Barclays

Mark-To-Market Manipulation Hides $90 BILLION Losses For UK Banks

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– Mark-To-Market Manipulation Hides $90 Billion Losses For UK Banks (ZeroHedge, March 12, 2013):

Some have attributed the resurrection of the financial markets (or more appropriately the banks) from the March 2009 lows to the IASB/FASB changes to factual to fantasy accounting. The Telegraph reports today that from PIRC’s and the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee that while banker bonuses continue to rise (for now), ‘hidden’ losses among UK banks could total GBP60 Billion (USD 90 Billion). HSBC topped the list with GBP10.4 Billion in bad debts that have yet to be written off and while the ‘accounting’ bodies are suggesting they will address criticism of this farce, as one analyst notes, they “can still make unprofitable lending appear profitable.” Regulators expect to hear plans from lenders on how they intend to fill these holes before the end of the month to coincide either with the FPC’s meeting on March 19 or a statement scheduled for March 27. While outright recaps are unlikely, banks are expected to
restructure and set out plans to raise their capital levels over the next
couple of years. More fantasy…

Via The Telegraph,

PIRC has calculated the amount of bad debts the banks may have to write off in coming years but have yet to subtract from profits, together with other items such as deferred bonuses not booked.

HSBC, which is the biggest bank by assets, was shown to have £10.4bn of hidden losses, the Royal Bank of Scotland has £9.4bn, and Barclays has £7.3bn. Lloyds Banking Group has £2.5bn and Standard Chartered £2.2bn. Together the undeclared losses total £31.8bn.

Read moreMark-To-Market Manipulation Hides $90 BILLION Losses For UK Banks

Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings

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– Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings (Economic Collapse, Jan 29, 2013):

Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the world?  Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the world from behind the scenes?  The answer might surprise you.  Most of us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions, but the truth is that it also represents power and control.  And today we live in a neo-fuedalist system in which the super rich pull all the strings.  When I am talking about the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few million dollars.  As you will see later in this article, the ultra-wealthy have enough money sitting in offshore banks to buy all of the goods and services produced in the United States during the course of an entire year and still be able to pay off the entire U.S. national debt.  That is an amount of money so large that it is almost incomprehensible.  Under this ne0-feudalist system, all the rest of us are debt slaves, including our own governments.  Just look around – everyone is drowning in debt, and all of that debt is making the ultra-wealthy even wealthier.  But the ultra-wealthy don’t just sit on all of that wealth.  They use some of it to dominate the affairs of the nations.  The ultra-wealthy own virtually every major bank and every major corporation on the planet.  They use a vast network of secret societies, think tanks and charitable organizations to advance their agendas and to keep their members in line.  They control how we view the world through their ownership of the media and their dominance over our education system.  They fund the campaigns of most of our politicians and they exert a tremendous amount of influence over international organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.  When you step back and take a look at the big picture, there is little doubt about who runs the world.  It is just that most people don’t want to admit the truth.The ultra-wealthy don’t run down and put their money in the local bank like you and I do.  Instead, they tend to stash their assets in places where they won’t be taxed such as the Cayman Islands.  According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to 32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the globe.

U.S. GDP for 2011 was about 15 trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is sitting at about 16 trillion dollars, so you could add them both together and you still wouldn’t hit 32 trillion dollars.

Read moreWho Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings

Mainstream Media Finally Awakens To The Fact That Big Banks Are Criminal Enterprises

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– Mainstream Media Finally Awakens to the Fact that Big Banks Are Criminal Enterprises (ZeroHedge, Dec 16, 2012)

The Federal Reserve Cartel: Part IV: A Financial Parasite (Veterans Today)

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@Amazon.com: Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network


– The Federal Reserve Cartel: Part IV: A Financial Parasite (Veterans Today, Dec 14, 2012):

(Excerpted from Chapter 19: Big Oil & Their Bankers…Part four of a five-part series)

United World Federalists founder James Warburg’s father was Paul Warburg, who financed Hitler with help from Brown Brothers Harriman partner Prescott Bush. [1]

Colonel Ely Garrison was a close friend of both President Teddy Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson.  Garrison wrote in Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve, “Paul Warburg was the man who got the Federal Reserve Act together after the Aldrich Plan aroused such nationwide resentment and opposition.  The mastermind of both plans was Baron Alfred Rothschild of London.”

