“In fact – it can’t be even 4 banks or even 5 banks. End the end it’s probably going to come out that it’s going to be all of them that were involved in this. And that’s what’s critical for people to understand that this is a cartel style of corruption … it’s not just one in Barclay’s.”
~Matt Taibbi
If you’re just catching up on the HUGE banking scandal where a British bank has been busted manipulating LIBOR interest rates that affect nearly everything we buy as consumers i.e. homes, cars, clothes, food, etc. - you can get all caught up on this issue by reading “It’s time to send the bankers to jail.”
It’s pretty clear now … the only way you can manipulate these rates is with the coordination of many, many banks. ZeroHedge writes:
I’m afraid it’s rather obvious. Given that almost half the reported inputs that help establish the Libor rate are discarded immediately, Barclays simply CANNOT have manipulated the Libor rate alone. Period.
What’s more, to effectively ensure the rate is set at the price required, you’d need to not only establish the highest and lowest 25% of prices, but then ensure the remaining 50% average out to the required rate and, based on the fact that there are 16 banks that submit rates, that would mean about 13 of the 16 involved would need to be complicit.
As a very good friend of mine put it earlier this week; at best this is a cartel, at worst it’s outright fraud on a scale that is completely unprecedented.
But ZeroHedge points out … there have rumors for quite some time that banks and hedge funds are manipulating prices for silver and gold … and that unfortunately – this is what our entire currency system is based off of:
If the long-stated claims about government-sanctioned, bank-led manipulation of precious metals markets put forward so eloquently by the likes of Ted Butler, Bill Murphy & Chris Powell at GATA as well as Messrs. Sprott, Sinclair, Davies et al are eventually proven to have any validity whatsoever, the fallout from the Libor scandal will prove to be (to use the words of Jamie Dimon) just another “tempest in a tea pot” as the precious metals are the very underpinnings of the entire global financial system. Conspiracy or no, it would be a blessed relief to get closure no matter what the truth turns out to be.
The Guardian explains HOW BIG this scandal really is:
But if that assumption is wrong – if the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money we lend or repay them, bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting which they’re not sharing with the rest of us – it’s a different story altogether.
It would amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportions – trillions of dollars that average people would otherwise have received or saved on their lending and borrowing that have been going to the bankers instead.
It would make the other abuses of trust Americans have witnessed in recent years – predatory lending, fraud, excessively risky derivative trading with commercial deposits, and cozy relationships with credit-rating agencies – look like child’s play by comparison.
So if you don’t know about the LIBOR scandal … read “It’s time to send the bankers to jail.”
