Bloomberg: Canadian LIBOR fixing probe targets seven firms

[Winehole23]

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/JPM:US), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/DBK:GY) and HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/HSBA:LN) are among at least seven firms facing a Canadian probe into whether they participated in a conspiracy to manipulate prices on interest-rate derivatives.



The nation’s Competition Bureau is investigating conduct by the group -- also including Citigroup Inc. (C) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/C:US), Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, ICAP Plc and RP Martin Holdings Ltd. -- between 2007 and 2010, according to documents it filed with the Ontario Superior Court in May. Investigators are examining whether firms conspired to affect prices on derivatives linked to the Yen London (http://topics.bloomberg.com/london/) interbank offered rate, according to the documents, which were shown to Bloomberg News by court clerks.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-14/jpmorgan-hsbc-are-among-seven-firms-facing-libor-fixing-probe-by-canada.html

[Winehole23]

Consider what went on here. Banks took a rate that they artificially set themselves, and then went out and convinced municipalities and pension funds and others to bet against them on the rate. LIBOR rates were supposed to be set by bank treasurers reflecting what it cost them to borrow from other banks. But reportedly a number of bank treasurers consulted traders when deciding what rate to report to the organization in London that collected and posted the rates. (LIBOR stands for the London InterBank Offered Rate) What's more, traders at a number of banks were given access (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-02/life-as-libor-traders-knew-it-seen-as-abusive#p1) to the systems that bank officials used to enter the rate so they could overwrite the rates with ones that would better suit them. When the rate went the way Wall Street traders programed it to do, the banks cashed in millions.


The LIBOR rate also affects what many of us pay on our adjustable mortgage, home equity loans, car loans and others. But that is a little bit of an aside. The real, clear damage is in the contracts that banks set up with municipalities and others to bet on their own manipulated rates. Baltimore was sold as much as $300 million in LIBOR contracts. The city is the lead plaintiff in the class action against the banks. The suits say the LIBOR market is as large as $90 trillion. Though some have put the market of things the rates affects as much as $350 trillion in loans and derivatives. The suit says on average over the period it was manipulated the banks artificially held the LIBOR rate down by 0.87%. Go with the smaller figure and by back of the envelope math, you get that the banks could have made as much as $750 billion on their scheme, but it probably wasn't that much since banks were probably asked to long and short on the rate.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/03/23/the-wall-street-multibillion-scandal-no-one-is-talking-about/

[boutons_deux]

"Why do you envy the wealthy their hard-earned riches"

--WC

[Winehole23]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/business/the-bank-run-updated.html?_r=1

[boutons_deux]

we need more financial deregulation so financial innovations can flourish and create jobs

[boutons_deux]

"In short, no promising financial path is before us. It’s good that the American economy seems to be recovering, and this may shove some problems into the future. But banking and finance remain a mess at their core. Welcome to the 21st century."

iow, America is fucked and unfuckable.

The financial system survived 2008/2009 with its overwhelming power, wealth, and ownership of the govt intact, and unchallengeable.

We even get shill here bitching about Dodd-Frank, which itself was gutted by the banksters.

[Wild Cobra]

"Why do you envy the wealthy their hard-earned riches"

--WC

And you wonder why nobody takes you serious.

[boutons_deux]

you defend the extremely wealthy IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, REPEATEDLY, not me.

[TeyshaBlue]

you defend the extremely wealthy IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, REPEATEDLY, not me.

You did a fair job of kissing Soro's ass earlier, bd.

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5672136&postcount=35

[Winehole23]

you defend the extremely wealthy IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, REPEATEDLY, not me.while you tell the 99%, repeatedly and stridently, that all resistance is futile. who's the willing stooge again?

[boutons_deux]

resistance IS futile.

IT'S OVA, dreamers.

eg, OWS won't get even one seat in Congress, there won't be even one OWS candidate.

I don't kiss Soros' ass.

More people watch Fox Repug network everyday than all the OWS peoples combined.

And nobody here has any suggestion of why America could be unfucked.

[Th'Pusher]

Wow. This thing is really beginning to blow up. Still waiting for American msm to catch on.

[Winehole23]

The LIBOR manipulation story has exploded into a major scandal overseas. The CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, has resigned in disgrace (http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/07/03/1068771/no-flowers/); 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 (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/28/barclays-should-face-criminal-investigation-says-ed-miliband_n_1633285.html) a sweeping criminal investigation. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, responded (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/29/mervyn-king-banks) 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).


The banks gamed LIBOR for two semi-overlapping reasons. As noted here last week (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/a-huge-break-in-the-libor-banking-investigation-20120628), there were instances of Barclays traders badgering the LIBOR submitters to "push down" rates in order to fatten their immediate bottom lines, depending on what they were trading or holding that day. They also apparently rigged LIBOR downward in order to produce a general appearance of better health, essentially tweaking their credit scores a few ticks upward.


Most intriguingly, or perhaps disturbingly, there were revelations last week that Bank of England deputy Governor Paul Tucker had a conversation (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/mps-to-question-bank-of-englands-deputy-governor-paul-tucker-7904459.html) with Diamond at the peak of the crisis in 2008. The conversation reportedly left Diamond, and subsequently his traders, with the impression that the bank had carte blanche to rig LIBOR downward in order to help allay spiraling public fears about the banks’ poor financial health.


British officials, and Tucker individually, deny that Tucker gave Diamond permission to rig rates. But a report by British regulators did conclude that the two were talking about Barclays LIBOR submissions on October 29, 2008, and that as a result of that conversation, Diamond came away with a “misunderstanding.” The Daily Mail quotes the Financial Services Authority report (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2167458/Libor-Dispute-said-Mervyn-Kings-deputy-senior-Barclays-boss.html#ixzz1zYvWm0IB):

However, as the substance of the telephone conversation was relayed down the chain of command at Barclays, a misunderstanding or miscommunication occurred.
This meant that Barclays’ submitters believed mistakenly that they were operating under an instruction from the Bank of England (as conveyed by senior management) to reduce Barclays’ Libor submissions.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-is-nobody-freaking-out-about-the-libor-banking-scandal-20120703?print=true

[boutons_deux]

Everybody STILL want to give their SS funds to Wall St to gamble with?

My guess is that Wall St, etc will "settle", pay wrist-slap fines, nobody goes to jail, and will fight in every country even the slightest financial regulations, and defeat them all.

[boutons_deux]

Massive Furor in UK Over Libor Manipulation; Where’s the Outrage Here?

In case it isn’t yet apparent to you, the unfolding scandal over manipulation of Libor and its Euro counterpart Euribor is a huge deal. Even though at this point, only Barclays, the UK bank that was first to settle, is in the hot lights, at least 16 other major financial players, which means pretty much everybody, is implicated.

First, Libor is the basis for pricing over $10 trillion of loans. As the CTFC noted:

US dollar Libor is the basis for the settlement of the three-month Eurodollar futures contract traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which had a traded volume in 2011 with a notional value exceeding $564 trillion.

The Wall Street Journal puts total in contracts affected at $800 trillion.

Second is that price fixing is a criminal violation under the Sherman antitrust act. The Department of Justice stressed that Barclays had been the first bank to cooperate with the investigation and had been extremely forthcoming, and for that reason it would not be prosecuted if it complied with the settlement terms for two years. The implication is that the DoJ will not be as generous with other banks involved in the price-fixing scheme. This is an overview from the Financial Times of Barclay’s misdeeds:

The bank admitted that it lowballed estimates of its borrowing costs from late 2007 to May 2009 because it wanted to reassure investors of its strength during the financial crisis and it believed other banks were doing the same. It also admitted that its traders improperly influenced the rate submissions from 2005 to 2008 to make money on derivatives.

Note that, according to Barclays, there were two scandals: one is the usual “rogue traders” sort, which took place from 2005 to 2007 (funny how these CEOs take credit for overall performance for bonus purposes and blame inadequately supervised lower level employees whenever real trouble arises?); the second, as we will discuss, is that Barclays submitted lower rates for the daily Libor “fixing” than its actual funding costs to make itself look healthier than it was during the crisis. Readers in comments at the time were reporting that published Libor was 30 to 40 basis points below where they found the market to be. Since lawsuits are being launched against Barclays, we will likely see estimates of the impact of the manipulation.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/massive-furor-in-uk-over-libor-manipulation-wheres-the-outrage-here.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

USA MSM not covering it?

Fox not repeating ad nauseam this is Wall St's Watergate?

[Th'Pusher]

Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith have been all over this one from the get go, but I am not seeing much from the major news outlets although NPR had a nice segment outlining it on Morning Edition today.

http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/156371620/rigging-libor-banking-scandal-hits-home-literally

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/06/156371620/rigging-libor-banking-scandal-hits-home-literally

This is a huge deal.

[boutons_deux]

"This is a huge deal"

corporate media won't touch it to avoid scaring away bank, finance, stock broker, c/c advertising.

[boutons_deux]

Here's another corporate/medical/corruption fraud case that isn't getting nearly as much MSM coverage as it should (BigPharma spends $60B+/year on advertising, much of it to MSM)

GlaxoSmithKline settles healthcare fraud case for $3 billion

GSK targeted the antidepressant Paxil to patients under age 18 when it was approved for adults only, and it pushed the drug Wellbutrin for uses it was not approved for, including weight loss and treatment of sexual dysfunction, according to an investigation led by the U.S. Justice Department.

The company went to extreme lengths to promote the drugs, such as distributing a misleading medical journal article and providing doctors with meals and spa treatments that amounted to illegal kickbacks, prosecutors said.

In a third instance, GSK failed to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety data about its diabetes drug Avandia, in violation of U.S. law, prosecutors said.

The misconduct continued for years beginning in the late 1990s and continued, in the case of Avandia's safety data, through 2007. GSK agreed to plead guilty to three misdemeanor criminal counts, one each related to the three drugs.

Guilty pleas in cases of alleged corporate misconduct are exceedingly rare, making GSK's agreement especially unusual.