Read moreThe Federal Reserve Cartel: Part IV: A Financial Parasite (Veterans Today)

HSBC Said to Near $1.9 Billion Settlement Over Money Laundering

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– HSBC Said to Near $1.9 Billion Settlement Over Money Laundering (New York Times, Dec 10, 2012):

Federal and state authorities plan to announce a record $1.9 billion settlement with HSBC on Tuesday, a major victory in the government’s broad crackdown on money laundering at banks.

The settlement with HSBC stems from accusations that the British banking giant transferred billions of dollars on behalf of sanctioned nations like Iran and enabled Mexican drug cartels to launder money through the American financial system, according to officials briefed on the matter. The deal, which will force the bank to forfeit more than $1.2 billion in ill-gotten gains and pay additional penalties, is the largest to emerge from an investigation that has spanned several years and involved multiple government agencies.

Read moreHSBC Said to Near $1.9 Billion Settlement Over Money Laundering

Barclays Libor Case To Go To Trial

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– Barclays Libor case to go to trial (Reuters, Oct 29, 2012):

LONDON – Barclays became the first bank to be ordered to stand trial in a British court over damages stemming from manipulation of the Libor interest rate after a High Court ruling on Monday.

Guardian Care Homes, a residential care home operator based in Wolverhampton, is suing Barclays for up to 37 million pounds ($59 million) over the alleged mis-selling of interest rate hedging products known as swaps.

“Today is a huge milestone with a trial now going forward to determine whether these financial products should be declared void,” Guardian Care Homes’ chief executive Gary Hartland said after the ruling.

The case could also lead to new revelations about the Libor scandal after Guardian Care Homes asked for documents relating to the affair to be disclosed.

The company says it should be fully compensated for its losses because the swap rates were based on the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor). Barclays agreed to pay $450 million in fines to U.S. and British authorities in June to settle allegations that it manipulated Libor and other key interest rates. More than a dozen other banks are also being investigated.

Read moreBarclays Libor Case To Go To Trial

Barclays Makes Over £500 Million Betting On Food Crisis

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See also:

– ‘We’ll Make A Killing Out Of Food Crisis’, Psychopathic Glencore Trading Boss Chris Mahoney Boasts

– Barclays makes £500m betting on food crisis (Independent, Sep 1, 2012):

Outrage as bank revealed to be major speculator while millions face starvation

Barclays has made as much as half a billion pounds in two years from speculating on food staples such as wheat and soya, prompting allegations that banks are profiting handsomely from the global food crisis.

Barclays is the UK bank with the greatest involvement in food commodity trading and is one of the three biggest global players, along with the US banking giants Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, research from the World Development Movement points out.

Last week the trading giant Glencore was attacked for describing the global food crisis and price rises as a “good” business opportunity.

Read moreBarclays Makes Over £500 Million Betting On Food Crisis

GAO Audit Of The Federal Reserve Reveals $16 TRILLION In Secret Bailouts

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From the article:

Comment: It’s not “socialism for the rich”; that’s an oxymoron.

It’s corporatism, i.e. fascism, as defined by Benito Mussolini.

– Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts (Sott.net, Sep 1, 2012):

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.

Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning.

What was revealed in the audit was startling:

Read moreGAO Audit Of The Federal Reserve Reveals $16 TRILLION In Secret Bailouts

Confused Why So Many Foreign Banks Are Suddenly Being Charged By The US? Here’s Why

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– Confused Why So Many Foreign Banks Are Suddenly Being Charged By The US? Here’s Why (ZeroHedge, Aug 8, 2012):

It’s very simple really. Please point out where on the below list of Top 20 contributors to a randomly selected US politician, in this case New York’s Chuck Schumer, can one find Standard Chartered, Barclays, or HSBC?

And there’s your answer, which should also explain why banks such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, etc, will never be subject to the same kangaroo court in which suddenly everyone is shocked, shocked, that banks were manipulating Libor and laundering money or doing any other thing which bankers do day after day, every day.

