By Robert Scheer
Posted on Jul 6, 2012
Posted on Jul 6, 2012
Forget
Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were mere amateurs in financial
crime. The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of
trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big
boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their
kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.
Modern
international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the
world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over
Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge
fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top
financers. 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.
How
to explain a $450 million settlement for one bank whose defense, in a
plea bargain worked out with regulators in London and Washington, is
that every institution in their elite financial circle was doing it? Not
just Barclays but JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others are now being
investigated on suspicion of manipulating the Libor rate, so critical to
a $700 trillion derivatives market.
Caught as the proverbial deer
in the headlights, Barclays Chairman Robert E. Diamond Jr. resigned
this week and offered a plaintive defense to the British Parliament that
he learned only recently that his bank was manipulating the index on
which so large a part of international trade is based. That is plausible
only if we assume he was paid $10 million a year to be deliberately
ignorant. The Wall Street Journal had exposed this scandal fully four
years ago but his bank continued to participate in it nonetheless.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment