Teaching teens how to gain financial freedo

During the US housing boom, this market expanded significantly. But a series of interest rate rises over two years meant many sub-prime borrowers could no longer afford their monthly payments, causing them to default on loans.

Citigroup is far from alone in being hit by bad debt, but its write-off is by far the biggest announced by any bank to date.

Analysts generally welcomed the results, as the $18.1bn bad debt write down was less than market expectations of $20bn.

However, analysts had mixed views on what message cutting the dividend and selling securities sent to the market.

It does nothing to send any signal that we are anyway near the end of the road that we've been going along for the past seven months, in the overall credit market woes, said Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC partners. read more