The Global Banking Scandal
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-07-09/global-banking-scandal
The deputy governor of the Bank of England Paul Tucker goes before the British Parliament today as part of a widening probe into bank manipulation of a key interest rate. He will be quizzed about whether banks were encouraged to lie about the LIBOR during the 2008 financial crisis. LIBOR is the acronym for London interbank overnight rate, used to set interest rates for trillions of dollars of contracts worldwide. The scandal has already cost Barclays Bank its top three officials. As part of a $450 million dollar settlement with U.S. and U.K. regulators, the British banking giant admitted to rigging the LIBOR as early as 2005. The probe has widened to most global banks. Joining Diane to discuss the fallout are University of Maryland School of Law professor Michael Greenberger, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Gary Gensler, Francesco Guerrera of The Wall Street Journal and Andrew Palmer of The Economist.
Guests
Michael Greenberger
professor, University of Maryland School of Law, and former Director of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Gary Gensler
chairman, Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Francesco Guerrera
editor, Money & Investing, The Wall Street Journal
Andrew Palmer
finance editor, The Economist
Comments
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@ arkus Have you not followed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the repurcussions that followed?
jbomber wrote:
"@ arkus Have you not followed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the repurcussions that followed?"
I have and most here agree it should be put back in place, I am not so sure this is such a great idea. I will say that it's just not possible to hang your hat on any one thing that caused the melt down.
Arkus wrote:
A court decision is enforced with guns! If you do not comply with government regulations or refuse to pay taxes it comes down to brute force. If you do not pay your property tax for instance police will come to your house and remove you with guns drawn and your house will be sold to pay the taxes. If you refuse to comply with government regulations you will be escorted by armed police to jail.
So basically what you are saying is, we should be able to do whatever we want when we want to do it. Without "brute force" as a possibility, some people just will not do what the community (note I did not say government and there is a difference) expects them to do for the good of the community. Under your proposed system, if I don't feel like paying my property taxes, that's OK, somebody else will pick up the tab for me. If I don't feel like paying my mortgage, that's OK, it's my right to own my home, and there is nothing the community can do about it.
Bottom line is that we live in a society. A society is a group of people working together for the good of the group. It is not, everyone for themselves suckers.
By the way, I know a sheriff deputy, who serves papers to people about the sale of their house. He has never come up to the door with his gun drawn ready for the showdown. Please don't confuse Lizard Lick Towing reality TV for anything resembling real life.
Mike Sergeant wrote:
"Bottom line is that we live in a society. A society is a group of people working together for the good of the group. It is not, everyone for themselves suckers."
EXACTLY MIKE! You nailed it. Or, to summarize, "from each according to his ability to each according to his need".
Arkus wrote:
By the way, I know a sheriff deputy, who serves papers to people about the sale of their house. He has never come up to the door with his gun drawn ready for the showdown. Please don't confuse Lizard Lick Towing reality TV for anything resembling real life.
Come on, you and I and everyone here has made small exaggerations to make a point. Don't start policing the metaphors, or we will all get bogged down.
ecgberht wrote:
Mike Sergeant wrote:
"Bottom line is that we live in a society. A society is a group of people working together for the good of the group. It is not, everyone for themselves suckers."
EXACTLY MIKE! You nailed it. Or, to summarize, "from each according to his ability to each according to his need"
So now your a Marxist, you do realize that Karl Marx himself said that it was an unworkable form of government and it was nothing more than an educational exercise.
Deja vu--all over again. You know, at one time here in the USA, we had the Glass-Stegall Act; specifically designed to prevent this sort of thing. And it worked for a lot of years. And then "Big Money" managed to get it eliminated, and now we are in another mess. This of course should tell us that "Big Money" is the REAL government in the world today, and the governments are just "fronting" for them. Will we never learn?
Well, the first lesson of history is that we never learn from history, and this money mess is just one of many examples.
The trend seems to be that the world is moving to the brink of disaster, and we either don't know, or else we don't care.
Mike Sergeant wrote: "So basically what you are saying is, we should be able to do whatever we want when we want to do it. If I don't feel like paying my mortgage, that's OK, it's my right to own my home, and there is nothing the community can do about it."
No, mine was a comparison of which represents the greater threat to personal freedom, governments or banks. You voluntarily sign a contract with a bank to get a loan, property taxes are imposed if they reach a point were you can no longer afford to pay them you are basically deemed unfit by the government to occupy your house and are therefore removed and replaced with someone else who will comply. Your going into areas that have nothing to do with my original point.
Mike Sergeant wrote: "By the way, I know a sheriff deputy, who serves papers to people about the sale of their house. He has never come up to the door with his gun drawn ready for the showdown. Please don't confuse Lizard Lick Towing reality TV for anything resembling real life"
True most people comply peacefully but that does not make it right. Everyone knows either you do comply peacefully or the guns will come out, it makes little difference if it's for an eviction or a trip to the concentration camp it's all a matter of degree. Government compliance is never optional and is always backed up by the potential of extreme violence, fight anything hard enough and the government force only gets stronger even to the point of sending in paramilitary forces.
Arkus Duntov wrote:
"I am not so sure this is such a great idea."
It is. Ya gotta trust me on this, Arkus. Wiki has an extensive and well written history of the legislative history and its effects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_steagall
Note the roles and opinions of people like Greenspan, Rubin, and Volcker and statements that Glass-Steagall was “obsolete” or “outdated.
At the signing, then President Clinton said it [the repeal] would,
“enhance the stability of our financial services system” by permitting financial firms to “diversify their product offerings and thus their sources of revenue” and make financial firms “better equipped to compete in global financial markets.”
Enhance the stability?! That sorta proved not to be the case! My point is not to blame Clinton - far from it. It is to demonstrate that the unintended consequences of Congress thinking they are smart can be devastating. It served wonderfully for almost 70 years through thick and thin, good economies and bad. These sorts of simple law are what the FG is SUPPOSED to do to protect its citizens from the unscrupulous.
mnemecek wrote:
"So now your a Marxist, you do realize that Karl Marx himself said that it was an unworkable form of government and it was nothing more than an educational exercise."
You're not from around here, are you mnemecek!? If you were, you would know I was poking fun at Mike. Some here would claim I'm "a little right of Attilla the Hun", but I won't own that!
Arkus Duntov wrote:
"True most people comply peacefully but that does not make it right."
Yes, yes it does. Any society needs to have peaceful compliance with whatever rules they have or the entire society breaks down.
Arkus Duntov wrote:
"it makes little difference if it's for an eviction or a trip to the concentration camp it's all a matter of degree."
It's always a matter of degree, otherwise leads to Anarchy or Marxism.
Arkus Duntov wrote:
" Everyone knows either you do comply peacefully or the guns will come out"
True, if you choose not to comply with our laws, then there must be a consequence. In the hunter-gatherer societies, the consequence is ostracism from the tribe(AKA the death sentence) in our society it being threatened by the gun. Even religions understand this. In the Judeo-Christian God's society it's an eternal trip to Hell. Islam also buys you a ticket to hell.
Society must be held together by some rules and there must be teeth behind those rules otherwise everybody will do as they please without regard to the other members of the society. This scenario will not end well.
Off with their heads!
I am only half joking. These scandals keep happening with unsurprising regularity. I think they are evidence of a systemic problem with global capitalism as it has come to be. These guys call themselves Masters of the Universe because their actions can have farther reaching consequences than many political leaders. The president can’t wave a magic wand and fix the economy, but a few out of control bankers can cause it to implode.
The fault lies not with a few unfathomably greedy, corrupt and frankly completely immoral people running these institutions but with a system that selects, rewards and promotes those people because they are the most ruthlessly competitive. Mister Nice Guy and the Boy Scout will never become the CEO of a Barclays or Lehman Brothers. Why do we continue to believe the ridiculous LIE that unrestrained free markets will achieve the best possible public good?
I am not saying that free enterprise is a bad thing; I am just saying that global capitalism IN ITS CURRENT FORM is out of whack. We are living in a second Gilded Age. There seems to be a correlation between the size of mansions built and incidence of massive financial scandal. This kind of excess, I believe is in inverse correlation with the public welfare. http://www.zillow.com/blog/2009-09-30/ira-rennert-mansion-is-largest-hom...
I just don’t understand why the megalomaniacs need SO MUCH. It is a moral disease driving them that they never have enough. Their gambling ruins lives. It KILLS PEOPLE. I am just an ordinary grunt, and I know my personal life is still being affected negatively today because of 2008. These guys have caused more and more spectacular F-UPS and if governments don’t start to regulate, they are going to cause the BIG ONE. Then all us peasants are going to stop them in the streets, drag them out of their Bentleys and Maybachs and bludgeon them with their diamond encrusted tire irons. I am only half joking.
ecgberht wrote: "It is"
Yes I would support reestablishing the Glass-Steagall Act.
There is no denying the fact it's repeal did a lot more harm than good.
Thanks for the link.
At the end of all the commentary on these pages, what's left is that you have the former head of a bank admitting to wrongdoing and implicating some of his fellow banking industry cohort.
I like reading the commentary pages because someone will occasionally give a good piece of information. I don't feel the need to call people I don't know names, and I don't have a need to be right on the topic. I wish folks would engage in spirited debate without all the condescension and vitriol. Some of you are actually passing out good information but your delivery leaves much to be desired.
GREAT SHOW! Especially interesting because this was a news story that I was ignoring till todays show opened up my understanding. Excellent come-back show!
Barclays and the admissions made by Jamie Dimon are concrete proof that markets are NEVER really free, especially when the one percenters refuse to follow even the rules they set up for themselves (i.e. LIMON).
Righties are basically poultry who hand over the keys to the chicken coop to the foxes and then make excuses for the FOXes when they act up. (Ironic.....what's in a name? Fox........hmmmm.)
IF the government is behind every failed policy and law, then it's the We-the-People voters who caused the problems. And it's not enough for righties to claim they didn't vote for this or that.......they would never let a lib get away with that excuse.
I really have seen nothing in our Constitution that says or implies the founding mothers wanted "we the market".
LibVet wrote:
"Barclays and the admissions made by Jamie Dimon are concrete proof that markets are NEVER really free, especially when the one percenters refuse to follow even the rules they set up for themselves (i.e. LIMON)."
Pure rhetoric.
LIMON? What is that? Did you mean LIBOR? Did you mean Lehman? Do you even know, LibVet?
Sorry, eggie, my typo. Not used to this one finger keyboard yet.......got hung up on Jamie's name.
But.......you got the point. You must be a banker to be supporting their crimes so aggressively.
mnemecek wrote: "Arkus wrote"
Don't know if your getting a little sloppy with the copy and paste but we did find out one of Mike Sergeant's sources is Lizard Lick Towing.
LibVet wrote:
" You must be a banker to be supporting their crimes so aggressively."
When did I do that???!!!
If they're criminals, put them in JAIL!!! But to lay their crimes off on Fox and Conservatives or suggest that they DEFEND them is EMPTY RHETORIC.