Geithner drawn into Libor scandal

[DeSwiss]

29. I wasn't aware I was making anything sound like anything other than the facts.

As you said, he was not the LIBOR Police. And as the head of the NY Fed, he discovers that Barlclays is not giving accurate information, thus rigging the LIBOR rate in favor of their clients. This is a crime. And he knew in that first moment when he discovered what was up, that the banks under his jurisdiction had been ripped off.

But instead of reporting this all to the ''proper'' authorities for criminal investigation (SEC, FBI, etc. -take your pick), he recommends ''remedies'' to ameliorate it. To smooth things over. Write things off as a ''financial anomaly.'' Or one of those freak one-in-a-million ''market corrections.'' Just the kind of wounded prey sound and bleating BS lawyers like to hear; which is exactly why a number of states Attorneys-General, as well as many large banks are lining-up their lawyers as we speak. This is the biggest swindle of all time. That we know of. But then it's always been rigged from the get-go. And the whole thing is coming apart and no amount of wishing it away is going to make it otherwise.

Timmeh knew that shenanigans were going on at Barclays, but he didn't tell anyone except the people in the exclusive TBTF Club. The result was The Great Recession (it followed immediately afterwards). So when TBTF banks can't pay their debts, we the Taxpayers pick up their bad paper. Much of which is inflated crappola.

- So we put in on the card and kick the can down the road a little further and leave it to our kids and grandkids worry about it. And the band played on.......

Monkey with the paper

When the U.S., and then the world's money economy started to crumble, the first thing capitalist economists could think of to do was to monkey with the paper. That's all they knew how to do. It was unthinkable that the tertiary virtual economy, that great backroom fraud of debt manipulation and fiat money, might have finally reached the limits of the material earth to support. That the money economy's gaming of workers and Mother Nature might itself might be the problem never occurred to the world's economic movers and shakers. It still hasn't. (Except for Chavez, Morales, Castro and Lula).

Jobs disappeared, homes went to foreclosure, and personal debt was at staggering all time highs. America's working folks were taking it square in the face. Not that economists or financial kingpins cared much one way or the other. In the capitalist financial world, everything is an opportunity. Cancer? Build cancer hospital chains. Pollution? Sell pollution credits. The country gone bankrupt? "Nothing to do," cried the mad hatters of finance, "but print more money, and give gobs of cash to the banks! Yes, yes, yes! Borrow astronomical amounts of the stuff and bribe every fat cat financial corporation up and down The Street!" All of which came down to creating more debt for the common people to work off. They seem willing enough to do it too -- if only they had jobs.

Along with the EU, Japan and the rest of the industrial world, the US continues to flood the market with cheap credit. That would be hunky dory, if was actually wealth for anybody but a banker. The real problems are debt and fraud, and tripling the debt in order to cover up the fraud. And pretending there no natural costs of our actions, that we do not have to rob the natural world to crank up the money world through debt.

~ Joe Bageant, "Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball"