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Giving America the GIFT of KNOWLEDGE……and disclosure
Listen up America. There is a scandal that has been known about since 2007. Are YOU knowledgeable about LIBOR?
YOU SHOULD BE. Where is the media coverage about this?
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From The Blaze:
‘WHERE IS THE PRESS WITH THE OUTRAGE?’ THIS MAJOR FINANCIAL SCANDAL HAS SANTELLI UP IN ARMS
by Becket Adams
July 16, 2012
Rick Santelli on Monday tore into the mainstream media for ignoring the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate (LIBOR) scandal and chided them for wasting time onpetty and useless headlines.
Wait, what’s the LIBOR scandal?
“LIBOR … is the average interest rate the world’s largest banks pay when they borrow money. And this figure … is used to price hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of financial instruments, from high-yield corporate debt to student loans,” Christopher Matthews writes for TIME Business.
Simply put, LIBOR isn’t just some “financial services sector thing” — it affects the everyday interest rates associated with loans, credit cards, etc.
This is where things start to go downhill.
Barclays, one of the world’s largest banks, admitted two weeks ago that it had submitted false data in order to keep its borrowing rates low. And while that alone is enough to cause concern, the real problem lies in the fact that Barclay’s wasn’t the only bank pulling this kind of stunt.
“We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, yet the LIBOR rate rigging scandal has rocked the financial world,” writes Sam Dwyer for BostInno, adding that other banks are involved in the growing scandal.
It gets worse: the New York Fed, headed by none other than Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, knew as far back as 2007 about the rate rigging. 2007? You know that this means, right? It means that at least a few key players involved in TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program]knew big banks were understating their borrowing costs!
And this is why Santelli is angry.
“You know, in the spring of 2008, there were a lot of e-mails that have now become at least, for the most part (a lot of it is blanked out), open for public consumption,” Santelli said.
“[I]nformation … was coming out as late as this Friday 13th regarding e-mails from the Federal Reserve, some from Tim Geithner [and] some from the Bank of England, with the notion, of course, that central bankers had a pretty darn good idea there were issues regarding LIBOR,” he added.
Yes, according to even the Associated Press, way too many people knew about this.
“Let’s think about this all from a different vantage point. Let’s think about this as taxpayers. Let’s think about the government and lack of due diligence,” Santelli continued.
“So, when we had that vote in October for TARP, where Congress was basically giving a green light to a program that was ill-fated, ill-designed,” he added, “How much due diligence did they do for our role as taxpayers in basically bailing out the banking system? Obviously zero.”
“Here you have regulators like the Federal Reserve Bank of New York highly aware there were issues. Did they put stipulations in that from this point forward this behavior has to be modified as part of the conditions for those checks?” he asked. “No, they didn’t.”
Seriously, just think about that. The Bank of England and the New York Fed knew about these problems and U.S. politicians still rushed forward with TARP.
“Where is the press with the outrage?” Santelli shouted.
“I love my Sunday shows. What did I learn? Things like jet skis are un-American. Oh, yeah that’s what I learned. Things like outsourcing un-American. Like hell it’s un-American!”
“What’s un-American is we now have Federal Reserve bank of New York and Treasury taking the heightened importance in regulating us in the future through Dodd/Frank. Shame on their legislation. They were aware of this, did nothing!” he added.
Read the Full TIME report here.
LINK
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From The Economic Times:
Former Barclays executice admits false LIBOR submission
July 17, 2012
LONDON: A former top Barclays executive admitted ordering staff to submit false interest rates during the credit crisis in 2008 because he believed his action had been sanctioned by the Bank of England.
Jerry del Missier told the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on Monday that he drew that conclusion from a conversation with the Barclays’ chief executive, Bob Diamond, in October 2008. He insisted that he believed he had done nothing wrong, and said he would not have given the order if he believed it had not been sanctioned by the Bank of England.
Del Missier resigned as Barclays’ chief operating officer on July 3, hours after Diamond resigned. Just a month earlier, del Missier had been promoted from head of Barclays Capital to chief operating officer of the group.
Barclays has been fined $453 million by U.S. and British agencies for submitting false reports of its interbank borrowing rates, data which goes into the calculation of a key market index, the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR).
In his evidence to the committee on July 4, Diamond said that del Missier had misunderstood a memo dated October 30, 2008, written by Diamond following a conversation with Paul Tucker, a senior figure at the Bank of England, regarding Barclays’ LIBOR submissions.
