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| "First you've got to get up, you've got to get mad..." |
Da-da has to share this with you. He was so mad about the LIBOR scandal (and so should you) that he just called all his representatives in Washington, and... they'd never heard of it. Every one of them denied any knowledge of it whatsoever.
If this doesn't give you an indication of the scope of this thing -- the biggest economic scandal in world history -- then nothing will. Or do you like being screwed by banks and their political lackeys in perpetuity?
Here's what's happening in the U.S., courtesy of that renegade tabloid, The Financial Times (you can't find it anywhere else):
US widens Libor-rigging probe
US lawmakers widened their probe into alleged Libor rigging, requesting more documents from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to determine how the regulator dealt with alleged admissions of manipulation.
The House financial services committee’s investigative panel on Monday asked for all records regarding banks’ Libor submissions at the New York Fed; between the regional Fed and the 16 banks involved in setting the London interbank offered rate; and all records between the New York Fed and other government agencies, including foreign organisations in the UK.
The request comes days after the Fed’s bank in Manhattan and separately the Bank of England made public hundreds of pages of emails, memos and call transcripts from 2007 and 2008 regarding Libor in response to demands from lawmakers.
Legislators on both sides of the Atlantic have launched inquiries to determine whether regulators knew about alleged efforts to manipulate a gauge that influences the prices of hundreds of trillions of dollars’ worth of financial instruments, yet looked the other way.
The New York Fed said its documents make clear that it “helped to identify problems related to Libor and press the relevant authorities in the UK to reform this London-based rate”. Tim Geithner, who led the New York Fed at the time before becoming US Treasury secretary, said last week that he and his colleagues acted “very early” in alerting other regulators of their concerns.
According to documents from the Bank of England, the Fed was concerned with the accuracy of the lending gauge but it did not tell its UK counterparts that there were deliberate attempts at manipulation.
Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, said last week that Mr Geithner should have been more aggressive.
“He should have been investigating what was going on with Libor,” Mr Shelby said. “[Mr Geithner] had information that something was amiss, but he didn’t do more.”
In April 2008 a Barclays employee told an analyst at the New York Fed that “we know that we’re not posting...an honest Libor”.
Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, told a committee of the UK parliament that he had only learnt about “deliberate misrepresentation” of Libor rates a few weeks ago.
Randy Neugebauer, Republican chairman of the House financial services committee’s investigations panel, said on Monday that while the New York Fed worked to identify flaws in Libor and made recommendations on how to fix it, “what is less clear...is how the [New York] Fed dealt with admissions of market manipulation by Libor contributing banks”.
“As you know, the role of government is to ensure that our markets are run with the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and transparency,” Mr Neugebauer added. “Therefore, any admission of market manipulation – regardless of the degree – should be swiftly and vigorously investigated.”
The New York Fed declined to comment. Mr Neugebauer wants documents by September 1.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/24ea3f74-d4ee-11e1-b476-00144feabdc0.html
LIBOR is used as the primary benchmark for all short term interest rates around the world. We're talking approx. $500 trillion dollars here. So, if it's ok for all of the 16 central banks to screw everyone (these "lie-bros" set the daily rates, folks) on loans and credit card debt, is it ok if Da-da and everyone else stops paying his/her mortgage? Car loans? Howbout if the states stops paying? Municipalities? Countries? That's right, ALL of our contracts with these banks are based on LIBOR, a bogus number the central banks and The Fed conjured out of the air to benefit themselves. These contracts WERE based on good faith. Now, there is no good faith.
You may have already suspected this, but now that it's a FACT that you are being screwed and lied to. Are you alright with that? Do you know how much interest you've paid on all your bills over the course of your life? How much you've indirectly paid in state and federal taxes? How much your company paid? Your state? Your city? All the states and cities and individuals of the world? All of this is influenced by LIBOR. Not to mention the trillions of dollars in bank bailouts your great great grandchildren are supposed to be paying for. People in the UK are going ape over this, because their media is accurately reporting it. Yet another outrage: the failure of the US media.
Sure, this doesn't surprise you, but when are you gonna get mad?
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| Wake up and BITE that hand. Get it over with. |
Btw, anyone talking this scandal down is betraying themselves as being on the take. Track them for yourself, forward and back.
UPDATE 1:
Finally, some action in the US media. Besides ho-hum WashPost and WSJ pieces, there's an excellent article from James Rickards at US News and World Report: LIBOR Fraud May Be the Mother of All Bank Scandals.
Finally, check out Rolling Stone blogger Matt Taibbi dealing with a CNBC squid on the subject.
UPDATE 2:
Da-da has some new insight from a HuffPost blogger -- AND a unique idea on how to rectify this mess.
