Webster G. Tarpley: Criminal Banking Cartel Dominates US, British Governments!

• Criminal banking cartel dominates US, British governments! 
  by Webster G. Tarpley, http://www.presstv.ir/ 
  A series of enormous financial scandals over the past few months provides new proof of the existence of an international banking cartel in the form of an ongoing criminal enterprise devoted to market manipulation, money laundering and embezzlement, and enjoying the collusion of the US and British governments at the highest level. The LIBOR scandal may well represent the biggest corruption case in the history of the world.  Every morning at 11 a.m. UK time, 16 leading banks operating in the City of London report, under the auspices of the British Bankers’ Association, the rate of interest that they would expect to pay to borrow money from another bank.  Of these 16 numbers, the four highest and the four lowest are removed from consideration, and the remaining eight are averaged together. 
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  The result is LIBOR, meaning the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate, which is published by Thomson Reuters at 11:30 a.m. London time, and which represents the main point of reference for short-term interest rates around the world.  The interest rates paid on almost $1 quadrillion ($1,000 trillion) of Eurodollar contracts, interest rate swaps, and various other derivatives are based directly on LIBOR.  This entire process is almost completely unregulated by government agencies, relying instead on the word of honor of bankers who have repeatedly shown that they are predators and liars.
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  The banks taking part in the LIBOR fixing include Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Lloyds Bank TSB (which absorbed HBOS in January 2009), Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, UBS, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Westdeutsche Landesbank, Société Générale of France, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UJF, Norinchukin of Japan, Royal Bank of Canada, and Rabobank of the Netherlands.  The list of LIBOR participants is actually a membership list of the world’s “too big to fail”  banking cartel of the most powerful – and the most insolvent – financial faction on the planet.
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  As early as 2007, Deputy Governor Paul Tucker of the Bank Of England was aware that some banks were reporting that they could borrow money at interest rates which were much lower than what they were really forced to pay.  These banks were trying to conceal how close to bankruptcy they actually were, in the hopes of avoiding panic withdrawals by depositors.  Sometimes, banks attempted to drive LIBOR up because of certain speculative positions they had taken. International financial authorities like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements attempted to cover up the scandal, but it finally exploded into public view in March 2012.
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  Evidence in the form of e-mails showing a conspiracy to manipulate LIBOR emerged first in regard to Barclays Bank, which was fined $200 million by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, $160 million by the US Department of Justice, and 60,000,000 Pounds by the British Financial Services Authority.  Barclays Chairman Marcus Agius was forced to quit, as was Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond.  But there were no criminal charges. 
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  Timothy Geithner, who is currently Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, was in 2008 the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the flagship of the US Federal Reserve System.  Geithner’s testimony at congressional hearings showed that he had done nothing to stop the criminal abuse of LIBOR, but he attempted to escape responsibility by saying it was up to the British to take the lead.  Most importantly, no US or British official did anything to warn the public about the biggest financial fraud of all time.  The central banks and government agencies, which are supposed to act as regulators, have all been captured and put into the service of the banks they are supposed to be overseeing.
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  It is impossible to imagine that Barclays Bank acted alone. Because of the way the LIBOR process is structured, a single bank cannot hope to manipulate the rate.  Therefore, there had to be a conspiracy embracing most or all of the 16 LIBOR banks.
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