Diamond’s memo said that “that while he (Tucker) was certain we did not need advice, that it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently.”
Del Missier, however, said his understanding of what action to take came from a conversation he had had with Diamond before seeing the memo. “I only know what I clearly recall from my conversation with Mr. Diamond,” he said. Tucker, now a deputy governor of the central bank, has denied giving Barclays any encouragement to submit false rates.
Diamond said he didn’t believe Tucker had sanctioned false submissions, and said he had not given that impression to del Missier. “I passed the instruction as I had received it on to the head of the money markets desk,” del Missier told the committee. “I relayed the contents of the conversation that I had had with Mr. Diamond, and fully expected that the Bank of England’s views would be incorporated in the LIBOR submissions.”
Del Missier said he thought the order he gave was “appropriate given everything that was going on,” but said he had not bothered to check whether it had been carried out.
“The entire financial system was hanging in the balance and in the grand scheme of everything that was going on, it didn’t seem a significant event, given the number of significant events that were transpiring at that time.”
Keep reading here…..
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****UPDATE!:
SOURCE: Breitbart.com/Big Government
BERNANKE KNEW ABOUT LIBOR SCANDAL FOUR YEARS AGO
By Mike Flynn
July 17, 2012
Most of the coverage of Bernanke’s testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee today has been focused on his gloomy economic outlook. That was interesting, to be sure, but it really was just further confirmation about what we already know about the economy. The most unsettling part of his testimony to me was when he acknowledged that the Fed had known about the LIBOR bank scandal four years ago. For four years he knew that banks were manipulating one of the most important financial measurements and yet Bernanke did nothing.
From The Associated Press:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke learned from news reports four years ago that banks were manipulating a key British interest rate. But Bernanke said Tuesday that the Fed was powerless to do anything beyond contacting British authorities.
LIBOR, the London interbank offering rate, is the rate banks charge each other to lend money. It is the benchmark for virtually every other financial instrument, from derivatives to mortgages. My colleague Wynton Hall reported that LIBOR is used to set $800 trillion in financial instruments. Think of it as a kind of financial pi.
The Economist calls it the biggest banking scandal in history:
If attempts to manipulate LIBOR were successful—and the regulators think that Barclays did manage it, on occasion—then this would be the biggest securities fraud in history, affecting investors and borrowers around the world. That opens the door to litigation not just by the direct customers of implicated banks, but by anyone with a financial interest in LIBOR.
If banks were manipulating LIBOR, as seems clear, it would have ripple effects throughout the entire financial sector. Its almost impossible to calculate the overall costs to the market. Its also impossible to calculate the irresponsibility of doing almost nothing about the manipulation.
Bernanke said that current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner briefed some US officials about the manipulation. He also said that the Fed notified the British banking authorities of the scandal, but that they didn’t have the authority to do anything else. Invoking the “Joe Paterno defense”, Bernanke defended his actions:
“I think the responsibility of the New York Fed was to make sure the appropriate authorities had the information, which is what they did,” he said.
You know who could have really used the information? Consumers. Anyone with any kind of credit product is affected by manipulations of LIBOR. I understand that Bernanke didn’t have express authority to “do something” about the manipulation, as in statutory or regulatory authority. But, you know what he did have the authority to do? Call a press conference. Public outcry that bankers were gaming the financial system provides the ultimate authority to remedy the scandal.
What progressives continually fail to understand is that you can have 30 Dodd-Frank “reform” efforts, but if regulators are in at least tacit collusion with corrupt bankers, the entire regulatory edifice is pointless.
The Obama Administration has known from day-one that some banks were manipulating a foundation of the financial system for their own benefit. And they did nothing.
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A Group worth studying and becoming knowledgeable about:
Group of Thirty:
Established in 1978
The Group of Thirty is a private, nonprofit, international body composed of very senior representatives of the private and public sectors and academia.
Knowledgeable
The Group of Thirty aims to deepen understanding of international economic and financial issues, to explore the international repercussions of decisions taken in the public and private sectors, and to examine the choices available to market practitioners and policymakers.
Influential
The work of the Group of Thirty impacts the current and future structure of the global financial system by delivering actionable recommendations directly to the private and public policymaking communities.
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Would it bother YOU to discover this supposed non-for-profit Institution had connections to the IMF, the Federal Reserve and the World Bank?
The Group of Thirty hosts an International Banking Seminar every year. Look here to see who attended in 2011.
International Banking Seminar 2010
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Would it bother YOU to discover this group is lead by connections to the Obama Administration, the Washington Post, etc.? Ever hear of the Volcker rule?
Group of Thirty members
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Timothy Geithner, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury is a former member of this group. Supposedly stepped down after Obama won the election.
Past Members
| Josef Ackermann | Montek Ahluwalia |
| Pedro Aspe | Abdul Aziz Al Quraishi |
| Roberto Campos* | Sir Roderick Carnegie |
| Max Corden | Andrew D. Crockett |
| Dick de Bruyne | Jose Martinez de Hoz |
| Andre de Lattre | Otmar Emminger* |
| Janos Fekete* | Victor K. Fung |
| Timothy Geithner | Alan Greenspan |
| Wilfried Guth* | Armin Gutowski* |
| Jawad Hashim | Thomas Johnson |
| Yoh Kurosawa* | Alexandre Lamfalussy |
| Anthony Loehnis | Fritz Machlup* |
| Jacques Maisonrouge | Stephen Marris |
| Michiya Matsukawa* | Jose Antonio Mayobre* |
| C.W. McMahon | Soburo Okita* |
| Suliman Olayan* | Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa* |
| I. G. Patel | Rupert Pennant-Rea |
| Claude Pierre-Brossolette | Karl Otto Pohl |
| Jacques Polak | Gordon Richardson* |
| Robert Roosa | William Ryrie |
| Anthony Solomon* | Robert Solomon |
| Herbert Stein* | Tasuku Takagaki |
| Cesar Virata | Rod Wagner* |
| Henry Wallich* | Sir Peter Waiters |
| Dennis Weatherstone* | Johannes Witteveen |
| The Honorable Janet L. Yellen |
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Group of 30
From SourceWatch
The Group of Thirty, often abbreviated to G30, is an international body of leading financiers and academics which aims to deepen understanding of economic and financial issues, and to examine consequences of decisions made in the public and private sectors related to these issues.
The group consists of thirty members and includes the heads of major private banks and central banks, as well as members from academia and international institutions. It holds two full meetings each year and also organises seminars, symposia, and study groups. It is based in Washington, D.C.
The Group of Thirty was founded in 1978 by Geoffrey Bell at the initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation, which also provided initial funding for the body. Its first chairman was Johannes Witteveen, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
The Bellagio Group, formed by Austrian economist Fritz Machlup, was the immediate predecessor to the Group of Thirty. It first met in 1963, to investigate international currency problems, particularly the balance of payments crisis which faced America throughout the early 60s.
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Why is it that when a Banking Scandal surfaces, George Soros can be connected to it?
****WORTH YOUR TIME TO READ: CLICK ON BLUE LETTERS BELOW**
***GEORGE SOROS AFFILIATIONS****
Excerpt:
Group of Thirty
The Group of Thirty aims to deepen understanding of international economic and financial issues, to explore the international repercussions of decisions taken in the public and private sectors, and to examine the choices available to market practitioners and policymakers.[16]
The former President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank is an associate of the governor of the Chinese central bank through this mysterious organization of bankers and other top current and former officials from various countries. You will notice that other Obama nominees and associates are members including Paul Volcker, Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers.
The entire list of “contributors and supporters” of the Group of Thirty is quite impressive. You will find not only U.S. financial institutions getting bailout money, but central banks around the world and Arab financial interests.
In addition, you also find private financial interests, including the hedge fund operated by George Soros.[17
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From the Federal Reserve Bank’s own website:
January 2009
Timothy F. Geithner
Timothy F. Geithner became the ninth president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on November 17, 2003. In that capacity, he serves as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the group responsible for formulating the nation’s monetary policy. President Obama nominated Mr. Geithner to be the 75th Secretary of the Treasury and the U.S. Senate confirmed him to the position on January 26, 2009.
Mr. Geithner joined the Department of Treasury in 1988 and worked in three administrations for five Secretaries of the Treasury in a variety of positions. He served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1999 to 2001 under Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.
He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 until 2003. Before joining the Treasury, Mr. Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates, Inc.
Mr. Geithner graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in government and Asian studies in 1983 and from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with a master’s in International Economics and East Asian Studies in 1985. He has studied Japanese and Chinese and has lived in East Africa, India, Thailand, China, and Japan.