Oh yes, there is an election coming up too…

Gerald Celente On Who Really Creates All These Wars And Why (Video)

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See also:

– Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: ‘War Criminals Run The State Department And The Entire US Government’


YouTube Added: 07.08.2012

If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.
– New York Post

When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.
– CNN Headline News

There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.
– CNBC

Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.
– The Wall Street Journal

A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.
– The Economist

Keiser Report: Hang ‘Em High! (Video)

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YouTube Added: 28.07.2012

Description:

In this episode, Max Keiser presents a double header with co-host, Stacy Herbert, to discuss crime and punishment in the financial sector. In London, JP Morgan banker, Tony Blair, has responded to the Keiser Report with his claim that hanging 20 bankers will not help and that, in fact, he asserts, public anger with the financial crisis is wrong. They also discuss the ‘blazer over cuffs look’ being the new black this season as Sean Fitzpatrick is arrested in Dublin, while over in Pennsylvania, Joe Paterno’s statue is draped in blue tarpaulin and hauled away as bond investors punish the university with higher rates and Moody’s threatens a downgrade. Finally, in Los Angeles, victims of vandalism are shocked to discover that it was a senior UBS banker who was smashing windows with a slingshot.

‘MR LIBOR’ Leaves The British Bankers’ Association, Goes To Reuters

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… which is owned by the Rothschilds.

– “Mr Libor” Leaves The British Bankers’ Association, Goes To Reuters (ZeroHedge, July 23, 2012):

There was a time when regulators caught red-handed abusing their privileges, aka, doing nothing in the face of glaring malfeasance, would quietly fade away only to even more quietly reappear, sans press release, as a third general counsel or some other C-grade menial role paying a minimum 6 figure compensation to the individual for years of doing nothing. This is no longer the case: it appears that the best such exposed “regulators” can hope for going forward is to get media positions. Such is the case with John Ewan. Who is John Ewan? None other than the director “responsible for the management of the setting of Libor” at the British Bankers’ Association. In other words, the man whom The Sun of all non-captured publications (oddly enough, tabloids sometimes have more journalistic integrity than Reuters and the FT as we will shortly find) has dubbed Mr. Libor. The Sun continues: “In a staggering profile on the internet Mr Ewan reveals he joined the BBA in 2005 to “put Libor on a secure commercial footing”. That year Barclays traders began fiddling the figures they submitted for the Libor calculations. On the LinkedIn networking site Mr Ewan boasts of generating a “tenfold” increase in revenue from licensing out the Libor rate.” He adds: “I introduced new products and obtained EU, US and Japanese trademarks for BBA Libor. “I successfully negotiated contracts with derivatives exchanges and all of the major data vendors.” Well, in the aftermath of Lieborgate surely Ewan is going to someone receptive to his permissive and highly profitable tactics over the years, such as Barclays. Actually no: instead of a bank, the only place that is willing to accept Ewan is media conglomerate Reuters. And not just as anyone: “Thomson Reuters confirmed that Ewan has joined the company as head of business development for its fixing and benchmark business.” We wonder how much revenue Mr. Ewan generated for Reuters?

Why Reuters? The WSJ provides a hint:

Read more‘MR LIBOR’ Leaves The British Bankers’ Association, Goes To Reuters

Oil And Gold Seasonals Suggest … BTFD!

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FYI.

– Oil And Gold Seasonals Suggest BTFD (ZeroHedge, July 23, 2012):

The long-term seasonal data for gold and oil has not just remained relatively highly correlated over time but, as Barclays points out today, has very clear periods of bearishness, consolidation, and bullishness. While Gold may have another month of treading water, the period from September to mid-October is empirically bullish while Brent’s August to mid-October period is the most bullish segment of the year. Given gold’s stability in the past month or so since the EU Summit, and oil’s surge (and modest pull-back very recently), seasonals certainly provide some technical support for BTFD here in these QE-sensitive, real assets.

Brent Crude’s two major bullish seasonals…

and Gold’s three periods of bullish seasonality…

Source: Barclays

How JPMorgan Made The Lehman Bankruptcy A Certainty

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– CONFIRMED AT LAST: The attempted cover-up of how JP Morgan torpedoed Lehman Brothers (The Slog, July 15, 2012):

As an early propagator of the allegation that JP Morgan Chase deliberately hastened the Lehman collapse, the Slog finds itself vindicated three years on by a successful regulator action against JPM, and contemporary documentation.

“And then when you have the suckers by the balls, you squeeze just like this”

Around the time of the Lehman disaster, a senior insider at the firm relayed to me what seemed an astonishing allegation: that in the weeks prior to the eventual collapse, JP Morgan deliberately withheld huge monies owed to Lehman in order to make the bankruptcy a certainty from which they could benefit. I relayed this story to another contact the following year, and he not only corroborated the charge, he also said he was sure Barclays had done the same. The now disgraced Barclays CEO Bob Diamond took over Lehman in a fire sale only weeks later (using taxpayers’ money as a bridging loan to do it) and rapidly built up a commanding position for the division he then headed up, Barcap  – the investment arm of the bank.

Now, more than three years later, regulators have penalised JPMorgan for actions tied to Lehman’s demise. The bank settled the Lehman matter and agreed to pay a fine of approximately $20 million. The action took place because of Morgan’s ‘questionable treatment of [Lehman] customer money’: regulators accused JPMorgan of withholding Lehman customer funds for nearly two weeks. So it had been true after all.

Jamie Dimon’s Morgan Chase dodged and dived on this one for three years in an attempt to smooth over the tracks.  As late as April this year, the Pirate insisted that the ‘monies involved were small’: but that doesn’t tally with this Wall Street Journal snippet from the time as follows:

‘Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the securities firm that filed the biggest bankruptcy in history yesterday, was advanced $138 billion this week by JPMorgan Chase & Co. to settle Lehman trades and keep financial markets stable, according to a court filing.’

Advancing cash to keep the markets stable is simply double-talk bollocks: many observers are sure this was the Lehman trades money withheld by JPM. The Lehman administrators continued to air their grievances about it, and in late May 2010 the bankruptcy estate of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. filed suit against JPMorgan Chase, alleging that JPMorgan’s actions in the weeks preceding bankruptcy were wrongful. The claims arose from amendments and supplements to the Clearance Agreement between Lehman and JPMorgan in the weeks immediately preceding the bankruptcy. (In a nutshell, JPM changed the terms without notice to include onerous requirements for massive collateral against giving Lehman its own money back – a form of crooked logic that only a banker could construct. The weight of this collateral requirement on already serious debts took Lehman Brothers from intensive care to the Pearly Gates).

Read moreHow JPMorgan Made The Lehman Bankruptcy A Certainty

Federal Reserve Admits It Knew Of Barclays Libor ‘Problems’ In 2007 And 2008

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From the article:

Via Reuters:

According to the calendar of then New York Fed President, Timothy Geithner, who is now U.S. Treasury Secretary, it even held a “Fixing LIBOR” meeting between 2:30-3:00 pm on April 28, 2008. At least eight senior Fed staffers were invited.

It is unclear precisely what was discussed at this meeting or who attended. Among those invited, along with Geithner, was William Dudley, who was then head of the Markets Group at the New York Fed and who succeeded Geithner as its president in January 2009. Also invited was James McAndrews, a Fed economist who published a report three months later that questioned whether Libor was manipulated.

– Federal Reserve Admits It Knew Of Barclays Libor “Problems” In 2007 And 2008 (ZeroHedge, July 10, 2012):

Last Tuesday we suggested that “Now The Fed Gets Dragged Into LiEborgate“ when we observed that “Barclays also cited subsequent research by the New York Federal Reserve staff members that, according to the lender, concluded that banks’ Libor quotes were systematically below their borrowing rates by 39 basis points after the Lehman bankruptcy. “Barclays own submissions for tenors of 1 month to 1 year Libor were higher than actual Barclays trades on 97% of the occasions when Barclays had actual trades during the financial crisis,” the lender said.” It seems that unlike the BOE, which had no idea of any Barclays problems and was merely calling up Diamond now and then to make sure the bank’s money market risk mechanisms were operational and to chit chat about the weather (as per the BOE at least), the Fed has decided to take the high road and openly admit it was well aware of Barclays’ LIBOR “problems.” And like that the Senatorial circus just got exciting, while that popping noise is bottles of Bollinger going off at every class action lawsuit legal firm.

From Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was aware of potential issues involving Barclays Plc and the London interbank offered rate after the financial crisis began in 2007, according to a statement from the district bank.

“In the context of our market monitoring following the onset of the financial crisis in late 2007, involving thousands of calls and e-mails with market participants over a period of many months, we received occasional anecdotal reports from Barclays of problems with Libor,” New York Fed spokeswoman Andrea Priest said in an e-mailed statement.

“In the spring of 2008, following the failure of Bear Stearns and shortly before the first media report on the subject, we made further inquiry of Barclays as to how Libor submissions were being conducted,” the statement said. “We subsequently shared our analysis and suggestions for reform of Libor with the relevant authorities in the U.K.”

Read moreFederal Reserve Admits It Knew Of Barclays Libor ‘Problems’ In 2007 And 2008

The Wrecking Of Barclays Is Organised Looting By Those At The Very Top (Guardian)

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Barclays’ top 238 employees took a total of £1.01bn home last year – or £4.27m each. Photograph: Nadia Isakova/Alamy

– The wrecking of Barclays is organised looting by those at the very top (Guardian, July 9, 2012):

You’d have learned precious little from watching Bob Diamond in parliament last week – apart, that is, from his love for his former employer. If pressed, you or I might admit to tolerating our jobs, to getting on with colleagues or, at the very least, to taking full advantage of the company stationery supplies. For the multimillionaire banker, however, this would be mere watery equivocation. The firm that had forced him out just the day before was “an amazing place”, packed with “wonderful people”. And, he told MPs over and over: “I love Barclays.”

Read moreThe Wrecking Of Barclays Is Organised Looting By Those At The Very Top (Guardian)

LIBOR Scandal: The Crime Of The Century? (TIME)

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– ??LIBOR Scandal: The Crime of the Century? (TIME, July 9, 2012):

The latest interest-rate-fixing LIBOR scandal is being heralded as the most egregious in a generation

The 21st has been a banner century for financial and accounting scandals. Enron, the dotcom bust, the subprime-mortgage crisis and the bank bailouts have all contributed to the very low esteem in which the American public holds Corporate America in general, and high finance in particular. So it is no small feat that the latest interest-rate-fixing LIBOR scandal is being heralded as the most egregious in a generation or, as Robert Scheer put it in the Nation, “the crime of the century.”

LIBOR is an acronym for the London interbank offered rate, and it is the average interest rate the world’s largest banks pay when they borrow money. And this figure (or figures, as different LIBORs are calculated for different loan maturities and currencies) is used to price hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of financial instruments, from high-yield corporate debt to student loans.

Considering the importance of this benchmark rate and the financial industry’s recent track record, it is no wonder that many in the press are up in arms about Barclays’ recent admission that it intentionally submitted false rates in order to manipulate LIBOR for its own gain. Barclays has been fined more than $450 million by British and American regulators, but it is by no means the only bank thought to have deceptively tried to influence LIBOR — thus the outrage expressed this past week in the media.

Scheer, for instance, pulled no punches in his polemic:

“Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined … It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.”

Read moreLIBOR Scandal: The Crime Of The Century? (TIME)

Libor Rate-Fixing Scandal Spotlight Now On … Citigroup And JPMorgan

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– Libor rate-fixing scandal spotlight now on Citi, JPMorgan (Raw Story/AFP, July 7, 2012):

NEW YORK — The harsh light of the Libor rate-fixing scandal has crossed the Atlantic, with both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase saying regulators and investigators have requested information from them in a so-far preliminary probe of the case.

Share prices for both — as well as Bank of America, which has not said if it was asked for information — have fallen sharply this week amid worries they could be in line for the type of heavy fines laid on Britain’s Barclays Bank, at the center of the scandal.

