Oil Gusher Inside Citigroup

By PAM MARTENS

If you want to flush out market manipulation, don’t turn to the sleuths in Congress.  They’ve been probing trading of the oil markets for two years and completely missed a company at the center of the action.  During that period, a barrel of crude oil has risen from $50 to $140, leaving a wide swatch of Americans facing a choice this coming winter of buying food or paying their heating bill.

The company that Congress overlooked should have been an easy suspect. It launched the oil trading career of the infamous fugitive, Marc Rich, pardoned by President Clinton in the final hours of his presidency.  It was at one time the largest oil and metals trader in the world. In the late 90s it bought up 129 million ounces of silver for legendary investor Warren Buffet’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, in London’s unregulated over-the-counter market.   In 1990, it was one of the first entrants into an ill-fated Russian oil venture called White Nights.  In 2005, while part of Citigroup, the largest U.S. banking conglomerate perpetually scolded for obscene executive pay, it handed its chief and top oil trader, Andrew J. Hall, $125 Million for one year’s work.  According to the Wall Street Journal, that was five times the pay package for Chuck Prince, CEO of the entire Citigroup conglomerate that year and $55 Million more than the CEO of Exxon-Mobil.

Finance pundits have been heralding Hall not as a scamster but as a valuable asset to Citigroup. They’ve also been back to their tactic of scarying people into believing that if Wall Street’s top dogs didn’t get their multi-million bonuses, the very fabric of our society will disintegrate. Like after the collapse of the Soviet Union, America will experience a braindrain. The best talent will flee for companies in Nigeria, Russia, China—maybe even North Korea if we keep abusing them—leaving the bailouted banks unable to pay back what they owe to us taxpayers. So if we want to see at least some that $750 billion we handed out, we got to play by the rules.

Some in the finance world are even arguing that if it wasn’t Andrew Hall’s widely successful manipulation of oil prices on behalf of Citigroup, taxpayers might have had to fork over not just $45 billion, but $49 billion to keep Citigroup afloat. He saved us $4 billion, and the least we can do is give him a suitcase filled with 100,000 crisp Benjamin notes.

One hundred million—100,000,000—dollars worth of bonus for ONE person for ONE year of work for a company that went bankrupt. Think about that. People were outraged at AIG bonuses back in March. Well those added up to a meager total of $165 million, with the top bonus payout of $6.4 million.

Andrew Hall was laughing at the underpaid AIG-losers when protestors showed up at their homes. “As it happens, one can see some of those homes from Mr. Hall’s front lawn in Southport, not far from his office,” says the New York Times.

The Bailout Vampire’s Lair: Andrew Hall retreats to his castle, sucking taxpayer money for strength

And that’s what these Citi commercials are all about: funneling as much cash from you into Citi’s gambling operations, while making you think they’re doing you a favor. So while you bike to work in the rain, map out cheap gas stations to save a few pennies a gallon, steal shampoo from hotels and all the while pay 30% interest on your cash back Citi credit card, Wall St. society gambling goons like Andrew Hall will be buying up more castles and expanding their collections of modern art.

Two years ago, Mr. Hall waged a legal fight with the Historic District Commission of Fairfield over an 82-foot concrete sculpture that he had placed on the front lawn of his 7,300-square-foot Greek Revival mansion, where he lives with his wife, Christine . . . A few years ago, he bought a medieval castle in Germany from the neo-expressionist painter Georg Baselitz, and he and his wife have turned the property, said to contain roughly 150 rooms, into a private museum for their collection.

“He has about 4,000 pieces in what could easily be described as one of the world’s finest collections of contemporary art,” said a New York dealer, Mary Boone. It includes pieces by Andy Warhol, David Salle, Bruce Nauman and Julian Schnabel.

—The New York Times

If Americans can’t stand up for themselves, maybe it is time to write an open letter to Bin Laden, asking for al Qaeda’s assistance is carpet-bombing Wall Street with 747s. After all, we do have a lot of parked airplanes to spare.

Read more: andrew hall, bailout, citi, Citigroup, Class War For Idiots, speculator, Yasha Levine, Class War For Idiots

Got something to say to us? Then send us a letter.

Want us to stick around? Donate to The eXiled.

Twitter twerps can follow us at twitter.com/exiledonline