Mr. Geithner serves as chairman of the G-10’s Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems of the Bank for International Settlements. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Group of Thirty.<<<<
http://www.ny.frb.org/aboutthefed/orgchart/geithner.html
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Group of Thirty Events
The events hosted by the Group of Thirty are invitation-only forums in which very senior members of the banking, financial and regulatory community come together to discuss issues of common concern in off-the-record settings conducive to frank exchanges of views and positions.
Plenary Meetings
The Group meets in plenary session twice a year. For your information we have included a list of the speakers at recent plenary sessions.
60th Plenary Session
December 4-6, 2008 <<<Note date: One month after Obama victory.
Hosted by Timothy Geithner<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
See Complete Agenda
See Photographs
Chairman:
Jacob A. Frenkel, Chairman, Group of Thirty, Vice Chairman, AIG Inc.
Host:
Timothy Geithner, President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Speakers:
William J. Brodsky, Chairman & CEO, Chicago Board Options Exchange
Jaime Caruana, Financial Counsellor, International Monetary Fund
http://www.group30.org/events.htm
The AGENDA of the Plenary meeting:
http://www.group30.org/agenda60.pdf
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Contributors and Supporters
The Group of Thirty is a 501c3 non-for-profit institution. Donations in support of our program and activities are tax deductible. If your institution would like to become active in and support our work, please contact the Group of Thirty staff for more information on (202) 331-2472 or via email on info@group30.org. We look forward to hearing from you.
Absa Group Ltd
Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development
Asociacion Española de Banca (AEB)
Austrian National Bank
Banca d’Italia
Banco Central de Chile
Banco de Galacia
Banco de Portugal
Banco Mercantil
Banco Santander
BancoSabadell
Bank Leumi le Israel BM
Bank of East Asia, Ltd.
Bank of Nova Scotia
Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ
Bankia
Banque Centrale du Luxembourg
Banque de France
BM&F Bovespa
BMCE Bank
BNP Paribas
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
Caxton Associates
Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland
Central Bank of Barbados
Central Bank of Jordan
Central Bank of Malta
CIB Bank Ltd
Citicorp
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Credit Suisse
Danmarks National Bank
Debs Foundation
Deutsche Bank AG
Dubai Financial Services Authority
Ferguson, Roger
Gavea Investimentos
Goldman Sachs and Co.
Gulf International Bank
Hong Kong Monetary Authority
HSBC Holdings Plc.
Indian Banks’ Association
Itau Unibanco
Japan Credit Rating Agency
JPMorgan Chase
Kaufman Foundation
LCH Clearnet Group Limited
Mizuho Financial Group Inc
Monetary Authority of Singapore
Moore Capital Management
Morgan Stanley & Co., Int’l
National Bank of Hungary
Olayan Group
People’s Bank of China
Reserve Bank of Australia
Reserve Bank of India
Roth, Peter
Russo, Thomas
Sella Holding Banca
Singapore Government Investment Corporation
Soros Fund Management/Open Society Institute
Sullivan and Cromwell
Sveriges Riksbank
Swiss Re
The Challenger Foundation
Tudor Investment
UBS
UniCredito Italiano
Whitehead Foundation
http://www.group30.org/contributors.shtml
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The connector in this story is Timothy Geithner, under Bush the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Geithner in June 2008 convened closed door meetings with 17 banks, essentially allowing them to propose and draft their own rules for the derivatives market.
This led to advocacy by the Fair Finance Watch that Geithner’s meetings were in fact rule making that excluded the public in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and by Inner City Press, as media, to get the meetings opened to journalists and the public.
The Administrative Procedures Act (5 U.S.C. Section 553) and related laws require that when the government engaged in rule-making, it must provide notice to the public, and allow and weigh public comments. The New York Fed under Geithner tried to rule-make without any involvement by the public, even the public most impacted by the subprime lending that underlies these processes. The New York Fed on June 9, 2008 met with a group of the largest banks to discuss, according to the Geithner himself
“Regulatory policy. These are the incentives and constraints designed to affect the level and concentration of risk-taking across the financial system. You can think of these as a financial analog to imposing speed limits and requiring air bags and antilock brakes in cars, or establishing building codes in earthquake zones. Regulatory structure. This is about who is responsible for setting and enforcing those rules. Crisis management. This is about when and how we intervene and about the expectations we create for official intervention in crises.”
