This is a bigger scandal than the World Series fix of 1919.
And yet, there is little to nothing in the U.S. media about it.
If the bankers fixed LIBOR, what else is fixed?
As Matt Taibbi wrote:
But to me what’s missing from all of this is the “Holy Fucking Shit!” factor. This story is so outrageous that it shocks even the most cynical Wall Street observers. I have a friend who works on Wall Street who for years has been trolling through the stream of financial corruption stories with bemusement, darkly enjoying the spectacle as though the whole post-crisis news arc has been like one long, beautifully-acted, intensely believable sequel to Goodfellas. But even he is just stunned to the point of near-speechlessness by the LIBOR thing. “It’s like finding out that the whole world is on quicksand,” he says.
The whole system is rigged and nobody seems to care.
In an Era of Impunity such as ours, the Overclass is not subject to the (increasingly punitive) rules that govern mere mortals.
ReplyDeleteTheir "merit" puts them above all that.
Never will be covered by the US press which is dominated by Murdoch, Zuckerman and their criminal allies.
ReplyDeleteEric. Holder is not only in contempt of congress. Eric Holder is in contempt of the other 99% of the population. Eric Holder is Obama's puppet Attorney General. Expect Eric Holder to hold passive indifference to the criminal actions of the racketeers.
ReplyDeletehttp://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/biggest-banking-scam-ever-141604082.html
ReplyDeleteThis is now being described as "the biggest financial scandal in history of the world." Isn't this the Barclays Bank that financed and part owns the new Barclays Arena in downtown Brooklyn? Yeah...they may be changing the name of THAT shithole soon. The retarded ("never miss a microphone") Marty Markowitz, who used the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers' reputation to lead a drive to shove through a terrible deal financed by Barclays, and ultimately bailed out by a Russian oligarch/criminal. Markowitz basically pissed all over Jackie Robinon's grave on that one...that bloated blowhard. Of course, this eyesore of a stadium, with hundreds of millions of NYC taxpayer money, was butt-fucked through by Queen Bloomberg through Forest City Ratner, one of his cronies. Barclays turns out was a BIG slave trade financier back in the day...and God knows what else. NOW, they've ben behind the rigging of all interests rates around the world.
"British bank Barclays (LSE: BARC.L - news) is dead centre of a storm involving the manipulation of inter-bank lending rates, particularly Libor (the London Inter Bank Offered Rate).
What is truly breath-taking is the sheer scale of this fraud.
According to one estimate, around $350 trillion (£223 trillion) of lending and derivatives is priced off Libor. That’s enough to pay for the whole of UK Government spending for around three centuries at current levels. Thus, if misconduct by banks caused Libor to increase by a mere one tenth of one basis point (0.001%), this amounts to $35 billion (£22 billion) a year in extra interest – that’s roughly the UK’s annual budget for transport and close to as much as council tax brought in last year.
One official claims that 20 other banks helped to rig interest rates and that Barclays is poised to 'blow the whistle' on wrongdoing at its co-conspirators. It's also likely that criminal charges could be brought against the ringleaders of this worldwide fraud.
And Barclays was just the first to admit to the fraud - there are 14 or 15 other banks involved too. The WSJ calculated more like %800 trillion in lending and other interests priced off LIBOR!
ReplyDelete...and the mainstream cable shows only give a relative blurb to this story....
ReplyDelete