LIBOR Mega scandal (total corruption)

Matt Taibbi explains illegal LIBOR fixing by the banksters

Why are we surprised at the depths to which our economic system will sink? And why do we think this is limited to bankers?

First vid blocked in the UK . Thanks for these

Really?
Well, my first OP post - and glad I did it!

:rs8:

It's a mega scandal kept under wraps even now, seeing all the big name banks in the ring.

I don't know if it will blow up big. Ever.

This can be a game changer, but.....

Amazing peoples life savings go missing their net value goes down up to 40 percent and nothing happens but when these cunts start ripping each other off you get hearings proceedings and lengthy time in parliament discussion.

Lord knows, we need a game changer!
Goldman Sachs has gotten away with their grand theft.
It may take total collapse.

Expecting a system which revolves around power to act in the interest of these who have no power is plain old naive. Change that underlying logic and the system dies. Methinks the powerful would have something to say about that.

Roubini has a suggestion...


ROUBINI: Break Up The Banks Or Hang Someone In The Streets

"Nobody has gone to jail since the financial crisis. The banks, they do things that are illegal and at best they slap on them a fine. If some people end up in jail, maybe that will teach a lesson to somebody. Or somebody hanging in the streets."

[link to www.businessinsider.com]

Confirmed. The UK has blocked the top video. Time to proxy hunt to see what I'm missing :)

Didn't need to proxy hunt, the Tor Network will show you it. Watching it now, thanks Op!

Wont work. The system will devolve back to cronyism after a brief bloodletting. Capitalism's logic would even corrupt you Parvati were you in a position to be exposed to its logic.

Look at the state of the Maori party (if you are indeed from New Zealand.)

The Soviets constructed the Iron Curtain for a good reason. They realised how corrosive capitalism is. They failed notwithstanding.

New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson Applaud British, Issue Challenge To American Regulators Over LIBOR Scandal
POSTED: July 9, 11:17 AM ET

excerpt:

Morgenson notes that the Barclays CEO, Diamond, seemed shocked that there were actual consequences for his misbehavior:

MR. DIAMOND seemed shocked to be pushed out. An American by birth, he probably thought he’d be subject to American rules of engagement when confronted with evidence of wrongdoing at his bank. You know how it works on this side of the Atlantic: faced with a scandal, most chief executives jettison low-level employees, maybe give up a bonus or two — and then ride out the storm. Regulators, if they act, just extract fines from the shareholders.


[link to www.rollingstone.com]

:Inan:

Mitt Romney is off to London to attend some fundraisers one will be hosted by the illustrious Mr Diamond of Barclays where guests shall pay between 25000 and 750000 a seat.YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP!!!!!!!!!!!

July 8, 2012
There Is No Such Thing As Safe

Even if you put your money in cash, if you put your money in the wrong cash, you lose a lot of money.

[link to jimrogers-investments.blogspot.co.nz]

Back to ...

Feudalism?
The Corporatist Fascist State?
Oligarchy?
Plutocracy?

Did I leave one out?
Oh yes... crooks!

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
How America's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy - until they were caught on tape

By Matt Taibbi
June 21, 2012 11:20 AM ET

excerpt:

The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America.

The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being ­cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.

In fact, stripped of all the camouflaging financial verbiage, the crimes the defendants and their co-conspirators committed were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of thuggery practiced for decades by the Mafia, which has long made manipulation of public bids for things like garbage collection and construction contracts a cornerstone of its business.

What's more, in the manner of old mob trials, Wall Street's secret machinations were revealed during the Carollo trial through crackling wiretap recordings and the lurid testimony of cooperating witnesses, who came into court with bowed heads, pointing fingers at their accomplices. The new-age gangsters even invented an elaborate code to hide their crimes.

Like Elizabethan highway robbers who spoke in thieves' cant, or Italian mobsters who talked about "getting a button man to clip the capo," on tape after tape these Wall Street crooks coughed up phrases like "pull a nickel out" or "get to the right level" or "you're hanging out there" – all code words used to manipulate the interest rates on municipal bonds. The only thing that made this trial different from a typical mob trial was the scale of the crime.

[link to www.rollingstone.com]

Bob Diamond should win the Nobel Prize in my opinion!

I think he deserves it!

There's always someone to replace Diamond. Forget the personalities.

Diamond Offers to Rebut Claims He Misled U.K. Lawmakers
By Kevin Crowley, Howard Mustoe and Ben Moshinsky on July 10, 2012

excerpts:

Former Barclays Plc (BARC) Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond offered to return to U.K. Parliament to challenge lawmakers who said he wasn’t telling the truth about the bank’s relationship with regulators.

“The comments made at today’s hearing have had a terribly unfair impact upon my reputation, which is of paramount concern to me,” Diamond said in a letter yesterday evening to Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury Committee. “I look forward to discussing this issue with you further if you wish to do so.”

... ‘Don’t Recall’

“Didn’t they tell you that trust is breaking down between the FSA and Barclays?” Tyrie, the committee chairman, asked.

“I don’t recall that in the February meeting,” Diamond said.

full article:

[link to www.businessweek.com]

Mitt Romney major 2012 donors.

Goldman Sachs $593060
JP Morgan $467089
Bank of America $425100
Morgan Stanley $399850
Credit Suisse $390360
Citigroup $312800
Wells Fargo $237550
Barclays $234650
UBS AG $207750.