Read moreLibor Rate-Fixing Scandal Spotlight Now On … Citigroup And JPMorgan

Barclays: ‘The Bank Of England Told Us To Do It’ (Telegraph)

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– The Bank of England told us to do it, claims Barclays (Telegraph, July 3, 2012):

The Deputy Governor of the Bank of England encouraged Barclays to try to lower interest rates after coming under pressure from senior members of the last Labour government, documents have disclosed.

A memo published by Barclays suggested that Paul Tucker gave a hint to Bob Diamond, the bank’s chief executive, in 2008 that the rate it was claiming to be paying to borrow money from other banks could be lowered.

His suggestion followed questions from “senior figures within Whitehall” about why Barclays was having to pay so much interest on its borrowings, the memo states.

Barclays and other banks have been accused of artificially manipulating the Libor rate, which is used to set the borrowing costs for millions of consumers, businesses and investors, by falsely stating how much they were paying to borrow money.

The bank claimed yesterday that one of its most senior executives cut the Libor rate only at the height of the credit crisis after intervention from the Bank of England.

Read moreBarclays: ‘The Bank Of England Told Us To Do It’ (Telegraph)

Matt Taibbi: LIBOR Banking Scandal Deepens; Barclays Releases Damning Email, Implicates British Government (Rolling Stone)

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– LIBOR Banking Scandal Deepens; Barclays Releases Damning Email, Implicates British Government (Rolling Stone, July 4, 2012):

This Libor-manipulation story grows crazier with each passing minute. We have officially disappeared now down the rabbit-hole of the international financial oligarchy.

Former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond is testifying before parliament in London today, and that’s sure to bring some shocking moments. But there’s already been one huge stunner. In advance of that testimony, Barclays released an email from October 29, 2008, written by Diamond to then-Chairman John Varley and COO Jerry del Messier (who also stepped down yesterday). The email from the CEO to the other two senior Barclays execs purports to detail the content of the conversation Diamond had with Bank of England deputy governor Paul Tucker that same day.

In the email, Diamond essentially tells the other two execs that he has been given permission by Tucker – encouraged, actually – to rig Libor rates downward. What’s even worse is that Diamond’s email suggests that Tucker was only following orders, i.e. that Tucker had received phone calls from “a number of senior figures within Whitehall” – that is, the British government – expressing concern about Barclays’ high Libor rates. Tucker in this version of events was acting as a middleman for the British government, telling Diamond to fake his borrowing rates in order to preserve the appearance of financial stability, for the good of Queen and country as it were.

Again: Libor, the London Interbank Exchange Rate, is the rate at which banks borrow from each other. A huge percentage of the world’s variable-rate investments are pegged to Libor. When Libor rates are high, it suggests that the banks’ confidence in each other is low, and high Libor rates are generally an indicator of shaky financial health among the banks. If the banks manipulated Libor, they did it to make themselves look healthier, but this had the consequence of affecting hundreds of trillions of dollars’ worth of financial products worldwide.

Read moreMatt Taibbi: LIBOR Banking Scandal Deepens; Barclays Releases Damning Email, Implicates British Government (Rolling Stone)

Matt Taibbi: Why Is Nobody Freaking Out About The LIBOR Banking Scandal? (Rolling Stone)

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Barclays bank

– Why is Nobody Freaking Out About the LIBOR Banking Scandal? (Rolling Stone, July 3, 2012):


YouTube

The LIBOR manipulation story has exploded into a major scandal overseas. The CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, has resigned in disgrace; his was the first of what will undoubtedly be many major banks to walk the regulatory plank for fixing the interbank exchange rate. The Labor party is demanding a sweeping criminal investigation. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, responded the way a real public official should (i.e. not like Ben Bernanke), blasting the banks:

It is time to do something about the banking system…Many people in the banking industry are hardworking and feel badly let down by some of their colleagues and leaders. It goes to the culture and the structure of banks: the excessive compensation, the shoddy treatment of customers, the deceitful manipulation of a key interest rate, and today, news of yet another mis-selling scandal.

The furor is over revelations that Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and other banks were monkeying with at least $10 trillion in loans (The Wall Street Journal is calculating that that LIBOR affects $800 trillion worth of contracts).

Read moreMatt Taibbi: Why Is Nobody Freaking Out About The LIBOR Banking Scandal? (Rolling Stone)