Stupid me. I have trouble just paying my bills, and frankly was always turned off by high finance. It is like a foreign language to me and as far as foreign languages go, I know enough in several languages to either get me in trouble or get my face slapped.
So when I heard about this Barclay Bank scandal this week I thought it was an isolated incident. I was dead wrong. Turns out itâs about to become probably the largest worldwide banking and financial institution scandal of all the "To Big To Fail" institutions in Europe and yes our buddies on Wall Street. If the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement ever got a treat to exploit this one is it. This could be OWS's steak from Peter Luger's. What a great scandal to rally around in the March On Washington, DC.
This also exposes the radicals in Congress who are on the Committees and Sub-Committees of the Financial Services, Appropriations, Budget, Energy and Commerce, Foreign Affairs, Oversight and Government Reforms, Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Commerce, Science and Transportation, Finance and Foreign Relations; who are known to be manipulated by the Wall Street Mafia. It's no secret all the members on the Hill know who they are. This whole International Banking Scandal kind of catches some of these guys with their pants down.
As I said, I'm no financial wiz kid but after watching this segment on Current TV, I start to get a grasp for it.
Link is: - http://youtu.be/...
So follow me below the screwed up highway clover leaf pattern for more.
Libor and Euribor are two of the crucial mechanisms for setting interest rates on a vast array of financial products. Libor is the largest and most variable rate, covering ten currencies. It even helps determine the rate of the US dollar in the form of eurodollars.
Traders in London, New York, Japan and elsewhere colluded to manipulate the Libor rate so as to make massive profits or conceal losses, at the direct expense of pension funds and mortgage and loan holders. These practices involving what the British Financial Services Authority (FSA) admits were a âsignificant number of employees played a major role in determining the extent of the global financial crash of 2008.
A former Barclays executive who was close to the bank's Libor-setting operation told the Financial Mail that the Libor mis-quotes "gave an illusion of stability and was a key factor in masking the severity of the crisis."
A legal case in the United States is seeking damages of $110 billion from Barclays and almost $126 billion from the UK government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) figures far in excess of the bank's market valuations. This alone would make it the financial crime of the century. Yet after investigations going back to 2007 in at least three countries, no one has been prosecuted. Instead, those responsible have earned millions upon millions. It was not until this week that the two leading figures in Barclays, Chairman Marcus Agius and Chief Executive Bob Diamond, reluctantly resigned. Both can expect handsome severance packages.
Meanwhile, the British Conservative/Liberal Democrat government has done nothing other than promise yet another toothless parliamentary inquiry the standard mechanism for burying every crime of the ruling elite from the Iraq war to the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
The reasons are obvious. Far more than a few dozen traders are involved. The 16 banks cited in the class action taken by the City of Baltimore, Charles Schwab Corp. and others include:-
• Bank of America
• Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi
• Barclays Bank
• Citibank
• Credit Suisse
• Deutsche Bank
• HBOS (Holding Company for Bank Of Scotland per of the Lloyds Banking Group)
• HSBC (Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation)
• JP Morgan Chase
• Lloyds TSB Bank
• Rabobank
• Royal Bank of Canada
• The Norinchukin Bank
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland)
• WestLB (LB stands for Landesbanken which is no longer part of WestLB)
Their respective heads will all claim ignorance of the practices conducted by their traders, despite some of those directly involved saying they were acting under orders.
The majority of the LIBOR setting banks have either failed, been on the verge of failure or are participating in government programs to prevent their failure. Because the setting of LIBOR is "judgmental" rather than "objective", I believe the "feelings" and "confidence" of the individuals at these 16 banks have a lot to do with the level of LIBOR. Issues in the London market such as job security, real estate prices, 2008 bonus compensation, layoffs and falling personal net worth have a lot to do with psychology of the LIBOR panel. Behavioral science has become more important to understanding LIBOR than monetary policy and market measures.
The door just opened for the U.S. Government (Treasury, DOJ, SEC) and the Federal Reserve to go after these criminals, recover a half a Trillion or more and break up these multi-headed snakes once and for all.