The agreement to settle the charges "is unprecedented in both size and scope," said James Cole, the No. 2 official at the U.S. Justice Department. He called the action "historic" and "a clear warning to any company that chooses to break the law."

The settlement includes $1 billion in criminal fines and $2 billion in civil fines.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/03/us-glaxo-settlement-idUSBRE8610S720120703?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

===

and of course, one can't imprison a Corporate-American, or any of its executives.

[boutons_deux]

Beyond Barclays: Laying out the Libor Investigations

So who else is being investigated?

Revelations about other banks have been trickling out over the past year:

· UBS previously made agreements to cooperate with several international investigations in exchange for leniency on potential criminal charges.

· Citigroup was also a target of investigation. Earlier this year, it emerged that a few traders at Citigroup and UBS tried to manipulate Libor rates for the Yen.

· The Times of London reported that Royal Bank of Scotland could soon be hit with a fine of up to $150 million for related charges.

· Bank of America also reportedly received a subpoena last year from regulators as part of the investigation. JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, HSBC and others were also on the Libor-setting panel during the period being investigated.

· Last fall, European regulators seized documents from Deutsche Bank and others regarding manipulation of the Euribor.

Private lawsuits over Libor are already underway. Last summer, Charles Schwab filed a suit alleging anti-trust violations against many Libor-setting banks and at least one class action has been filed alleging that Libor manipulation meant banks paid “unduly low interest rates to investors.”

http://www.propublica.org/article/beyond-barclays-laying-out-the-libor-investigations

[boutons_deux]

Libor: The Crime of the Century

The U.S. Justice Department made a deal with Barclays, and although it may prosecute some individuals in the scam, it agreed not to go after the bank itself. “Such an agreement makes sense only if that cooperation will allow prosecutors to nail other banks that have been involved in setting the rates, including potential cases against Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC ... ,” the Times editorial said.

Both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were reported by The Wall Street Journal years ago to be suspected of rigging the Libor interest rate. The leaders of those banks, despite such media exposure, clearly remained confident enough to continue on their merry way.

The sad reality is that they will probably get away with it. The world of high finance is by design as obscure and opaque as the bankers and their political surrogates can make it, and even this most recent crack in their defense of deception will soon be made to go away.

http://www.thenation.com/article/168751/libor-crime-century#

[boutons_deux]

Former Senior Barclays Staffer Charges Diamond with Lying to MPs in Select Committee Testimony

Diamond said he found out what his traders were up to only two weeks ago, when the fines dropped into his inbox. What I don’t understand is why the MPs didn’t make more of that. If that is the case, and yet they’ve paid £300m in fines, in my view it is impossible that he wouldn’t have known.

Barclays operates a policy of escalation. That is endemic. It is almost entombed in the culture of the bank. The purpose of that is that if something goes wrong it gets escalated up the line. I don’t know how or why Diamond wasn’t questioned more on that point. Libor fixing was escalated by several people up to their directors, they would then have escalated it up to the line because, at Barclays, if you don’t escalate and it is found that out you haven’t, it is grounds for disciplinary action. You will be dismissed. You are taught that, and you have to do regular in-house FSA courses. You have to sign off every year. If a member of a team saw something and didn’t escalate they would be fired….

Back in 2008, we noticed what was going on with Libor. We were informed on a weekly basis of the rates we were having to charge to clients and the rates at which Barclays was borrowing. The dealers in our Treasury area, they would send a monthly update of the difference between the Libor interest rate they were quoting and the Libor they were getting. They were advising us of the difference of what was being published and their actual cost of funds. This was escalated up.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/former-senior-barclays-staffer-charges-diamond-with-lying-to-mps-in-select-committee-testimony.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

lots of the readers' comments seem to be from financial industry insiders

[Winehole23]

http://www.economist.com/node/21558281

[boutons_deux]

http://www.economist.com/node/21558281

"LIBOR is supposed to be a pretty honest number because it is assumed, for a start, that banks play by the rules and give truthful estimates."

:lol :lol :lol

Who assumes that? Banksters will steal every $B they can, BECAUSE THEY CAN and everybody else pays.

[Winehole23]

^^^picked a nit and broke his wrist patting himself on the back for it

[boutons_deux]

gfy

[Winehole23]

g'day

[boutons_deux]

gfy

[boutons_deux]

U.S. Is Building Criminal Cases in Rate-Fixing

As regulators ramp up their global investigation into the manipulation of interest rates, the Justice Department has identified potential criminal wrongdoing by big banks and individuals at the center of the scandal.

The department’s criminal division is building cases against several financial institutions and their employees, including traders at Barclays, the British bank, according to government officials close to the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. The authorities expect to file charges against at least one bank later this year, one of the officials said.

The prospect of criminal cases is expected to rattle the banking world and provide a new impetus for financial institutions to settle with the authorities. The Justice Department investigation comes on top of private investor lawsuits and a sweeping regulatory inquiry led by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Collectively, the civil and criminal actions could cost the banking industry tens of billions of dollars.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/u-s-is-building-criminal-cases-in-rate-fixing/?hp

[boutons_deux]

Citigroup May Have Been The Worst American Offender In The Libor Rate Rigging Scandal

The British bank Barclays has been getting the lion’s share of the attention for its role in the LIBOR rate rigging scandal, especially after it paid a $450 million settlement. But as Fortune’s Stephen Gandel noted, Citibank may have been even worse. “In early 2010, two economics professors from UCLA and the University of Minnesota looked at Libor manipulation and found that, at least according to one measure, Citi had misstated its lending rate by more than any other large U.S. bank in the run up to the financial crisis,” Gandel wrote. Citi’s underreported its borrowing costs by a margin 50 percent larger than did Barclays.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/20/558201/citigroup-libor-study/

[boutons_deux]

Matt Taibbi Dishes on the "Biggest Insider Trading You Could Ever Imagine"



http://www.alternet.org/economy/156387/matt_taibbi_dishes_on_the_"biggest_insider_trading _you_could_ever_imagine"?page=entire

[EVAY]

Most of the MSM, and by far most Americans, don't have a clue about LIBOR. That is the real reason that the MSM isn't going very far with this. It is too esoteric for most people on their summer vacations.

I remember what happened to LIBOR in the fall of 2008 and how long it took it to come back down...and at the time, even MY (not overly bright) financial advisor was saying that until LIBOR came back down, no credit would be extended to anyone anywhere.

And it wasn't. Hence, the prolonged housing crisis...It is really a credit crisis...and this is why it isn't over.

[boutons_deux]

UBS's Track Record of Averting Prosecution

As the Justice Department weighs the possibility of criminal charges in the unfolding Libor rate-setting scandal, it may want to consider the record of the Swiss banking giant UBS.

At UBS, a series of immunity, nonprosecution and deferred prosecution agreements in recent years - evidently the government's preferred approach to corporate crime - seems to have had scant, if any, deterrent effect. "It's depressing," Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, a member of the House oversight committee, told me this week after we discussed UBS's recent transgressions. "The Justice Department has to decide: Is the day of consent decrees and settlements, where you pay a fine, one passed on to shareholders, are those days over? Are the days of jail time here?"

UBS, one of more than a dozen banks being investigated for manipulating interest rates for their own benefit, is hardly the only major global bank with a record of recidivism. Just this week, HSBC apologized after a Senate committee exposed a pattern of money laundering for "drug kingpins and rogue nations." HSBC, which had been cited twice in the last decade for repeatedly violating money laundering laws, remains under civil and criminal investigation.

It was a rival, Barclays, that set off an international furor when it admitted to a wide-ranging conspiracy to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, commonly known as Libor, which is the benchmark for countless interest rate determinations and an estimated $450 trillion in derivative contracts. It obtained a nonprosecution agreement, in large part because of what the Justice Department called its "extraordinary" cooperation, and agreed to pay American and British authorities a $450 million penalty. Barclays has had its own problems with accusations of money laundering and paid $298 million to settle charges that it circumvented United States prohibitions on funneling money to Iran.

But in many ways, UBS is in a league of its own given its track record for scandals. Should UBS be implicated in the Libor rate-fixing conspiracy, it's hard to imagine a better corporate candidate for a criminal indictment - even though it has already been granted conditional immunity from some aspects of the Libor scandal.

As the Justice Department points out in its guidelines for charging a corporation with a crime: "A corporation, like a natural person, is expected to learn from its mistakes," and "a history of similar misconduct may be probative of a corporate culture that encouraged, or at least condoned, such misdeeds, regardless of any compliance programs. Criminal prosecution of a corporation may be particularly appropriate where the corporation previously had been subject to noncriminal guidance, warnings or sanctions."

UBS, with dual headquarters in Zurich and Basel, traces its roots to 1854. Last year it had more than $26 billion in revenue and nearly 65,000 employees worldwide. It was deemed too big to fail during the financial crisis, and had to be bailed out by the Swiss government after a $50 billion write-down on mortgage-backed securities.

The bank's recidivism seems rivaled only by its ability to escape prosecution:

¶ UBS obtained a deferred prosecution agreement in 2009 for conspiring to defraud the United States of tax revenue by creating more than 17,000 secret Swiss accounts for United States taxpayers who failed to declare income and committed tax fraud. UBS bankers trolled for wealthy clients susceptible to tax evasion schemes at professional tennis matches, polo tournaments and celebrity events. One UBS banker smuggled diamonds in a toothpaste tube to accommodate a client. In return for the deferred prosecution agreement, UBS agreed to pay $780 million in fines and penalties and disclose the identities of many of its United States clients. At the same time it settled Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it acted as an unregistered broker-dealer and investment adviser to American clients and paid a $200 million fine. In October 2010 the government dropped the charges, saying UBS had fully complied with its obligations under the agreement.

¶ In May 2011, UBS admitted that its employees had repeatedly conspired to rig bids in the municipal bond derivatives market over a five-year period, defrauding more than 100 municipalities and nonprofit organizations, and agreed to pay $160 million in fines and restitution. An S.E.C. official called UBS's conduct "a 'how to' primer for bid-rigging and securities fraud." UBS landed a nonprosecution agreement for that behavior, and the Justice Department lauded the bank's "remedial efforts" to curb anticompetitive practices.

¶ In what the S.E.C. called at the time the largest settlement in its history, in 2008 UBS agreed to reimburse clients $22.7 billion to resolve charges that it defrauded customers who purchased auction-rate securities, which were sold by UBS as ultrasafe cash equivalents even though top UBS executives knew the market for the securities was collapsing. Seven of UBS's top executives were said to have dumped their own holdings, totaling $21 million, even as they told the bank's brokers to "mobilize the troops" and unload the securities on unsuspecting clients. As Andrew M. Cuomo, who was New York's attorney general then, put it: "While thousands of UBS customers received no warning about the auction-rate securities market's serious distress, David Shulman - one of the company's top executives - used insider information to take the money and run." Besides reimbursing clients and settling with the S.E.C., UBS paid a $150 million fine to settle consumer and securities fraud charges filed by New York and other states. It again escaped prosecution.

There's more - including UBS's prominent role and big losses in the mortgage-backed securities debacle that helped bring on the financial crisis. The federal agency overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sued UBS for securities law violations, accusing it of "materially false statements and omissions." The agency is seeking $1 billion in damages. (UBS has denied the charges and the case is pending.) UBS hasn't been charged with any civil or criminal misconduct related to mortgage-backed securities.

In the continuing global interest rates investigations, UBS last summer revealed that it had received conditional immunity from the Justice Department and other authorities. It was shown this leniency even though the Justice Department has pointedly said that Barclays, not UBS, was the first bank to cooperate.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=245039D3CF09641D73160A7CFA21A38 8?a=950270&f=23

[boutons_deux]

Trader Claims Rate Rigging Scandal Dates Back To 1991

In the Financial Times today, a former trader for Morgan Stanley claims that rigging of the LIBOR rate has been going on since at least 1991. Revelations that LIBOR — a key benchmark for interest rates — was being rigged has caused a wide-reaching scandal in both European and American financial circles, and could lead to criminal charges. Based on conversations he had with other traders, Douglas Keenan wrote, “it seems the misreporting of Libor rates may have been common practice since at least 1991. Although the difference between the reported rate and the actual rate might seem small, the total amount of money involved is material, given that Libor rates affect contracts worth hundreds of trillions.”

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/27/599841/trader-claims-scandal-1991/

[Winehole23]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/30/us-hsbc-earnings-idUSBRE86S0T520120730

[Yonivore]

Most of the MSM, and by far most Americans, don't have a clue about LIBOR. That is the real reason that the MSM isn't going very far with this. It is too esoteric for most people on their summer vacations.

I remember what happened to LIBOR in the fall of 2008 and how long it took it to come back down...and at the time, even MY (not overly bright) financial advisor was saying that until LIBOR came back down, no credit would be extended to anyone anywhere.

And it wasn't. Hence, the prolonged housing crisis...It is really a credit crisis...and this is why it isn't over.
Really? Ignorance didn't seem to stop them on derivatives and credit default swaps.

I think they're carrying the water, once again, for an administration's fair-haired child Timothy Geithner who -- when he had the opportunity -- failed to sound the alarm.

If Geithner looks bad, Obama looks bad. The equation is that simple.

[ElNono]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/30/us-hsbc-earnings-idUSBRE86S0T520120730

Cost of doing (shady) business... doubt that's much of a dent on their earnings...

[Winehole23]

nope. not much of deterrent.

[Winehole23]

Swiss bank UBS AG is expected to pay more than $450 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle claims some of its employees submitted false Libor rates, the New York Times reported.


In June, British bank Barclays Plc was fined $453 million for manipulating Libor benchmark interest rates, becoming the first bank to settle in the ongoing probe, prompting the resignation of its chairman and chief executive.
UBS was the first bank globally to report suspected rate rigging, and has said it has received conditional immunity from some authorities for cooperating in their probes.


A UBS spokeswoman told Reuters that the bank was in the midst of discussions with authorities in the United States and Britain in connection with Libor investigations and has been cooperating fully with the regulatory and enforcement authorities, but gave no further details.


Christopher Hamilton, spokesman for Britain's Financial Services Authority, declined to comment beyond confirming the already established fact that the FSA is investigating UBS.


The Commodity (http://www.reuters.com/finance/commodities?lc=int_mb_1001) Futures (http://www.reuters.com/finance/futures?lc=int_mb_1001) Trading Commission and the U.S. Justice Department, investigating the Libor matter in the United States, could not immediately be reached for comment.


Other banks (http://www.reuters.com/sectors/industries/overview?industryCode=128&lc=int_mb_1001) are also anxious to draw a line under the probe, which is well into its second year. British bank RBS said last month it hopes to reach a settlement on its part in the rate-rigging scandal - likely to result in fines for the bank - and expects to start talks soon.
Morgan Stanley estimated that 11 global banks linked to the Libor scandal could face $14 billion in regulatory and legal settlement costs through 2014.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/03/ubs-libor-idUSL5E8N34DE20121203

[Winehole23]

as usual, institutions perpetrating fraud on essentially a universal scale settle out of court. no one goes to jail, no one goes out of business.

rob a bank, go to prison; hold up nations, pay a fine.

[boutons_deux]

top stories this morning on NYT mobile home page:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/blogs/morgan-stanley-trader-faces-inquiry-on-possible-manipulation.xml?f=19 (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/blogs/morgan-stanley-trader-faces-inquiry-on-possible-manipulation.xml?f=19)

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/blogs/ubs-is-described-as-near-deal-on-rate-rigging.xml?f=19

the entire financial sector is reliably assumed to be 100% corrupt until proven otherwise.

[Winehole23]

that's a bit of a stretch but then again, you're not exactly well-known around here for distinguishing shades between black and white . . .

[boutons_deux]

that's a bit of a stretch but then again, you're not exactly well-known around here for distinguishing shades between black and white . . .

You're well known sterile, academic debates over inconsequentil details while ignoring the big picture.

[Winehole23]

the world ain't black and white, but is made much the simpler by supposing it so.

[Winehole23]

otoh, fuck it. stick to simple cliches. it suits you.

[Winehole23]

Swiss bank UBS (UBSN.VX (http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=UBSN.VX)) faces a fine of about $1 billion next week to settle charges of rigging the Libor interest rate benchmark, a person familiar with the situation said on Thursday.


Such a penalty would be more than double the $450 million fine levied on British bank Barclays (BARC.L (http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BARC.L)) in June by U.S. and British regulators and would be the third massive U.S. fine to hit big European banks (http://www.reuters.com/sectors/industries/overview?industryCode=128&lc=int_mb_1001) this week.


"The global settlement is about $1 billion," the source said. "It's expected early next week - on Monday or Tuesday."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/13/us-ubs-libor-idUSBRE8BC0Z820121213

[boutons_deux]

Libor Manipulation Cost Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac $3 BillionLibor manipulation cost Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more than $3 billion, according to an estimate by a government watchdog, who recommends the government-owned mortgage giants sue the big banks.

That estimate and legal advice were made in a private report by Steve Linick, the inspector general for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator for Fannie and Freddie, which were taken over by the U.S. government during the financial crisis. The Wall Street Journal first reported the watchdog's analysis (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324461604578189630708982470.html?m od=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories) on Wednesday.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by the Huffington Post, was in a memorandum prepared by the FHFA watchdog's staff and delivered to FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco on Nov. 2. The FHFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to the WSJ, the FHFA has told Linick in a recent letter that it was "exploring potential legal options."

“We conducted a preliminary analysis of potential Libor-related losses at Fannie and Freddie and shared that with FHFA, recommending that they conduct a thorough review of the issue," Kristine Belisle, a spokeswoman for the FHFA inspector general, said in an email. "FHFA agreed to study the matter further.”

More than a dozen banks in the U.S. and Europe are under investigation for allegedly manipulating a key short-term interest rate known as Libor, which influences borrowing costs throughout the global economy. Swiss bank UBS on Wednesday agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle charges (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/seven-and-a-half-things-you-need-to-know_n_2326648.html?utm_hp_ref=business)that its traders manipulated Libor over several years. The bank's Japanese unit pleaded guilty to a crime -- a rarity for a bank -- and two of its former traders have also been hit with federal criminal charges. Earlier this year U.K. bank Barclays Capital agreed to pay about $450 million to settle Libor charges.


One of the early defenses raised in the Libor scandal (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-gongloff/post_3622_b_1659133.html) was that interest rates were often manipulated lower during the crisis, a boon to borrowers. What was the harm in that, the defenders asked? But Barclays and UBS traders -- and likely traders at many other banks -- also manipulated interest rates higher, to help bolster profits in derivatives trades.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/libor-manipulation-cost-fannie-freddie_n_2332300.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

And what about the muni bond sales that were set against LIBOR?

[boutons_deux]

otoh, fuck it. stick to simple cliches. it suits you.

GFY more than you are already fucked

[boutons_deux]

Quelle Surprise! UBS Gets a Cost-of-Doing-Business Fine for “Epic” Libor Fraud (Updated) (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/quelle-surprise-ubs-gets-a-cost-of-doing-business-fine-for-epic-libor-fraud.html)
The gaming was so extensive that the FSA noted that “every Libor and Euribor submission in currencies and tenors in which UBS traded is at risk of having been improperly influenced”. “Trader A” would often put in internal orders to manipulate prices for months at a time. The perps also bought the support of players at other firms, via offering profit sharing or other bribes,

The reason US authorities are so leery of even indicting a major financial firm is that Federal government bodies as well as many private parties must cease doing business. The loss of many counterparties and the sudden unwinding of trades is correctly seen as hugely damaging to the firm in question, a probably death knell. Even AIG, which is not a major trading firm and is more foreign than American in terms of the mix of its business, felt it could not withstand an indictment; that’s the only way the wily and ruthless Hank Greenberg could be forced to give up the helm.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/quelle-surprise-ubs-gets-a-cost-of-doing-business-fine-for-epic-libor-fraud.html#ljriWz0bSQyZUlTR.99

[Winehole23]

Freddie Mac (FMCC) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/FMCC:US) sued Bank of America Corp. (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BAC:US), UBS AG (UBSN) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/UBSN:VX), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/JPM:US) and a dozen other banks over alleged manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, saying the mortgage financier suffered substantial losses as a result of the companies’ conduct.


