globalresearch.ca / By Washington’s blog / July 2, 2012
Governments On Both Sides of the Atlantic Try to Put Lipstick on a Pig
We noted yesterday that the big banks have criminally conspired since 2005 to rig $800 trillion dollar Libor-based market.
Barclay’s chairman says that the Bank of England gave explicit approval for the manipulation.
A former Barclay’s executive – who was close to the Libor-setting manipulation – told the Daily Mail that Barclay’s manipulated Libor to make the bank look healthier than it really was, and , and the cover-up led to a slow policy response which prolonged the financial crisis.
This appears to be very similar to what happened in America. As I noted last year:
The Tarp Inspector General has said that [then-Secretary of the Treasury Hank] Paulson misrepresented the big banks’ health in the run-up to passage of TARP. This is no small matter, as the American public would have not been very excited about giving money to insolvent institutions.
(Paulson also threatened martial law if Tarp was not passed.)
As we reported last year:
[All of the big banks were] insolvent in the 1980s, but the government made a concerted decision to cover that up.
Financial writers such as Mish and Reggie Middleton pointed out in late 2007 and early 2008 that B of A was again insolvent.
Nouriel Roubini noted in January 2009 that the entire U.S. banking system is “bankrupt” and “effectively insolvent”:
“I’ve found that credit losses could peak at a level of $3.6 trillion for U.S. institutions, half of them by banks and broker dealers,” Roubini said at a conference in Dubai today. “If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion.”
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“The problems of Citi, Bank of America and others suggest the system is bankrupt,” Roubini said. “In Europe, it’s the same thing.”
