What’s particularly telling about our criminal government system is that people like Bob Diamond get to remain the CEO of megabanks like Barclays after costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars for pulling off something illegal. If Bob Diamond was middle management at Barclays and was accused of the same thing he’d be begging on the streets for enough change to make the next meal, but in this world, he gets “pressure to step down”. In any event, truth is always more powerful than the bizarre clown world we live in, so even regulators had to wake up to realize that Barclays had a “serious, widespread” role in manipulating the price of interest rates.
Barclays got fined for breaching rules as far back as 2005, and was hit with penalties of £230 million (about $356 million) in an operation involving a “significant number of employees” and included senior management. Moreover, Barclays was ordered to pay £59.5 million (about $92 million) by the Financial Services Authority – the largest ever given, yet Bob Diamond still gets to keep his job, because the only backlash given were calls for him to step down.
Manipulating interest rates involved offering expensive champagne as payment for favors and collusion with traders all while Diamond enjoyed £100 million in payments since 2006 (and that’s on the books, all of these crooks get paid under the table as well, and probably significantly more, moreover, I’m sure many behind the scenes payments were made as well) and has insisted Barclays will act as a “good citizen”. This disgusting behavior has had politicians issuing a disgusted response. According to MP Andrew Tyrie, who heads the Treasury select committee:
“This was a serious breach. I am very concerned about it. The price-setting mechanism of Libor is crucial to the integrity of the markets. This appears to have been put at risk. From the information I have, it looks inexcusable.” (LIBOR stands for London Interbank Offered Rate, which is used for setting interest rates and financial contracts throughout the world),
Basically what Barclays did was trade on interest rates, and whenever they speculated on a certain trade they’d try to manipulate rates with their buddies to make some cash. Further, the bank manipulated rates to stay low during the financial crisis to pad its image in front of the media to make it think the bank was fine, because there was speculation the bank was short on cash.
Story is HERE.
It will become progressively more difficult for the powers that be to justify its existence as it tries to legitimize the crimes that are being revealed daily. Eventually, there will be a tipping point where the general population that’s asleep will realize that something is horribly wrong, and not much or anything is being done to help humanity or the planet.
Bob Diamond has basically been complicit in blatant financial fraud and market manipulation yet retains his job while his bank gets fined heavily. I would agree that this is not sufficient justice, but it is certainly more than the criminals are willing to give, which indicates to me that there is a positive faction wanting to clean things up in our system.
Nonetheless, the criminals remain at large, and will remain to be free as long as the people stay asleep and refuse to acknowledge the robbery and fleecing of their wealth and freedom.
If the politicians think the inquiry will end at just a fine and a few hearings about Barclays, then they’re wrong. I expect there will be a lot of mysterious whistleblowing occurring throughout this investigation, and I’m sure a healthy amount of leaked information led to this massive fine in the first place. Thus, I refuse to see the glass as half empty, mainly because this kind of act was unheard of when we were all chummy chummy and in bankster pockets only a few years ago.