Posted on 07/19/2012 3:57:29 PM PDT by billflax
America has a serious problem. The integrity of interest rates has been compromised. Free enterprise requires fidelity and trust. A banking cabal regularly conspires to rig rates benefiting large banks and their political allies. These actions almost certainly harm others.
Collusion and market manipulation are reprehensible, but enough about Ben Bernanke and his merry price fixing elves at the Federal Reserve, let’s delve into the LIBOR scandal.
For disclosure, I’m a bank underwriter. My employer has not been implicated (and almost certainly won’t be) and my department doesn’t use LIBOR. Nonetheless, note, the following observations are mine alone.
We can see the chattering class has no qualms regarding scare tactics. Commentators who had never before heard of LIBOR (and still don’t get it) bandy about numbers in the hundreds of trillions to shock audiences. Free market’s foes gladly exploit this controversy to discredit capitalism.
Barclays, the British banking behemoth, was caught undercutting (and sometimes overstating) LIBOR to boost profits and bolster perceptions of financial stability. It recently paid record fines and its CEO, Bob Diamond, was fired in disgrace. Lawyers are giddy over prospects for massive lawsuits while opportunistic politicians salivate.
But stay calm. Back away from the cliff. Or, at least stop chucking bankers over the edge. This is overblown.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Sorry, but this is just another reason to mistrust those in charge. We have a manipulated stock market, a manipulated banking system and we are just suppose to sit back and watch what happens? This is what happens when government and business become intertwined (ie. government run by lobbyists).
Require courses in ethics in all Business Admin Universities and departments, put those who broke the law in jail and work to immediately reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
A simpler reform would be reinstating Glass-Steagall.
Exactly, free markets are the answer, not collusion. Thanks
It’s really just an excuse for greenmail. Borrowers don’t pay LIBOR anyway. What they pay is a negotiated rate that is determined by reference to LIBOR. But you can calculate a negotiated rate relative to anything. It’s still a negotiated rate, and will reflect the market even if you use a completely arbitrary base rate.
There are more than a few “smart voices” that say the same thing has happened to the oil and gas markets in the past four years. Economy down but the prices of these porducts UP. Just ain’t right
Have to agree! I’d bet that collusion is happening in not only the oil and gas market but several others as well. The chances of oversight (actually correcting the problems by government) are minimal since probably most are involved.
Really depressing isn’t it?
Keep in mind a big part of the volatility in oil prices pertains to volatility in the dollar. When the dollar’s value changes, the first place that will appear is in international commodities such as oil.
Actually, yes I not only know that but deplore the continue depression of the dollar by the Fed!
This is just another thing that I am beginning to hate about this Administration!! They are not only driving us into massive inflation (regardless of what they are reporting - just look at food prices) but they lie about it also.
I expect as most do that most prices will increase with oil prices - they just keep pretending that it is not a problem.
There’s more to your story, billfax.
The foreign press is reporting that Citigroup and UBS tried to manipulate the yen with Libor. JP MorganChase and HSBC may also be involved in the Libor manipulation.
The Post is reporting that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner knew of the Libor scandal while he was smoking big cigars at the New York Fed back in 2007. When he learned of the scandal, he messaged the London regulators and told them to “discourage Barclays from misreporting.”
There’s dirt all over the big banks. Allowing Chairman Marcus Agius and Chief Executive Robert Diamond to walk away is not sufficient. The losses to homeowners and investors by the Libor fraud hasn’t been calculated yet, but it will probably be in the hundreds of billions.
I’m seeing a criminal class of bankers that are raping the world. I agree, though, that we don’t need more regulations. We need public hangings.
I can hardly wait to see which banks hire which scumbag PR firms to start feeding lies and bilge to the sycophant, traitorous business press.
“If LIBOR is manipulated up, that sets the price of interest higher across a broad swath of the global economy.”
No, if LIBOR is manipulated up, then borrowers will just negotiate a narrower margin. If, for example, market rates are 9%, and LIBOR is 6%, then the margin is 3%. If market rates are 9%, and the Bank manipulates LIBOR so that it’s 7%, then the borrowers will say, “I can get 9% at the bank down the street, so I’m only going to pay you LIBOR plus 2%.”
that arguement is a red herring put out by the trading industry.
LIBOR schebor, Geithner, the big financial firms here & abroad, the government treasury heads here & abroad have been fixing the markets and financial paper for many years. We little guys are the sheep to shear, we end up paying more even when the big guys go bust as they never lose.
Forget the lawsuits against the cheater banks as it will just add to our burden and buy some more personal jets for the lawyer guys. Our revenge has to be voting in a bunch of less greedy politicians or another 1776 revolution. If big government is no longer humping the markets, maybe businesses will try to make profits with good products sold at reasonable prices - crazy idea?
And they wonder why the retail investor has dropped out of the market! Of course, you are right but few really realize it yet - and please no lawsuits, we can’t stand anymore losses by the public.
"LIBOR is an acronym for the Londer InterBank Offered Rate, and is also known as Eurodollar deposits. It is the average interest rate paid on deposits of US dollars in the London market. It is the interest rate at which lenders can borrow money from other banks. As such, it measures the cost of capital for a bank."So, LIBOR drives a lot more than just mortgages, it's the basis for interbank lending, business loans, securitization, government lending and more...
"Competitive pressure will increasingly lead to long-term stability in the spread between PRIME and LIBOR. The cost of capital for most major lenders is similar, leading to similar consumer interest rates. Since most lenders publish the interest rates they charge, there is little reason for one major lender to undercut the others on price, since they know that the others will quickly match rates. Any advantage will be short-lived."
It’s all just a part of the crooked markets! The sad part of it is that this happen with the acquiescence of the government who should be protecting the public. This seems to be a recent phenomenon due to computer controlled markets.
How in the world can the individual investor survive when major monetary agents are controlling it with computer controlled buy/sale orders? I see no chance for the individual investor in anything! They say our benefits lie in keeping investments for years for retirement - Well, good luck with that! I’ve seen what that does these days - it seems to be a crap shoot for us but a great benefit for the big money folks and their computerized market controls.
They continue to drain the money from the small investor and I see no changes for the future.
Yes, you can get lucky on some stocks, but you better be just that “lucky” because in the end, only the big money investors will survive.
Damn, I hate what the stock market has become. It used to be a safe haven for the little people, now it is a means of taking money from the small investors by the large corporations. They do well, the markets go up, and the rest of us lose...
That is true, but I doubt you’ll find a bank that complains it’s been cheated. They know what the deal is.
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