the financial cartel has been caught stealing from you again....and by "you", i mean everyone on the planet.
the news:
The LIBOR scandal: The rotten heart of finance | The EconomistOver the past week damning evidence has emerged, in documents detailing a settlement between Barclays and regulators in America and Britain, that employees at the bank and at several other unnamed banks tried to rig the number time and again over a period of at least five years. And worse is likely to emerge.
Investigations by regulators in several countries, including Canada, America, Japan, the EU, Switzerland and Britain, are looking into allegations that LIBOR and similar rates were rigged by large numbers of banks. Corporations and lawyers, too, are examining whether they can sue Barclays or other banks for harm they have suffered. That could cost the banking industry tens of billions of dollars. “This is the banking industry’s tobacco moment,” says the chief executive of a multinational bank, referring to the lawsuits and settlements that cost America’s tobacco industry more than $200 billion in 1998. “It’s that big,” he says.
so, what is LIBOR?
Libor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe London Interbank Offered Rate is the average interest rate estimated by leading banks in London that they would be charged if borrowing from other banks.[1] It is usually abbreviated to Libor ( /ˈlaɪbɔr/) or LIBOR, or more officially to BBA Libor (for British Bankers' Association Libor) or the trademark bbalibor. It is a benchmark, along with the Euribor, for interest rates all around the world.[2][3]
Libor rates are calculated for different lending periods: overnight, one week, one month, two months, six months, etc., and published daily after 11 am (London time) by Thomson Reuters. Many financial institutions, mortgage lenders and credit card agencies set their own rates relative to (and typically higher than) Libor.
and in theory, how should LIBOR be calculated?
Explainer: Why the LIBOR scandal is a bigger deal than JPMorganThe calculation of Libor is coordinated by just two people, who work in an unremarkable open-plan office in London’s Docklands. I watched the process, which seemed utterly routine, a couple of years ago. Just after 11 a.m. on every weekday that’s not a bank holiday, traders at leading banks send in their estimates of the interest rates at which their banks could borrow money. They do this electronically, but sometimes the co-ordinators make a phone call to a bank that hasn’t sent in its estimates, and if the latter seem implausible – typos, for example, are fairly common – they’re checked, also with a quick call: ‘Hi there, is the Kiwi chap [provider of the estimates for borrowing New Zealand dollars] about? … Bit of a spread on the two month. Everyone else is coming in a good bit under that.’
A simple computer program discards the lowest quarter and highest quarter of the estimates, and calculates the average of the remainder. The result is that day’s Libor. The calculation is repeated for each of ten currencies and 15 loan durations (from overnight to 12 months), so 150 Libors are published daily: overnight sterling Libor, one-week euro Libor, one-month yen Libor, three-month US dollar Libor and so on.
and here is a discussion about what the banksters have been up to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oV2mI0IYp8
charge them, put them on trial, and if found guilty....put them up against the wall.