Government-owned Freddie Mac accuses the banks of acting collectively to hold down the U.S. dollar Libor to “hide their institutions’ financial problems and boost their profits,” according to a complaint filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.
(http://www.bloomberg.com/photo/freddie-mac-sues-bofa-ubs-jpmorgan-over-libor-rigging-/304417.html)
A Freddie Mac sign stands outside the headquarters in McLean, Virginia. Freddie Mac accuses the banks of fraud, violations of antitrust law and breach of contract. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg















(http://www.industrybrains.com/signupgroup/Welcome_IB.aspx)



“Defendants’ fraudulent and collusive conduct caused USD LIBOR to be published at rates that were false, dishonest, and artificially low,” Richard Leveridge, a lawyer for Freddie Mac, said in the complaint, which was made public yesterday.

Manipulation of interest rates (http://topics.bloomberg.com/interest-rates/) by some of the world’s biggest banks has spawned probes by half a dozen agencies on three continents in what has become the industry’s largest and longest-running scandal. More than $300 trillion of loans, mortgages, financial products and contracts are linked to Libor.

Libor is calculated by a poll carried out daily by Thomson Reuters Corp. on behalf of the British Bankers’ Association, an industry lobby group that asks firms to estimate how much it would cost to borrow from each other for different periods and in different currencies.

The complaint lists 15 banks as defendants as well as the British Bankers’ Association. They include Citigroup Inc. (C) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/C:US), Barclays Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/RBS:LN), the Royal Bank of Canada, Deutsche Bank AG and Credit Suisse Group AG. (CSGN) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/CSGN:VX)

Freddie Mac accuses the banks of fraud, violations of antitrust law and breach of contract. The housing financier is seeking unspecified damages for financial harm, as well as punitive damages and treble damages for violations of the Sherman Act. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-19/freddie-mac-sues-multiple-banks-over-libor-manipulation.html

[Winehole23]

Some of the world's largest banks including Barclays Plc, UBS AG and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc have been fined billions after admitting manipulating Libor--which forms the basis of trillions of dollars of transactions. Litigation could take the cost of Libor manipulation to $176 billion, Macquarie estimates.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/03/28/australia-scraps-interbank-lending-panel-in-wake-libor/#ixzz2OoxnXjYb

[boutons_deux]

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/03/28/australia-scraps-interbank-lending-panel-in-wake-libor/#ixzz2OoxnXjYb



they're all TBTJ, nuthin EFFECTIVE gonna happen.

who pays the "costs of Libor manip"? pension funds, municipalities, etc. $100B stolen through blatant fraud, yawn. Surprised? It's the financial sector

[Winehole23]

A judge on Friday dismissed a "substantial portion" of claims facing a number of banks in a barrage of lawsuits accusing them of interest-rate rigging.

U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled for the banks, which include Bank of America Corp , JPMorgan Chase & Co and others, of allegedly manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, commonly known as Libor.


The judge granted the banks' motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' federal antitrust claims and partially dismissed their claims of commodities manipulation. She also dismissed racketeering and state-law claims.


The decision is a significant setback for private plaintiffs, whose lawsuits had been consolidated before the New York judge as part of a multidistrict litigation proceedinghttp://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/29/us-libor-lawsuits-banks-idUSBRE92S0HE20130329

[boutons_deux]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/29/us-libor-lawsuits-banks-idUSBRE92S0HE20130329

she's in Wall St pocket, part of the corporatocracy.

her dismissal MUST be appealed.

Banks have already, "effectively", admitted guilt.

"Barclays agreed to pay 290 million pounds ($441 million) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/RBS:LN)paid $612 million to U.S. and U.K. regulators to resolve claims. UBS AG (UBSN) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/UBSN:VX) agreed to pay 1.4 billion Swiss francs ($1.47 billion).Other defendants in the civil lawsuits include Credit Suisse Group, HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/HSBA:LN), Deutsche Bank AG, Citigroup Inc. (C) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/C:US) and RBS.
Buchwald dismissed the antitrust claims because the plaintiffs didn’t allege enough facts to show that they were harmed by the alleged misconduct. The judge dismissed some commodities-manipulation claims because they centered on transactions that were too long ago. Other such claims may proceed, she said."

[boutons_deux]

Lynn Parramore: Your Retirement for a Bottle of Champagne – How Wall Street Fraudsters Ripped You Off, Again (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/lynn-parramore-your-retirement-for-a-bottle-of-champagne-how-wall-street-fraudsters-ripped-you-off-again.html)

Just as you’re struggling to finance a summer vacation, or simply to pay the freaking rent, how would you like to open your wallet and hand over a wad of cash to a gang of international con artists who commit fraud as casually as they order a five-course dinner?

Really? That’s how you feel about it? Well, tell it to the U.S. Department of Justice, because that’s just what’s going down as a result of the LIBOR scandal.

To recap: Bank hustlers manipulated the world’s most important set of benchmark interest rates and thereby impacted the prices of upward of $500 trillion worth of financial instruments. The LIBOR scam devastated state and municipal budgets, squeezed pension yields and ripped off bank shareholders. In a case of jaw-dropping fraud, greedy traders rigged up the benchmark so that they could cash in on bets on derivatives, while banks submitted fake numbers to make themselves look financially healthier.

One Barclays official was fond of fudging numbers in exchange for champagne (http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/t/0/0/alternet/~buzz.money.cnn.com/2012/07/04/barclays-libor-email/). “Dude…I owe you big time!” gushed a trader in an email to Barclays’ Mr. Fix-It. “Come over one day after work and I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger.”

That’s right. A bottle of bubbly for a scam that screwed your grandma on her retirement savings (http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/t/0/0/alternet/~www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CD8QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alternet.org%2Fstory%2F156460 %2F6_ways_big_banks_screwed_grandma_in_the_price-fixing_scandal_that%27s_rocking_the_world&ei=PcaHUfC3EKn64AOS_4CADQ&usg=AFQjCNE). Retail bank certificates of deposit, you see, are very popular with senior citizens, and they are priced based on LIBOR benchmarks. As Alexander Arapoglou and Jerri-Lynn Scofield have explained on AlterNet, that alone could cause Grandma’s income to drop by as much as 2 percent. It ain’t like she didn’t need the money! That’s not even counting what happened to her pension — or yours.

LIBOR was, in the opinion of many, the con of the century. But is it a crime without punishment?

About a month ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that a federal court judge had let several banks off the hook, dismissing claims that 16 banks targeted by lawsuits had broken federal antitrust laws by rigging LIBOR. As Matt Taibbi explained in his must-read article on the banking scandal (http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/t/0/0/alternet/~www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425), the federal judge bought the banks’ ridiculous blame-the-victim story that if cities and towns and other investors lost money over LIBOR rigging, it was their own fault. Why would they think the banks were competing, rather than, um, “collaborating”? A collaborative cheer sounded in bank boardrooms around the world, because unless the plaintiffs can win on appeal, the ruling significantly reduces what banks would potentially have to pay for wrongdoing.

Some people in the state of Oregon are feeling just a bit riled by this state of affairs.

New research shows that the state of Oregon alone lost at least $110 million as a result of the LIBOR scam. The research on Oregon is based on an analysis of monthly investment data provided by State Street Bank, the custodian bank for the State of Oregon. On Friday, the Oregon Working Families Party joined a coalition of labor and community leaders to call on Governor John Kitzhaber to sue the Wall Street banks responsible for the costly fraud. According to a statement from the WFP, Oregon has not filed a single lawsuit in connected to LIBOR. The governor remains mute on the issue.

“Wall Street just robbed us again. When are our leaders going to stand up for Oregonians to bring some of our money back home?” said Steve Hughes, state director of the Oregon Working Families Party. “This ain’t chump change either—with $110 million Oregon could literally double its contribution to the Oregon Opportunity Grant to help more Oregon students get a college education.”

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/lynn-parramore-your-retirement-for-a-bottle-of-champagne-how-wall-street-fraudsters-ripped-you-off-again.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29

[boutons_deux]

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal EverWhen that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620), to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620)

Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.

"It's a double conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality."
The bad news didn't stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. "Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry," CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.

But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants' incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.

"A farce," was one antitrust lawyer's response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.

"Incredible," says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodit

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425?print=true

the financial sector is more sophisticated, more talented, more secretive, more powerful, and wealthier than any govt, is unstoppable.

[boutons_deux]

and STILL the FUCKING Repugs kill financial regulation:

Elizabeth Warren Slams ‘Dangerous’ Legislation That Would Weaken Wall Street Reform (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/17/2029651/elizabeth-warren-slams-dangerous-legislation-that-would-weaken-wall-street-reform/)

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/elizabeth-warren2.jpg

A week after a bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee overwhelmingly approved (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/09/1988001/congress-moves-to-weaken-dodd-frank-reforms-that-officials-want-strengthened/) a rollback of certain financial reforms contained in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, one of the Senate’s biggest consumer advocates is pushing back.


Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) came out swinging against the repeal of new rules meant to regulate derivatives, the complex financial instruments that were at “the center of the storm” that caused the financial crisis. The rules shouldn’t be weakened or repealed (http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/300267-warren-opposes-derivatives-bills-with-house-traction) just because big banks want to see them eliminated, Warren argued Thursday, The Hill reports:


“The big banks won some battles and lost some battles during the financial regulatory debate in 2009 and 2010, but their tune never changed and their lobbying never let up,” she said. “It is dangerous for Congress to amend the derivatives provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act without at the same time taking accompanying steps to strengthen reform and maintain the law’s equilibrium.”

