Crime of the Century-Forget Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were amateurs in financial crime.

[midnight]

"The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.

Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Labor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclay's Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.

How to explain a $450 million settlement for one bank whose defense, in a plea bargain worked out with regulators in London and Washington, is that every institution in their elite financial circle was doing it? Not just Barclays but JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others are now being investigated on suspicion of manipulating the Libor rate, so critical to a $700 trillion derivatives market.

Caught as the proverbial deer in the headlights, Barclay's Chairman Robert E. Diamond Jr. resigned this week and offered a plaintive defense to the British Parliament that he learned only recently that his bank was manipulating the index on which so large a part of international trade is based. That is plausible only if we assume he was paid $10 million a year to be deliberately ignorant. The Wall Street Journal had exposed this scandal fully four years ago but his bank continued to participate in it nonetheless."http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/crime_of_the_century_20120706/



Citizen's united was an awesome law for these big boys...

[Hestia]

1. Shouldn't the fine actually be in the billions, rather than millions? Isn't this a major low-ball?

[DCKit]

2. They never charge the owners more than pocket change. You should know that by now. nt

[Trillo]

3. Not even pocket change.

All business costs are passed on to their prey.

[90-percent]

4. Well there you go again

OUR INSTITUTIONS ARE INFESTED WITH CORRUPT SOCIOPATHS

-90% Jimmy

note new and improved sig line