printCNN Business News reports that British bankers and regulators have been caught red-handed, monkeying with interest rates.
And I thought that was the job description of the banking cartel.
Barclays Chief Executive Officer Bob Diamond conducted an “exhaustive internal investigation,” only to find that “other banks were involved [too] in setting and manipulating interest rates.”
In addition to the resignation of Diamond, del Missier and the chairman of the board, Barclays said many traders involved in the Libor manipulation are “no longer with the bank.” But Barclays plans to keep these individuals’ names confidential, since civil and criminal investigations are ongoing.
Meanwhile, Diamond had been consistently vocal about the need for bank to act responsibly. Speaking at the Fortune Most Powerful Women conference on June 18, Diamond said: “Being a better citizen is critically important to us in financial services today for all kinds of reasons. In order to be effective we need to regain trust in our industry.”
Buried in the news item is this nugget: “[T]op British banking regulators could be implicated in this wide-ranging investigation.”
USA, USA, We Are Always AAA: Expect the world’s top monopoly money counterfeiter to be right in the middle, stirring the money pot.
Two thoughts:
• When the ostensibly private arm of the baking cartel cops to mischief, its bankers take the heat and the hate. The public has been brainwashed into believing that Big Ben (Bernanke) and his counterparts in European and British governments are in the right to debase their countries’ coin. Therefore, the populations on our Ape Planet (where humans are becoming the dumber species) don’t blink over central banker shenanigans. (Except for Ron Paul, who gives Big Ben a hard time.)
• THE Cost. Barclays (BCS) spent “nearly £100 million” ($157 million) and three years conducting an ‘exhaustive internal investigation’ into its traders and executives’ role in manipulating … a key global benchmark interest rate.”
The populations affected (mentioned in the point above) disregard the price of central planning and the attendant regulation, even though these costs are passed on to the dumb public.
A free market in money would dispense with the waste.