Press accounts made clear that the financial instruments and regulatory issues discussed behind closed doors are related to issues of public interest, which in fact are disproportionately impacting low- and moderate- income people and communities of color — subprime and predatory mortgages.
The financial institutions invited, in mid 2008, were:
Bank of America, N.A. – ***Barclays Capital<<<<NOTE THIS**** – BNP Paribas – Citigroup – Credit Suisse – Deutsche Bank AG – Dresdner Kleinwort – Goldman, Sachs & Co. – HSBC Group – JPMorgan Chase – Lehman Brothers – Merrill Lynch & Co. – Morgan Stanley – The Royal Bank of Scotland Group – Societe Generale – UBS AG – Wachovia Bank, N.A.
Buy-Side Firms: AllianceBernstein – BlueMountain Capital Management LLC – Citadel Investment Group, L.L.C.
Fast forward to March 2009, with Geithner despite tax evasion installed as Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, and with Lehman having failed and Wachovia been swallowed by Wells Fargo. Now he is promoting monopoly powers in the market for an even smaller group of banks, just seven: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, ***Barclays<<<<<NOTE THIS**, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank — which despite European headquarters received billions of dollars in U.S. Troubled Assets Relief Program bailout funds through AIG.
Now the idea is to formalize the monopoly through legislation, not rule making. Industry friendly Congress people like Connecticut’s Chris Dodd are supporting the monopoly for the privileged. The fig leaf policy argument is that derivatives should runs through regulated banks. The push is made now, before it is formalized that non-banks, too, are regulated. It is a pure power grab, with Timothy Geithner as the connector. And who is fighting this monopoly of the morally if not financially bankrupt? To be continued.
March 23, 2009
Citigroup‘s Pandit put out this spin last week, “The work we have all done to try to stabilize the financial system and to get this economy moving again would be significantly set back if we lose our talented people because Congress imposes a special tax on financial services employees,” Mr. Pandit wrote in a memo distributed to Citi’s 300,000 employees.
Bank of America‘s Ken Lewis claims that B of A is “part of the solution for the financial crisis” through its subsidized acquisitions of Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch. Most say, part of the problem…
March 16, 2009<<<<Note date!
In DC, “Inevitable” Fraud as Obama Jokes with JPM Chase, Meets Citi and ExxonMobil
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press
WASHINGTON, March 12 — As President Barack Obama promises to find and “call out” misuses of the stimulus package, and to review the over 7,000 earmarks in the budget bill he signed this week, the chairman of his Recovery Act’s Transparency and Accountability Board, Earl Devaney, told the Press of a “naive impression that given the amount of transparency and accountability called for by this Act, no or little fraud will occur… some level of waste and fraud is unfortunately inevitable.”
Accordingly, the same is true not only at the United Nations — despite Obama not mentioning the need for UN reform in his comments Tuesday after meeting Secretary General Ban Ki-moon — but also with the bank bailout funds of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Nevertheless, Obama joked with JPMorgan Chase‘s Jaime Dimon at the Business Roundtable’s gabfest Thursday in Washington. As a smaller banker asked the final question of Obama — no questions were taken after his meeting with the UN’s Ban —Obama said that banking has of late become complex, and that he could ask “Jaime” about it.
Also on the White House’s list of Roundtable attendees was Citigroup’s longtime board member and now chairman Richard Parsons. Citigroup veered into predatory lending, JPM Chase at a minimum securitized it, while lending to payday lenders and pawnshops. What then is so funny?
Obama’s successor as Senator from Illinois Roland Burris is said to have a brother who is going through foreclosure. A well-known Representative from the state of Illinois, sponsoring a pro-industry payday lending bill, has taken over $10,000 from the lender QC Holdings. If this is how politics will be in the current Washington, predatory lending can be expected to continue.
http://www.innercitypress.org/bankbeat.html
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ADDITIONAL LINK:
Financial Advisors and Academia Discussing/Influencing World Markets and Finance? News: U.S. Treasury Gives China “Direct Link” to U.S. Treasury Auction System.
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Did YOU know that Obama’s MOTHER worked for Peter Geithner, Tim Geithner’s father? Read at blue lettered link below
Treasury’s Geithner to Grads: Work for the Government. What Geithner Doesn’t Say or Reveal……
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