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/17/2029651/elizabeth-warren-slams-dangerous-legislation-that-would-weaken-wall-street-reform/

[Winehole23]

The package of legislation isn’t expected to move forward in the Senate, according to Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), one of the sponsors.http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/09/1988001/congress-moves-to-weaken-dodd-frank-reforms-that-officials-want-strengthened/

[TeyshaBlue]

lol

[boutons_deux]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/09/1988001/congress-moves-to-weaken-dodd-frank-reforms-that-officials-want-strengthened/

the point: it's the REPUG "House Financial Services Committee overwhelmingly approved (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/09/1988001/congress-moves-to-weaken-dodd-frank-reforms-that-officials-want-strengthened/) a rollback of certain financial reforms".

[Winehole23]

The banks involved — including Bank of America, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase — were cited for deficiencies in governance, risk management and internal controls. They were ordered to correct the problems and post as much as $959 million each in increased statutory reserves at zero interest rates for one year.


Meanwhile, a probe into possible manipulation of the Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate, a LIBOR equivalent, has been expanded. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said Tuesday that HSBC Holdings, Hong Kong's dominant commercial bank, had been added to an investigation that initially focused on UBS. The identities of other banks being investigated in Hong Kong have not been disclosed.

HSBC disclosed a year ago that it was involved in interbank probes in several countries. The bank said Tuesday itould not comment on "specific requests." UBS previously admitted to the manipulation of EURIBOR and TIBOR, interbank rates set in Brussels and Tokyo.

Additionally, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that U.S. and British authorities are preparing to bring criminal charges against former employees of Barclays for their suspected roles in manipulating benchmark interest rates.http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/06/18/libor-ubs-citigroup-tom-hayes/2433551/

[Winehole23]

“We will never know the amounts of money involved, but it has to be the biggest financial fraud of all time,” says Adrian Blundell-Wignall, a special adviser to the secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. “Libor is the basis for calculating practically every derivative known to man.”


More than five years after alarms first sounded, regulators and prosecutors are closing in. UBS was fined a record $1.5 billion by U.S., U.K. and Swiss regulators in December for rigging global interest rates. Tom Hayes, 33, a former yen trader at the Zurich-based bank, was charged by the U.S. Justice Department on Dec. 20 with wire fraud and price fixing for colluding with brokers, contacts at other firms and his colleagues to manipulate Libor. Hayes hadn’t entered a plea as of mid-January, and his lawyers at Fulcrum Chambers in London declined to comment.


Barclays paid a 290 million pound ($464 million) fine in June to settle with regulators, and three top executives, including CEO Robert Diamond, departed. Other banks, including RBS, were negotiating settlements in early 2013, according to people with knowledge of the talks. RBS may pay as much as £500 million to settle allegations that traders tried to rig interest rates, two people with knowledge of the matter say. UBS and Barclays admitted wrongdoing as part of their settlement agreements. Spokesmen for the two banks, and for RBS, declined to comment.


The industry faces regulatory penalties of at least $8.7 billion, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. The European Union is leading a probe that could see banks fined as much as 10 percent of their annual revenue. Meanwhile, Libor is being overhauled after the U.K. government ordered a review in September into the way the benchmark is set.


The scandal demonstrates the failure of London’s two-decade experiment with light-touch supervision, which helped make the British capital the biggest securities-trading hub in the world. In his 10 years as chancellor of the Exchequer, from 1997 to 2007, Gordon Brown championed this approach, hailing a “golden age” for the City of London in a June 2007 speech. Brown, who later served as prime minister for three years, declined to comment.


Regulators have known since at least August 2007 that some banks were using artificially low Libor submissions to appear healthier than they were. That month, a Barclays employee in London e-mailed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, questioning the numbers that other banks were inputting, according to transcripts published by the New York Fed. Nine months later, Tim Bond, then head of asset allocation at Barclays’s investment bank, publicly described Libor as “divorced from reality,” saying in a Bloomberg Television interview that firms were routinely misstating their borrowing costs to avoid the perception they were facing stress.


The New York Fed and the Bank of England say they didn’t act because they had no responsibility for oversight of Libor. That fell to the British Bankers’ Association, the industry lobbying group that created the rate in 1986 and largely ignored recommendations from central bankers after 2008 to change the way it was computed. Regulators also were preoccupied with the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and forcing banks to be honest about their Libor submissions might have revealed they were paying penalty rates to borrow, which in turn would have further damaged public confidence.


Libor is calculated daily through a survey of banks asking how much it costs them to borrow in 10 currencies for periods ranging from overnight to one year. The top and bottom quartiles of quotes are excluded, and those left are averaged and made public before noon in London.


Because it’s based on estimates rather than actual trade data, the process relies on the honesty of participants. Instead of being truthful, derivatives traders sought to influence their own and other firms’ Libor submissions, with their managers sometimes condoning the practice, according to documents and transcripts of instant messages obtained by Bloomberg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-28/libor-lies-revealed-in-rigging-of-300-trillion-benchmark.html

[boutons_deux]

Banks Slapped with $2.3 Billion Fine for Rate Manipulation

Some of the world's biggest banks have been hit with a 1.71 billion euros ($2.3 billion) fine for interest-rate (http://www.dailyfinance.com/category/interest-rates/) rigging by traders, the largest fine ever imposed by the European Commission.

Joaquin Almunia, vice-president of the European Commission and the commissioner responsible for competition, said in a statement: "What is shocking about the Libor (http://www.dailyfinance.com/tag/libor/) and Euribor scandals is not only the manipulation of benchmarks, which is being tackled by financial regulators worldwide, but also the collusion between banks who are supposed to be competing with each other.

"Today's decision sends a clear message that the commission is determined to fight and sanction these cartels in the financial sector. Healthy competition and transparency are crucial for financial markets to work properly, at the service of the real economy (http://www.dailyfinance.com/category/economy/) rather than the interests of a few," he added.

The offenses involved traders conspiring to fix the European interbank offered rate, known as Euribor, and its Japanese equivalent, the Yen London interbank offered rate -- Yen Libor, for profit.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/12/04/banks-fine-interest-rate-manipulation/

$2.3B, a hand slap,nobody goes to jail, world-wide corrupt financial sector continues as before.

[boutons_deux]

so what about the muni bonds sold at rates increased by LIBOR fraud? will financial sector compensate the taxpayers?

REDISTRIBUTION through FRAUD!

[EVAY]

It certainly does seem to give 'unregulated free markets are best' a big fat black eye.

I don't see any way to spin this other than pure unadulterated greed. What level of regulation would it take to make sure it doesn't happen again? This was HUGE during the early days of the financial crisis.

[boutons_deux]

Another Batch of Wall Street Villains Freed on Technicality

Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm were mid-level players who worked for GE Capital. They were involved in a wide-ranging scheme (one that also involved most of America's biggest banks, from Chase to BOA to Wachovia) to skim billions of dollars from America's cities and towns by rigging the auctions banks set up to help towns earn the highest returns on the management of municipal bond issues.

The case was over 10 years in the making and involved offenses that took place long before the 2008 crash. All three defendants were convicted in May 2012, with Goldberg ultimately getting four years and the other two getting three.

Now, they're all free. A New York federal judge last week ordered their convictions overturned in a quiet Thanksgiving-week transaction.

The GE Muni-riggers will now join such luminaries as the Gen Re defendants (executives from an insurance company who were convicted in 2008 of helping AIG conduct a fraudulent accounting transaction) and the KPMG defendants (executives of the U.S. arm of the Dutch accounting giant who were convicted in the 2000s of selling illegal tax shelters) in the ranks of Wall Street line-crossers who improbably made it all the way to guilty verdicts in criminal cases, only to be freed on technicalities later on.

As one antitrust lawyer I know put it: "Apparently, the government can't seem to get criminal trials involving financial executives (as opposed to, well, drug dealers) right. Go figure."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/another-batch-of-wall-street-villains-freed-on-technicality-20131204#ixzz2mcjXgE8p

Another way the financial sector STEALS from taxpayers (who pay taxes to pay for the muni bonds + interest)

[RandomGuy]

This is the kind of real conspiracy shit that you don't see on infowars, and is far more troubling for its realness.

[RandomGuy]

It certainly does seem to give 'unregulated free markets are best' a big fat black eye.

I don't see any way to spin this other than pure unadulterated greed. What level of regulation would it take to make sure it doesn't happen again? This was HUGE during the early days of the financial crisis.

Honestly, given the amount of money involved and the importance of this benchmark, I would be all for assigning full-time regulators to literally stand around doing nothing but watching these fuckers work, reading every stinking email, and listening to every single phone conversation.

Anyone caught manipulating it, gets the needle/firing squad, and I am not kidding about that.

[boutons_deux]

"reading every stinking email, and listening to every single phone conversation."

a job for the NSA!

[EVAY]

Honestly, given the amount of money involved and the importance of this benchmark, I would be all for assigning full-time regulators to literally stand around doing nothing but watching these fuckers work, reading every stinking email, and listening to every single phone conversation.

Anyone caught manipulating it, gets the needle/firing squad, and I am not kidding about that.

Works for me. I think it's about the only way anyone could ever have any more confidence in any of them.

I mean, let's face it, the entire world-wide monetary system is essentially a socially-constructed reality in that things are worth what we say they are worth because we all agree to the basics of the system. Much more of the kind of crap this has been and who the hell will agree with anything?

[Winehole23]

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sued 16 of the world's largest banks on Friday, accusing them of collusively suppressing interest rates.

The lawsuit, filed in the federal district court in New York, was the latest to accuse financial institutions of conspiring to manipulate Libor, or the London Interbank Offered Rate.


The FDIC said the defendants' conduct caused substantial losses to 38 banks that the U.S. regulator had taken into receivership since 2008, including Washington Mutual Bank and IndyMac Bank.


Among the banks named as defendants include Bank of America Corp, Barclays PLC, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and UBS AG.
The lawsuit also named as a defendant the British Banks' Association, the U.K. trade organization which during the period at issue administered Libor.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/fdic-libor-idUSL2N0MB18R20140314

[boutons_deux]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/fdic-libor-idUSL2N0MB18R20140314

years, decades later, maybe a relatively tiny handslap fine for crimes that cost, and still cost, municipalities (taxpaers), $100Bs in elevated bond rates.

[Winehole23]

the black eye will last

[boutons_deux]

the black eye will last

who really cares? Americans still bank, and always will bank with the criminal TBTF banks, including some who got screwed by predatory lending by those banks.

these financial crimes are too complex, too obscure, any connections to citizens way too long, and above all way too removed from people's lives. The criminal banks are laughing their asses off as they outfox the govt and fleece everybody out of $Ts. They are unstoppable.

[Winehole23]

Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars for a swindle pulled off by the world’s biggest banks, using a form of derivative called interest-rate swaps; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has now joined a chorus of litigants suing over it.

According to an SEIU report (http://www.seiu.org/images/pdfs/Interest%20Rate%20Swap%20Report%2003%2022%202010.p df):

Derivatives . . . have turned into a windfall for banks and a nightmare for taxpayers. . . . While banks are still collecting fixed rates of 3 to 6 percent, they are now regularly paying public entities as little as a tenth of one percent on the outstanding bonds, with rates expected to remain low in the future. Over the life of the deals, banks are now projected to collect billions more than they pay state and local governments – an outcome which amounts to a second bailout for banks, this one paid directly out of state and local budgets.



It is not just that local governments, universities and pension funds made a bad bet on these swaps. The game itself was rigged, as explained below. The FDIC is now suing in civil court for damages and punitive damages, a lead that other injured local governments and agencies would be well-advised to follow. But they need to hurry, because time on the statute of limitations is running out.
On March 14, 2014, the FDIC filed suit for LIBOR-rigging against sixteen of the world’s largest banks – including the three largest USbanks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup), the three largest UKbanks, the largest German bank, the largest Japanese bank, and several of the largest Swiss banks. Bill Black, professor of law and economics and a former bank fraud investigator, calls them “the largest cartel in world history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn5JclFHglc#t=196), by at least three and probably four orders of magnitude.”

LIBOR (the London Interbank Offering Rate) is the benchmark rate by which banks themselves can borrow. It is a crucial rate involved in hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivative trades, and it is set by these sixteen megabanks privately and in secret.
Interest rate swaps are now a $426 trillion business (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-27/interest-rate-swaps-trading-comes-out-of-the-shadows). That’s trillion with a “t” – about seven times the gross domestic product of all the countries in the world combined. According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in 2012 US banks held $183.7 trillion in interest-rate contracts, with only four firms representing 93% of total derivative holdings; and three of the four were JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America, the US banks being sued by the FDIC over manipulation of LIBOR.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-global-banking-game-is-rigged-and-the-fdic-is-suing/5377703

[boutons_deux]

“the largest cartel in world history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn5JclFHglc#t=196), by at least three and probably four orders of magnitude.”

set by these sixteen megabanks privately and in secret.

"Who Do You Begrudge Them Wealthy For Their Wealth?" -- WC

"Behind Every Great Fortune Is A Great Crime" -- Honore de Balzac

[Winehole23]

SEC waives automatic penalties for criminal conduct, commissioner issues scathing dissent:


Securities and Exchange Commissioner Kara Stein on Monday denounced the regulator's decision (http://www.sec.gov/News/PublicStmt/Detail/PublicStmt/1370541670244#.U17JUPldXAs) to continue providing special benefits to a big bank after its conviction for manipulating interest rates.

The SEC spared Royal Bank of Scotland Group from losing its regulatory status as a well-known seasoned issuer on Friday. The bank was criminally convicted earlier this year for manipulating the Libor benchmark interest rate. The bank's crimes, Stein said Monday in a dissent to the SEC decision, harmed individuals, businesses and governments worldwide.


The SEC issued a waiver to another well-known seasoned issuer after criminal misconduct last fall. Stein said the regulator was wrong then, and "compounded that error when it granted a waiver for another criminal wrongdoer" -- Royal Bank of Scotland Group.


"The arguments in both instances implicate a structural problem with our policy, whether dealing with criminal or civil misconduct," wrote Stein, who was appointed to the SEC by President Barack Obama. "They rest largely upon the notion that the triggering conduct is insignificant when considered in the context of a large financial institution with global operations."


Stein faulted the commission for repeatedly waiving disqualification provisions set out by Congress and the SEC at the risk of harming investors and markets. The SEC reserves the well-known seasoned issuer tag (http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/28/sec-rbs-stein-idUKL2N0NK1PI20140428) for companies that raise large amounts of capital and are widely followed in the market, according to Reuters. Benefits include allowing companies to raise money immediately from securities offerings without waiting for SEC review of documents.
"We need to step back and think broadly about what these provisions are intended to accomplish, and ask ourselves -- are we achieving the intended goals? Are they being fairly applied to all firms and individuals? Large institutions should be treated no differently, neither better nor worse, than small and medium-sized issuers," she wrote.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/28/kara-stein-elizabeth-warren_n_5229555.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

[boutons_deux]

SEC waives automatic penalties for criminal conduct, commissioner issues scathing dissent:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/28/kara-stein-elizabeth-warren_n_5229555.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

:lol the financial sector (which of course includes govt financial regulatory agencies), all countries, is 100% corrupt, rotten, putrid, septic from top to bottom, and laughing its ass off at how it fleeces the planet with impunity.

Anybody in Congress going to be outraged to any effect? fuck no. financial sector OWNS Congress.

[Winehole23]

The Justice Department is preparing a fresh round of attacks on the world’s biggest banks, again questioning Wall Street’s role in a broad array of financial markets.


With evidence mounting that a number of foreign and American banks colluded to alter the price of foreign currencies, the largest and least regulated financial market, prosecutors are aiming to file charges against at least one bank by the end of the year, according to interviews with lawyers briefed on the matter. Ultimately, several banks are expected to plead guilty.


Interviews with more than a dozen lawyers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations open a window onto previously undisclosed aspects of an investigation that is unnerving Wall Street and the defense bar. While cases stemming from the financial crisis were aimed at institutions, prosecutors are planning to eventually indict individual bank employees over currency manipulation, using their instant messages as incriminating evidence.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/big-banks-face-another-round-of-u-s-charges/

[boutons_deux]

one banker in UK was convicted for LIBOR, others to come. of course, top bankers claim ignorance

[Winehole23]

many banks will plead guilty. the black eye remains and enforcement is ongoing. bankers may actually go to jail.

[boutons_deux]

many banks will plead guilty. the black eye remains and enforcement is ongoing. bankers may actually go to jail.

Geithner supposedly knew about LIBOR fixing, did nothing.

[Winehole23]

how unsurprising

[Winehole23]

This is the kind of real conspiracy shit that you don't see on infowars, and is far more troubling for its realness.It doesn't seem to bother SpursTalkers much, but yeah.

[boutons_deux]

It doesn't seem to bother SpursTalkers much, but yeah.

or Fox News, or Repugs, or even Dems(except for the tiny few Warrens, Sanders, Merkleys, etc). The financial sector OWNS the planet, starting the US govt at all levels.

[RandomGuy]

many banks will plead guilty. the black eye remains and enforcement is ongoing. bankers may actually go to jail.

One can only hope.

[Winehole23]

SEC waives automatic penalties for criminal conduct, commissioner issues scathing dissent:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/28/kara-stein-elizabeth-warren_n_5229555.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/28/kara-stein-elizabeth-warren_n_5229555.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013)D avid Dayen follows up on SEC waivers:


Kara Stein, a Democratic Commissioner who previously served as a Banking Committee aide to Sen. Jack Reed, has openly rebelled against the waiver policy since arriving at the SEC in August 2013, voting against waivers on five occasions. This April, she went public with a blistering dissent (http://www.sec.gov/News/PublicStmt/Detail/PublicStmt/1370541670244#_ftn1) against a waiver for Royal Bank of Scotland, after the criminal conviction of their subsidiary (http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/28201326133127414481.pdf) over rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). Thanks to the waiver, Royal Bank of Scotland could continue to offer securities to investors as a “well-known seasoned issuer,” without SEC approval of each offering. This was the 30th such waiver since 2010, 29 of which went to large institutions and broker-dealers. “I fear that the commission’s action to waive our own automatic disqualification provisions arising from RBS’s criminal misconduct may have enshrined a new policy,” Stein said, “that some firms are just too big to bar.”


Stein, a pro-reform regulator (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-21/ghosts-of-2008-haunt-sec-s-outsider-pushing-tough-rules.html) whose insistence on loophole closures significantly improved the final Volcker rule, has persuaded Luis Aguilar, her Democratic colleague, to agree with her stance that automatic penalties from civil or criminal misconduct should not be waived. “The commission and its staff should not be in the business of rubber-stamping and approving all waiver applications simply because a request is made,” Aguilar has said.


The two were able to change SEC policies on waivers, forcing signoff by the commissioners rather than at the staff level. But because SEC chairwoman Mary Jo White typically voted with the commission’s two Republicans, the waivers continued to go through.


In the Bank of America case, however, White had to recuse herself from the decision. As a private attorney, White represented Ken Lewis, who was CEO of Bank of America at the time that they fraudulently sold mortgage-backed securities to investors without disclosing the poor quality of the underlying loans. So without her vote, the commission is deadlocked (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-27/bofa-mortgage-settlement-stalls-over-sec-political-fight.html) at 2-2, threatening Bank of America’s ability to secure the waivers.
The penalties kick in as soon as a judge approves the settlement, so Bank of America has sought to delay approval, pending the status of the waivers. As long as Stein and Aguilar hold firm, the sanctions will trigger, or the entire SEC settlement will disintegrate, creating more legal exposure for Bank of Americahttp://www.salon.com/2014/10/28/big_banks_stunning_setback_meet_two_officials_sayi ng_no_to_bank_of_america/

[Winehole23]

SEC reopening cases against banks that violated their settlements:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/prosecutors-wrestling-with-wall-streets-repeat-offenders/?_php=true&_type=blogs&smid=fb-share&_r=0

[boutons_deux]

I'd love to see Liz Warren as Hillary's head of the SEC or running Treasury :lol

[boutons_deux]

SEC reopening cases against banks that violated their settlements:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/prosecutors-wrestling-with-wall-streets-repeat-offenders/?_php=true&_type=blogs&smid=fb-share&_r=0

nothing but false hopes, smokescreen.

and the SEC, Treasury can't touch the unregulated private banking INDUSTRY.

and payday predator lenders are STILL untouched

[boutons_deux]

There so much financial shit, fraud, predation, stealing

Student Loan Servicers Tricked Borrowers Into Paying More, Made Illegal Collection Calls

http://consumerist.com/2014/10/29/student-loan-servicers-tricked-borrowers-into-paying-more-made-illegal-collection-calls/

[boutons_deux]

and then there's these ripoff artists

Obama Administration Rules Target For-Profit Colleges

The Obama administration on Thursday will publish new regulations intended to target for-profit career colleges that leave students with debts they cannot repay.

