It has occurred to members of the Congress of the United States that
this Libor bid rigging thing might be a good opportunity to remind the
banking industry that it’s election time. So the House Banking
Committee, whose members are placed there to assure privileged access to
Wall Street campaign donations, will hold a hearing to ask Tim Geithner
what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it.
When all this stuff was going down, Mr. Geithner was the head of the New York Federal Reserve, and from that position of Wall Street oversight responsibility, the New York Times tells us today, he was privy to reports and rumors of bid rigging to affect the Libor rates. So what did he know and what did he do?
The Times tells us it has obtained documents and e-mails from that period (from Treasury? or from the Committee?), and those documents assure us that when Mr. Geithner found out about those illegal bidding schemes back in 2007-2008, he expressed his concerns to counterparts at the UK Bank of England and others and suggested ways to “improve” the reporting of rates that go into the Libor composite. The Times DealBook headlines this story as ” Geithner tried to curb rate rigging in 2008.” How reassuring.
We seem to be missing a barking dog or two in this story. The thing that has apparently shocked so many people in the last few weeks since the story broke on Barclays’ bid rigging settlement with US and UK regulators is that no one seems to have warned the victims that the entire structure for setting interest rates on consumer loans, mortgages, municipal bonds, insurance swaps and everything else in the economy — literally trillions of dollars in transactions — was rigged. It’s 2012, and they (the victims) just found out, so now there are hundreds of entities lining up to sue the worlds largest banksters for one the largest frauds in history.
Read more: http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/07/13/tim-geithners-libor-where-was-the-barking-dog/
When all this stuff was going down, Mr. Geithner was the head of the New York Federal Reserve, and from that position of Wall Street oversight responsibility, the New York Times tells us today, he was privy to reports and rumors of bid rigging to affect the Libor rates. So what did he know and what did he do?
The Times tells us it has obtained documents and e-mails from that period (from Treasury? or from the Committee?), and those documents assure us that when Mr. Geithner found out about those illegal bidding schemes back in 2007-2008, he expressed his concerns to counterparts at the UK Bank of England and others and suggested ways to “improve” the reporting of rates that go into the Libor composite. The Times DealBook headlines this story as ” Geithner tried to curb rate rigging in 2008.” How reassuring.
We seem to be missing a barking dog or two in this story. The thing that has apparently shocked so many people in the last few weeks since the story broke on Barclays’ bid rigging settlement with US and UK regulators is that no one seems to have warned the victims that the entire structure for setting interest rates on consumer loans, mortgages, municipal bonds, insurance swaps and everything else in the economy — literally trillions of dollars in transactions — was rigged. It’s 2012, and they (the victims) just found out, so now there are hundreds of entities lining up to sue the worlds largest banksters for one the largest frauds in history.
Read more: http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/07/13/tim-geithners-libor-where-was-the-barking-dog/
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