Reposted from The Daily Bell
Barclay's LIBOR Corruption a Phony Ploy to Strengthen the Bloomberg/Qatar QIBOR?
Thursday, June 28, 2012 – by Staff Report

Barclays Libor fix trail leads to senior managers ... Senior Barclays managers were worried over negative headlines during the financial crisis and contributed to a culture that fixed key funding rates artificially low, U.S. and UK regulators said in reaching a settlement with the bank. The findings based on internal emails and other communications raise questions about how high up the Barclays management chain came instructions to submit lower rates, and who knew about the rate rigging. – Reuters
Dominant Social Theme: The corruption of these Western banks is terminal!
Free-Market Analysis: So Barclay's resides at the "heart of darkness" which is LIBOR – various rates at which banks and the rest of can borrow. Something isn't quite right about this.
Bloomberg is busy setting up QIBOR in Qatar, and the putative explanation is that there is too much corruption in London. Now we have an example of corruption! Convenient? Right on time ...
QIBOR is just like LIBOR and those involved will "set" the rate at which banks borrow after conversing with banks themselves. This is a US$ 90 trillion market and thus the movement of this facility from London to Qatar is no small event.
If one were interested in moving such a large market, charges of corruption would surely be helpful. And lo and behold, we are reading about them everywhere.
What is the big deal about financial corruption? It is simply a fact that the world's modern central banking is shot through with corruption. How could it be otherwise? It begins with central banks that fix the price of money and its volume and continues from there.
When a small group of people have the power to basically print as much money as they want – and do – then to act surprised that "corruption" permeates the entire system is somewhat, well ... manipulative in our view.
This LIBOR "scandal" has a manufactured smell to it in our humble opinion. For one thing, the headlines are screaming about Barclay's as if the bank was manipulating rates UP (and maybe they did). But this Reuters story indicates that rates were being set artificially low – because of a fear that Barclay's would be seen as a gouger.
Dominant Social Theme: The corruption of these Western banks is terminal!
Free-Market Analysis: So Barclay's resides at the "heart of darkness" which is LIBOR – various rates at which banks and the rest of can borrow. Something isn't quite right about this.
Bloomberg is busy setting up QIBOR in Qatar, and the putative explanation is that there is too much corruption in London. Now we have an example of corruption! Convenient? Right on time ...
QIBOR is just like LIBOR and those involved will "set" the rate at which banks borrow after conversing with banks themselves. This is a US$ 90 trillion market and thus the movement of this facility from London to Qatar is no small event.
If one were interested in moving such a large market, charges of corruption would surely be helpful. And lo and behold, we are reading about them everywhere.
What is the big deal about financial corruption? It is simply a fact that the world's modern central banking is shot through with corruption. How could it be otherwise? It begins with central banks that fix the price of money and its volume and continues from there.
When a small group of people have the power to basically print as much money as they want – and do – then to act surprised that "corruption" permeates the entire system is somewhat, well ... manipulative in our view.
This LIBOR "scandal" has a manufactured smell to it in our humble opinion. For one thing, the headlines are screaming about Barclay's as if the bank was manipulating rates UP (and maybe they did). But this Reuters story indicates that rates were being set artificially low – because of a fear that Barclay's would be seen as a gouger.





