The U.S. Department of Education rules will sanction schools with students who carry too much debt compared with their earnings after graduation. Programs that fail to meet debt-to-income requirements for two out of three consecutive years would lose eligibility for federal student loans and grants — the primary revenue stream at for-profit colleges.

The for-profit college industry includes schools such as the University of Phoenix, ITT Technical Institute and Everest College, owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc., based in Orange County, Calif. Corinthian has been in the crosshairs of more than a dozen state and federal regulators for more than a year amid allegations that the company falsified student job placement rates and steered students into high-interest loans.

The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company announced in July that it would sell the vast majority of its campuses, after the Department of Education restricted access to federal student loans and grants.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the new regulations are intended to weed out programs that rely heavily on taxpayer subsidies but don’t follow through on promises of career training.

“The quality of these programs today varies tremendously,” Duncan said in a briefing with reporters Wednesday. “While some are strong, today too many of these programs fail to provide the training (students) need, while burying them in debt they cannot repay.”

http://www.nationalmemo.com/obama-administration-rules-target-profit-colleges/

[boutons_deux]

Does any serious person question why Repugs/VRWC/conservatives HATE ALL regulations?

[boutons_deux]

and then there's these ripoff artists

Obama Administration Rules Target For-Profit Colleges

The Obama administration on Thursday will publish new regulations intended to target for-profit career colleges that leave students with debts they cannot repay.

The U.S. Department of Education rules will sanction schools with students who carry too much debt compared with their earnings after graduation. Programs that fail to meet debt-to-income requirements for two out of three consecutive years would lose eligibility for federal student loans and grants — the primary revenue stream at for-profit colleges.

The for-profit college industry includes schools such as the University of Phoenix, ITT Technical Institute and Everest College, owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc., based in Orange County, Calif. Corinthian has been in the crosshairs of more than a dozen state and federal regulators for more than a year amid allegations that the company falsified student job placement rates and steered students into high-interest loans.

The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company announced in July that it would sell the vast majority of its campuses, after the Department of Education restricted access to federal student loans and grants.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the new regulations are intended to weed out programs that rely heavily on taxpayer subsidies but don’t follow through on promises of career training.

“The quality of these programs today varies tremendously,” Duncan said in a briefing with reporters Wednesday. “While some are strong, today too many of these programs fail to provide the training (students) need, while burying them in debt they cannot repay.”

http://www.nationalmemo.com/obama-administration-rules-target-profit-colleges/



and it was Repugs who blocked Warren's bill to allow students-indebted-past-death to re-finance their $1T+ of college debt.

[Winehole23]

topicality's not really your thing, is it?

[boutons_deux]

file under "100% corrupt, predatory (international, globalized, deregulated, unpoliced) financial sector".

[Winehole23]

$4B in fines, no prosecutions for six banks caught with their hands in the cookie jar:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/aa812316-69be-11e4-9f65-00144

[Winehole23]

five big banks get $5B in fines and plead guilty to crimes:


Adding another entry to Wall Street’s growing rap sheet, five big banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion and plead guilty to multiple crimes related to manipulating foreign currencies and interest rates, federal and state authorities announced on Wednesday.


The Justice Department forced four of the banks — Citigroup (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/citigroup_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org), JPMorgan Chase (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/morgan_j_p_chase_and_company/index.html?inline=nyt-org), Barclays (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/barclays_plc/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and the Royal Bank of Scotland (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/royal-bank-of-scotland-group-plc/index.html?inline=nyt-org) — to plead guilty to antitrust violations in the foreign exchange market as part of a scheme that padded the banks’ profits and enriched the traders who carried out the plot. The traders were supposed to be competitors, but much like companies that rigged the price of vitamins and automotive parts, they colluded to manipulate the largest and yet least regulated market in the financial world, where some $5 trillion changes hands every day, prosecutors said.


Underscoring the collusive nature of their contact, which often occurred in online chat rooms, one group of traders called themselves “the cartel,” an invitation-only club where stakes were so high that a newcomer was warned, “Mess this up and sleep with one eye open.” To carry out the scheme, one trader would typically build a huge position in a currency and then unload it at a crucial moment, hoping to move prices. Traders at the other banks agreed to, as New York State’s financial regulator put it, “stay out of each other’s way.”http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/business/dealbook/5-big-banks-to-pay-billions-and-plead-guilty-in-currency-and-interest-rate-cases.html?_r=0

[Winehole23]

Federal prosecutors had previously agreed not to prosecute the Swiss bank over the Libor scheme. But in a rare stand against corporate recidivism, the Justice Department voided that non-prosecution agreement after UBS was accused of taking part in the effort to manipulate currency prices.

[Winehole23]

Mr. Lawsky has said that he is examining whether Barclays and other banks used electronic foreign exchange trading platforms to cheat their clients. The settlement announced on Wednesday did not release the bank from any future penalties.

[boutons_deux]

my assumption is that the entire financial industry is a corrupt cesspool, and many within it agree

Pressure To Act Unethically Looms Over Wall Street, Survey Finds

A new survey of financial professionals tends to confirm the widely held belief that the financial industry has an ethics problem.

Among the more than 1,200 financial professionals in the U.S. and Britain who were surveyed, about half the respondents believe their competitors in the industry have behaved unethically or illegally to gain an advantage in the market.

Ann Tenbrunsel, one of the authors of the study (http://www.labaton.com/en/about/press/Historic-Survey-of-Financial-Services-Professionals-Reveals-Widespread-Disregard-for-Ethics-Alarming-Use-of-Secrecy-Policies-to-Silence-Employees.cfm), says that perception, even if it's just a suspicion, does not bode well for the industry.

"Our behavior is influenced by the norms that we believe exist in the industry, the norms that we believe exist in the organization," she says. "If there's an increased salience of the fact that everybody else is doing this, we also know from psychological research on peer pressure that I will be more likely to do it myself."

Tenbrunsel, of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, partnered with the law firm Labaton Sucharow to do the study. The firm, which often represents whistleblowers in cases involving financial industry wronging, did a previous study in 2012.

http://www.npr.org/2015/05/19/408010692/pressure-to-act-unethically-looms-over-wall-street-survey-finds

And Repugs/VRWC want to hand $Ts in Soc Sec funds to these thieving scumbags.

Lloyd Blankfein claims Goldman Sacks is doing God's work :lol

[boutons_deux]

http://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/monopoly_pimpin.jpg

[Winehole23]

$5B in fines and guilty pleas for crimes isn't a blowjob

[boutons_deux]

$5B in fines and guilty pleas for crimes isn't a blowjob

how many go to jail? anybody lose salary? bonuses?

$5B is tax-deductible? maybe not since they pled guilty.

in any case, a hand slap compared to the banks recurrent annual profits.

the corruption, crimes will continue, without question, as SEC and Treasury are understaffed, compromised, and unwilling to police.

[boutons_deux]

Bernie Sanders Drops A Truth Bomb On Wall St: Criminal Fraud Is Big Banks’ Business Model

Despite weak financial regulatory systems around the world, it seems that every week we hear about another multi-billion scandal involving a major financial institution.

Today, we learn that JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and other huge banks were fined $5.6 billion for rigging interest rates and manipulating currency exchanges.

Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Since 2009, huge financial institutions have paid $176 billion in fines and settlement payments for fraudulent and unscrupulous activities.

The reality is that seven years after too-big-to-fail banks crashed the economy, fraud still appears to be the business model on Wall Street.Today, the six largest financial institutions have nearly $10 trillion in assets, equal to nearly 60 percent of our gross domestic product.

They control more than two-thirds of the credit card market and one-third of the mortgages.

These huge institutions are not only involved in fraudulent activities, they have grown even larger and more powerful since the Wall Street crash of 2008.

They are not only an ongoing threat to taxpayers, but a burden on our entire economy.



In my view, the only effective way of dealing with these enormous financial institutions is to break them up. Today’s news is just another example of why these too- big-to-fail banks are too big to exist.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/05/20/bernie-sanders-drops-truth-bomb-wall-st-criminal-fraud-big-banks-business-model.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29 (http://www.politicususa.com/2015/05/20/bernie-sanders-drops-truth-bomb-wall-st-criminal-fraud-big-banks-business-model.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29)

[Winehole23]

the corruption, crimes will continue, without question, as SEC and Treasury are understaffed, compromised, and unwilling to police.the DOJ, apparently not so.

[boutons_deux]

the DOJ, apparently not so.

Lynch already handed out gentle hand slaps to the financial sector before she was AG.

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/10/loretta_lynchs_wall_street_friends_what_you_should _know_about_ag_nominees_finance_past/

[boutons_deux]

yawn

Guilty Pleas and Heavy Fines Seem to Be Cost of Business for Wall St.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/business/dealbook/guilty-pleas-and-heavy-fines-seem-to-be-cost-of-business-for-wall-st.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0


For the municipal bonds rate rigging crime, have any raped municipalities' taxpayers been compensated, bond terms renegotiated?

or do the $Bs in rigged-rate bonds keep flowing to the financial sector for decades?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2014/03/13/muni-bond-rate-rigging-kingpin-david-rubin-gets-probation/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/business/muni-rates-examined-for-signs-of-rigging.html?_r=0

http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/division-update/2014/muni-bonds.html

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1LENP_enUS567US570&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=municipal%20bond%20rate%20rigging&es_th=1

and then there's the financial sector giving "payday loans" on states' tobacco settlement "pay checks", with "payday loan" interest terms, rates.

