RATES SCAM: Euribor rates ‘rigged throughout 2009-10 crisis’.
As the news began to permeate deep into the MSM – even as far as the Dacre Wail – last night that the Libor rate has been fiddled for perhaps thirty years or more, an interesting (if brain-challenging) piece by John Morrison at Asymptotix argues strongly that euribor was completely rigged two years ago as interbank illiquidity solidified completely during 2009-10 in the eurozone. Thus we had:
‘….the context to incentivise Fixed Income trading desks (most all of which are in London) making losses in the context of total Armageddon, to start to behave in a criminally disruptive manner; the environment was ‘all bets are off’; ‘this is the end of the world as we know it’… the opportunity to rig LIBOR or EURIBOR occurs in a context of crisis where Central Authorities have lost control of the capital market transmission mechanism…’
This is an intriguing viewpoint, and one which I think has some validity – viz, when the authorities are ignorant and incompetent (and we are talking Brussels here) to keep things going it becomes a case of individual players following the sauve qui peut approach. This is backed up by Van Rompuy’s immortal line at the start of Ecofin, June 17th 2010:
“As we can see there is an absence of any sign of crisis at this moment, I hope we can look forward to meeting in a relaxed and comfortable context”.
But whatever the motive at any given time for Libor mendacity, we can see with crystal clarity now that Diamond, Tucker, most of the TSC, Marcus Agius, and let’s face it the entire politico-financial complex have been lying their heads off to us about stuff since forever.
Cheery way to start (or end) the day depending on your position, Pondside.
PLANETARY RATES SCAM: Nobody can deny it now
Reuters joins MSM chorus accepting global knowledge of Libor frauds
Further to previous Slogposts about the multinational nature of Libor manipulation – and the authorities’ knowledge of the same – Reuters said this today….
‘The Federal Reserve Bank of New York may have known as early as August 2007 that the setting of global benchmark interest rates was flawed. Following an inquiry with British banking group Barclays Plc in the spring of 2008, it shared proposals for reform of the system with British authorities.
The role of the Fed is likely to raise questions about whether it and other authorities took enough action to address concerns they had about the way Libor rates were set, or whether their struggle to keep the banking system afloat through the financial crisis meant the issue took a backseat.
A New York Fed spokesperson said:
“In the context of our market monitoring following the onset of the financial crisis in late 2007, involving thousands of calls and emails with market participants over a period of many months, we received occasional anecdotal reports from Barclays of problems with Libor. In the Spring of 2008, following the failure of Bear Stearns and shortly before the first media report on the subject, we made further inquiry of Barclays as to how Libor submissions were being conducted. We subsequently shared our analysis and suggestions for reform of Libor with the relevant authorities in the UK.”‘
It is hard to believe than anyone with a brain could still believe that rate fixing is restricted to any one continent, let alone one bank in one country.
Filed under Uncategorized
EU ESM LEGALITY: Karlsruhe Court slows things down
Judges in Germany’s Karlsruhe Constitutional Court suggested today that they were being rushed into a decision on the legality of the ESM.
But the Judges did make clear that there will be NO final decisions today on the constitutionality of the ESM and Fiscal Compact approved by European leaders and passed with a two-thirds majority by Germany’s Bundestag during June.
So: already there is more delay than Merkel thought. The more I look at this, the more I think Gauck’s goal is to talk out the ESM/Fiscal Pact laws until such time as it is obvious to even the Bild reader that the eurozone is destined to bankrupt the Fatherland.
But in the meantime, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said today it had affirmed its ‘AA-’ long-term and ‘A-1+’ short-term issuer credit ratings on the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The outlook is stable.
All Quiet on the Western Front, then.
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