Hahaha. Amusing.

The British army is positioning itself on the rooftops in London,to protect the games.
Never seen before.
Are they preparing for a terror attack?
Or are they scared that riots would break out,and London would be lit up like a giant torch..and not the olympic one.

Really... government by banksters.
Yep... that's a plutocracy: Rule by the rich!

WIKI:
One modern, perhaps unique, formalised example of a plutocracy is the City of London. The City (not the whole of modern London but the area of the ancient city, which now mainly comprises the financial district) has a unique electoral system.

Most of its voters are representatives of businesses and other bodies that occupy premises in the City. Its ancient wards have very unequal numbers of voters. The principal justification for the non-resident vote is that about 450,000 non-residents constitute the city's day-time population and use most of its services, far outnumbering the City's 9000 residents.

The Global Economy is a Giant Ponzi Scheme.

There is far more debt than money in existence and it can never be repaid.

A reset is coming. Simple exponential math proves this as fact.



Do you understand the ramifications of this?

Libor Exposure Of Banker Corruption, Bank Of England And U.S. Fed Both Implicated
Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
Jul 05, 2012 - 03:03 AM
By: Jim_Willie_CB

excerpts:

Few observers make the connection, but the current LIBOR scandal is a middle inning of two important events. The first is the demise of the Western banker leadership crew. The executives from the most powerful banks will be last to be deposed, all sharing an ethnic strain. The second is the open fracture of the Western financial system.

... The London Interbank Offered Rate scandal will erupt into an uncontrollable firestorm, hitting one chamber and then the next, with rapid contagion.

The Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve are both implicated, but they will skate until the end game. They control the prosecutors and the news networks. Few yet connect the LIBOR rigged prices to the important parts of the financial kingdom run by the harried banker elite.

... The evidence for price rig has been glaring for years. The big banks have skimmed the difference for profit for years. Imagine selling milk or concrete with a variation in price at the wholesale level, enabling vast profits from skimming. It has been permitted for the big banks, a grand blemish on an already scarred sector.

Anyone with a solid intelligence quotient, a curious manner, and a suspicious streak can detect the recent trail. The MFGlobal client account thefts were a coming out event for the corruption. The JPMorgan margin calls on various positions had become an acute problem. They were very short on cash. With the upcoming December 2011 gold & silver delivery notices adding strain to the near breakpoint, JPMorgan made a decision. They stole the MFGlobal client accounts. They reneged on all precious metals contract delivery. They put all the to-be-delivered metal in their own account.

Mission Accomplished, the catch phrase for unspeakable colossal permitted corruption in the USGovt and US financial markets. The losses in May by JPMorgan in the sovereign bond and Interest Rate Swap arena provided the Prima Facie case for the MFGlobal thefts, showing deep losses that will escalate over time.

The officials at JPM have been telling scattered truths over the course of the last several weeks. They admit at times that their profound losses are tied to Interest Rate Swaps, which experienced analysts and traders can tell are for defense of the USTreasury Bonds and their entirely unwarranted 0% yield.

full opinion:

[link to www.marketoracle.co.uk]

[Insane world...]


July 11, 2012

FINANCIAL IMPLOSION: Global Derivatives Market at $1,200 Trillion Dollars … 20 Times the World Economy
- by Washington’s Blog

Top Derivatives Expert Estimates Size of the Global Derivatives Market at $1,200 Trillion Dollars … 20 Times Larger than the Global Economy

How Large Is the Derivatives Market?
Everyone paying attention knows that the size of the derivatives market dwarfs the global economy. But how big is it really?

For years, there have been rumors that there is over a quadrillion – one thousand trillion – dollars in notional value of outstanding derivatives. But no one really knew.

Even though the Bank of International Settlements regularly publishes tables showing the amounts of different types of derivatives, some of the categories are ambiguous, and so it has been hard to get a good handle on what’s really out there.

For example, one blogger wrote last year:
Estimates of the notional value of the worldwide derivatives market go from $600 trillion all the way up to $1.5 quadrillion.

Smart guys like bond trader Jeffrey Gundlach said last year that we’ve got a quadrillion dollar derivative overhang, the government hasn’t done anything to fix the basic problems in our economy, and so we’ll have another crash.

But I’ve now found an estimate from a top derivatives expert who confirms the claim.

Specifically, Paul Wilmott – who has written numerous books on the subject – estimated the number last year at $1.2 quadrillion:

The… derivatives market … is 20 times the size of the world economy.

According to one of the world’s leading derivatives experts, Paul Wilmott, who holds a doctorate in applied mathematics from Oxford University (and whose speaking voice sounds eerily like John Lennon’s), $1.2 quadrillion is the so-called notional value of the worldwide derivatives market. To put that in perspective, the world’s annual gross domestic product is between $50 trillion and $60 trillion.

A Clear and Present Danger to the World Economy

The size of the derivatives market is a huge threat to the world economy:

One of the biggest risks to the world’s financial health is the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. It’s complex, it’s unregulated, and it ought to be of concern to world leaders ….

full report:

[link to www.globalresearch.ca]


:lisail:

Jim Rogers Explains Why We Are Going to Have 'Financial Armageddon'

June 29, 2012

The only bloody time I actually want a GLP converted video...grrr.

I don't quite understand.
But if you are having trouble seeing these, go here.
Both videos are here:

[link to enenews.com]

:Inan: