Check out our new Video of the Week on the LIBOR scandal!
About The Author
ft Editorial Staff
is the production staff comprised of legal editor Fred Crane, writer-editors Connor P. Wallmark, Amy Platero, Robin Jennings, Branden Ekas, consulting instructor Summer Goralik, graphic designer Mary LaRochelle, video instructor Bill Mansfield and video editors John Rojas, Quinn Stevenson and Jose Melendez Avila.
You will have to look under the article about ARMs to find our comment about the LIBOR scandal and the fleecing of America by the banking cabal.
Apparently the comment we placed yesterday was removed. The truth is not easy to take. It is unfortunate that even First Tuesday censors the facts about what is happening to this nation.
The video is 90% correct. Banks packaged these low interest loans into securities/derivatives and generated a enormous profit. The derivatives market grew from 50 trillion dollars in the summer of 2005 to about 400 trillion dollars by the summer of 2009. Liquidity began to dry up as big investors retreated from the market. Smaller investors began to default. Eventually the market collapsed because the underlying collateral for these portfolios evaporated as the prices for the assets within these portfolios disintegrated. Investors suffered because there was little if any tangible collateral to support these securities/derivatives. As in the 1929 Depression the big investors withdrew from the party and left everyone else holding an nearly empty bag.
Where have you been? LIBOR is the worst index one can possibly muster. Cut throat and bleeding are those who got into this by MORTGAGE PROFESSIONALS! There is no honor among thieves. I have done over 200 loan modfications, bought and sold property, protected those buyers who were licking the paint over a house, just to get in. I never placed any poor soul into that…Not my style. The rich are the authors of the poor!
REALLY? you rely on Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine for the closing quote?
with so many qualified to remark on the question of the LIBOR scandal you decided Taibbi and Rolling Stone, amongst the whiniest of the whiny liberal rags is the best?
BillS, yes you have recourse! Go find a lawyer and file suit on your lender.
The fact that the entire global financial system is riddled with systemic fraud – and that key players in the gatekeeper roles, both in finance and in government, know it and choose to quietly sustain the fraud is how our governments have operated for decades. The willingness to not rock the boat in regulatory bodies is simply rewarded by promotion to ever higher positions, ever greater authority. Just look at Tim Geithner; If you learn that rate-rigging and regulatory failures are systemic, but stay quiet, well, perhaps you have shown that you are genuinely reliable and deserve membership of the good old boys club.
It’s too big, the numbers too massive for anyone to do anything about it. They regulatory authorities have known about Libor fraud for over a decade! Has any change taken place, at all? Nope, rates still artificially low, all governments still manipulating Libor and the bond market and money supply to keep it that way.
Anyone taking an ARM would be uneducated and inexperienced in this market. At some point, printing more money won’t keep interest rates down…and as a result, massive inflation will run away with the day. But for those in the know, the next transfer of wealth is about to take place.
I have a large adjustable rate loan on a residential building for seniors which is tied to the Libor. Not knowing where interest rates would go and fearing rate hikes, I entered into a Swap agreement fixing my rate. I had to cover the difference between the Libor rate and my fixed rate. Over the last several years, I have paid a HUGE premium as the Libor rates remained what felt like artificially LOW. Now I can see that indeed was true. Now I have to wonder if I have any recourse as a result of the artificially low rates?