[boutons_deux]

Waivers may defang the DOJ’s work to hold banks accountable to the law, but at least the fines themselves still give these deals some teeth, right?

Wrong.

The fines will get paid by shareholders (http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-jpmorgan-20131019-story.html), not by individual executives or traders who benefited personally and professionally from the crimes their firms are admitting to.

Regardless of how the tax implications shake out, the banks are already coming out ahead judging by the stock market’s response to the fine announcements Wednesday.

Barclay’s stock price rose so significantly over the course of trading Wednesday that the bank “is worth £1.5bn more than this time yesterday, or almost exactly its total fines (http://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2015/may/20/greece-june-repayment-ecb-support-live-updates),” the Guardian notes.

RBS came out even better, gaining £715 million in value over the day.

That’s $1.12 billion at current exchange rates, or nearly double the $669 million in combined DOJ and Federal Reserve fines the bank was just levied over its role in manipulating those very same rates.

waivers that ensure the crimes don’t actually mess with the felons’ business activity appears to be common practice.

Banks are batting 1.000 on waiver requests (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-19/-thankyou-mail-shows-guilty-bank-s-behind-scenes-efforts) in recent years according to Bloomberg, despite settling or pleading out numerous cases where investigators had turned up overwhelming evidence of conspiracies to rig markets and harm consumers.

. It is unclear if the smaller corresponding fines from the Federal Reserve can be deducted, ascivil penalties have a murkier tax status (http://www.wisbar.org/newspublications/wisconsinlawyer/pages/article.aspx?Volume=76&Issue=3&ArticleID=594) than the criminal penalties tied to the guilty pleas.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/05/21/3661581/foreign-exchange-rigging-cartel-fines-paper-tiger/

Whine Hole, naive as ever, trying to contradict my 100% accurate cynicism. America is fucked and unfuckable. BigFinance is fucking the planet and untouchable.

[m>s]

^nobody reads your posts you crazy leftist loon just so you know

[boutons_deux]

http://www.truthdig.com/images/made/images/cartoonuploads/D1E7AAE7-CE8B-4653-96EA-3890E0132EC3_590_419.jpg

[boutons_deux]

http://www.truthdig.com/images/made/images/cartoonuploads/Screen_Shot_2015-05-21_at_110629_AM_590_432.jpg

[RandomGuy]

Federal prosecutors had previously agreed not to prosecute the Swiss bank over the Libor scheme. But in a rare stand against corporate recidivism, the Justice Department voided that non-prosecution agreement after UBS was accused of taking part in the effort to manipulate currency prices.

Kinda shocked at that part.


e crimes described on Wednesday also painted the portrait of something more systemic: a Wall Street culture that enabled many big banks to break the law even after years of regulatory black marks after the crisis.

“If you aint cheating, you aint trying,” one trader at Barclays wrote in an online chat room where prosecutors say the price-fixing scheme was hatched.

[RandomGuy]

^nobody reads your posts you crazy leftist loon just so you know

You ok with large banks defrauding people to the tune of billions?

Not sure that is "lefty" stuff or "righty" stuff.

Stinky maybe, but this is the kind of shit that should be enough to piss anybody off.

[m>s]

^ I don't even know what he said I have his shit blocked. He's a sad little fucker and an enemy to my race.

[boutons_deux]

more proof that the police surveillance state and BigFinance are beyond the reach of the law

Wall Street Flouts Fed Standards to Fund High-Risk Loans

Regulators’ efforts to rein in Wall Street’s biggest banks are in danger of backfiring.

Guidelines aimed at strengthening lending standards are shifting the market for high-yield credit to less-supervised loan funds, raisingalarm (http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/fsoc/studies-reports/Documents/2015%20FSOC%20Annual%20Report.pdf) this week from the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Because the funds don’t have depositors, some of their money comes from Wall Street banks, leaving systemically important institutions exposed to risks regulators hoped to avoid.

Loans by nonbanks such as KKR & Co. and Apollo Global Management LLC affiliates are a small part of the market, but they’re growing. Direct-lending funds, which raise money from institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies, surged to a global record last year of $29.9 billion, according to financial data firm Preqin. Loans by U.S. business development companies, or BDCs, many of which have credit lines with banks, jumped to $55 billion last year from $17 billion in 2010

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-22/wall-street-flouts-fed-standards-to-fund-high-risk-loans

Can't afford a car loan, you're too big a risk?

no worry, we'll make it a 7-year loan, lower payments, and of course HIGHER interest revenue to capitalists.

[Winehole23]

nonbank banking, hmm

[boutons_deux]

nonbank banking, hmm

... was huge factor in the housing bubble, including regulated banks forming non-regulated subsidiaries to get in on the predatory scamming, writing toxic mortgages.

[boutons_deux]

Here's yet another HUGE difference between Dems and Repugs

Dodd-Frank Rollback Bill Advances in Senatehttp://www.thinkadvisor.com/2015/05/21/dodd-frank-rollback-bill-advances-in-senate

Even the already-Repug-gutted, puny restrictions in the Dodd-Frank are targeted for destruction.

[boutons_deux]

Not that it will make the slightest difference

SEC Commissioner Kara Stein Issues Blistering Dissent on Waivers for Bank Recidivists (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/sec-commissioner-kara-stein-issues-blistering-dissent-on-waivers-for-bank-recidivists.html)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/sec-commissioner-kara-stein-issues-blistering-dissent-on-waivers-for-bank-recidivists.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29

We'll see if she walks the talk.

[boutons_deux]

In Britain, Libor-Rigging Conspiracy Case Is Also a Test for Regulators (In total, banks have paid more than $160 billion since 2009 to settle charges related to issues such as rigging interest rate benchmarks, manipulating currencies, mis-selling insurance, packaging toxic mortgages and evading taxes, among others.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/business/dealbook/in-britain-libor-rigging-conspiracy-case-is-also-a-test-for-regulators.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

And the corruption, crimes very probably continues today, or will be repeated in the not-distant future.

[boutons_deux]

Bill Black (destroys):

LIBOR – History’s Largest Financial Crime that the WSJ and NYT Would Like You to Forget (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/bill-black-libor-historys-largest-financial-crime-that-the-wsj-and-nyt-would-like-you-to-forget.html)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/bill-black-libor-historys-largest-financial-crime-that-the-wsj-and-nyt-would-like-you-to-forget.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29

[Winehole23]

antitrust lawsuits revived:


A U.S. appeals court on Monday revived private antitrust litigation accusing major banks of conspiring to manipulate the Libor benchmark interest rate, in a big setback for their defense against investors' claims of market-rigging.


The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reversed a lower court judge's dismissal of investors' antitrust claims against 16 banks, including Deutsche Bank AG, UBS AG , Bank of America Corp and JPMorgan Chase & Co because she found no showing of anticompetitive harm.


"Appellants sustained their burden of showing injury by alleging that they paid artificially fixed higher prices," Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote for a three-judge appeals court panel.

http://www.reuters.com/article/libor-banks-decision-idUSL2N18K0ZE

[Winehole23]

the store never closes:


Societe Generale will pay a total of $750 million to settle charges by the CFTC and the U.S. Justice Department that the bank manipulated the London interbank offered rate, both federal agencies announced Monday.The settlements were announced along with an additional combined $585 million penalty against Societe Generale by the Justice Department and Parquet National Financier, the French federal regulator, relating to a multiyear scheme to pay bribes to officials in Libya. The bank will pay $292.5 million each to U.S. and French authorities to settle the bribery charges.
http://www.pionline.com/article/20180604/ONLINE/180609967/societe-generale-to-pay-750-million-to-settle-libor-manipulation-charges

[Winehole23]

Gotta be a coincidence, Trump waives penalties for Deutche Bank:

https://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/trump-administration-waives-punishment-convicted-banks-including-deutsche-which

[boutons_deux]

Gotta be a coincidence, Trump waives penalties for Deutche Bank:

https://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/trump-administration-waives-punishment-convicted-banks-including-deutsche-which

so fucking blatant, quid pro quo, "you lend me $100Ms, I cancel your fines for criminality"

[Winehole23]

Trump is admired and envied for his grifting.

[boutons_deux]

Despite red flags and knowing he lied about his net worth, Deutsche Bank kept giving Trump loans (https://theweek.com/speedreads/829982/report-despite-red-flags-knowing-lied-about-net-worth-deutsche-bank-kept-giving-trump-loans)

despite Deutsche Bank saying Trump was not a top priority, it's just not true.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Deutsche Bank gave Trump loans despite his business bankruptcies and knowing he overinflated his net worth and the worth of his real estate assets. At the time,

the German bank wanted to make a name for itself on Wall Street,

so it worked with clients deemed risky by other entities

In 2010, the bank concluded that he was inflating some of his assets by up to 70 percent,

yet still gave him a $100 million loan to buy the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami.

Rosemary Vrablic — who'd helped get Trump more than $300 million in loans — tried to get Trump a loan in early 2016 for his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland,

After Trump's election, Deutsche Bank commissioned reports to figure out how the bank became so entwined with him, and

employees were told they couldn't even say "Trump" in public,

Trump is believed to have received more than $2 billion from the investment banking and private banking arms.

https://theweek.com/speedreads/829982/report-despite-red-flags-knowing-lied-about-net-worth-deutsche-bank-kept-giving-trump-loans (https://theweek.com/speedreads/829982/report-despite-red-flags-knowing-lied-about-net-worth-deutsche-bank-kept-giving-trump-loans)

Let's see:

DB convicted of (Russian?) money laundering,

DB lends Trash $Bs (from Russians?),

Russia gets Trash elected,

so-called Pres Trash essentially forgives DB's criminal fines.

[Winehole23]

bit of a placeholder, $7M per basis point

How Much Did Libor-Rigging Cost? U.S. FDIC Finally Has an Answer (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/how-much-did-libor-rigging-cost-u-s-fdic-finally-has-an-answer)