The LIBOR interest rate manipulation by Barclays, and various other banks including the Bank of England has a bias toward manipulating rates lower. Low rates feed the speculation that drives the biggest profit centers of the Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks. Central banks are not independent, but centralized rate setting and money printing institutions created by large banks to serve large banks and they engage in the bias toward lower rates. Ostensibly, central banks fill the role of 'lender of last resort.' In fact, central banks are now the primary lender to large banks -- at zero percent interest -- with the role of 'lender of last resort' now being played by savers and pensioners whose accounts are being drained as interest rates are manipulated lower.
The banking lobby misrepresents the situation in two ways. First, they foster the belief that the economy needs lower rates to 'get going.' Second, the banking lobby likes to pretend that there is no alternative. In the first case, lower rates -- by and large -- have the effect of lowering the value of a country's currency and destroys its purchasing power and this drags the economy down. In the second case, we do have an alternative. A perfect example is the Burnley Savings and Loans in the U.K. run by Dave Fishwick, an entrepreneur who got tired of the lies and deceit at the big banks and decided to open his own.
At Dave's bank, pensioners earn 5 percent on their money while small business borrowers pay 8.9 percent to 14.9 percent a year interest. That's it. That's his business plan. And of course it works because there is a huge spread between what depositors are making and the rate at which loans are made. This is all banking was ever meant to be. Anybody in fact can do it. It's one of the easiest businesses in the world. And yet for some reason banking has, for the TBTF crowd, become a failure. Why? Because that massive spread is not enough for the management of banks like Barclays and JP Morgan. They want more and they are willing to take big risks (with our money) to make more for themselves. And when their risky bets don't pay off, they are able to shuttle the liability onto the balance sheet of the Federal government, who in turn must impose increasingly more draconian austerity measures to pay off the bad bets. This is what is meant by Too Big To Fail. Too big to suffer any consequences for making bad business decisions. Too big for any genuine, impartial accountability. Too big to play by the rules. Too big to pay a competitive rate of interest on savings.
Burnley Savings and Loans pays 5 percent on savings with no problem. And this proves we are all getting 90 percent (or more) less than we should be getting on our savings and pensions -- as interest income that would ordinarily be going into the pockets of retirees and savers -- gets channeled onto the balance sheets of TBTF banks to cover losing bets. This is at the heart of the LIBOR manipulation fraud; institutionalized fleecing of savers on behalf of speculators who use their ill gotten gains to lobby governments to make it easier to manipulate markets to fleece us even more.
Similarly, programs like Quantitative Easing in the U.S. and U.K. are nothing more than interest rate manipulation schemes too; employed to pry income from savers and pensioners and redirect that money into the pockets of the TBTF banks.
So why don't have we have more Dave Fishwick's opening honest banks paying 5 percent on savings? Because the TBTF banks have used that lobbying money they pilfered from our savings to get laws passed to set up barriers to prevent any competition coming along. Mr. Fishwick is working through 8,000 pages of forms to comply with 'regulations' that seem only to apply to banks offering competitive rates on savings and loans while the TBTF banks simply bypass all regulation, all codes of ethics, and all common decency as they continue to drain the economy of all its savings to pay off bad bets made by the unscrupulous gamblers that run the TBTF banks.
[KR311] Keiser Report: Fraud & 60 Orgasms
We discuss why nobody is freaking about LIBOR in America, while JP Morgan caught doing an Enron on U.S. energy markets and GlaxoSmithKline pays 10 percent of their ill-gotten gains for bribing doctors and scientists across America. In the second half of the show Max talks to Kevin Sara of the TuNur solar export project of Tunisia about solar exports from the Middle East and toxic derivatives exports from the City of London.
Follow Max Keiser on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maxkeiser
2) Kevin Sara's TuNur project is very similar to real banking in the sense that no too big to fail entity can control the sun, it produces and can be harnessed at a reasonable cost and benefit all. this is what true banking/lending/savings making interest should do.
But it pisses off the controllers who are used to running the show and making abusive "profits".
It means the game is fair and they, the emperors have no clothes.
I want my 5% back...when you calculate what you should have been making since AT LEAST 2005, on your savings, you realize that money could have bought you a year or two of time for your family, your house being paid off, your new business started, school paid for etc.
We were robbed!!!!!
The people need to bring a Class Action suit against these thieves! These banks are making money at every turn – AT OUR EXPENSE:
First - we (depositors) provide the banks with a good part of the collateral they use to make loans with (our savings/checking,funds,etc.)! They (the banks) in turn:
- charge high interest rates for the loans they make (often to us) with our money
- pay us (depositors) next to nothing (interest-wise) for the funds we supply them with for lending,
- charge us (depositors) FOR THE RIGHT to hold and use our funds for lending (their gain) by way of outrageous rates and fees for everything from loans, monthly fees, credit cards, ATMs, overdrafts, transfers, and more!
GET THE PICTURE???
We supply the banks – they use it to make money with – return next to nothing to us – and they laugh all the way to the vault!
NOT BAD IF YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT!
Now - add the LIBOR rigging scheme to further their gains and suppress ours and now you've got a rip-off of gargantuan proportions!
IF THIS RIP-OFF ISN'T A SLAP IN THE FACE TO EVERY PERSON WHO HAS A BANK ACCOUNT THEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS!
And they wonder why people don’t like banks – HA!
Anybody have any ideas how we'd go about it?
Bring back the green back!
Full faith and credit - we'll watch for the trust
Then sell the banking stockholders out, sell all the banks assets (hahaha there are none - so take the CEO's and mangers personal assets including their million dollar homes then grab all the Cayman Swiss and Dubai accounts their gold and silver and check under the mattress
then arrest the bankers and close down the Federal Reserve right after the audit it from 1913 on
Finally, march Bernanke and Geithner into prison.
send a real message or abandon ship
cause if you let these guys free and allow them to keep their hands on the plantation guess what that makes you?!
fraud larceny and theft
what is Obama waiting for?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/us-debt-gdp-passes-101-global-debt-ponzi-enters-its-final-stages
Today, without much fanfare, US debt to GDP hit 101% with the latest issuance of $32 billion in 2 Year Bonds.
If the moment when this ratio went from double to triple digits is still fresh in readers minds, is because it is: total debt hit and surpassed the most recently revised Q4 GDP on January 30, or just three weeks ago.
Said otherwise, it has taken the US 21 days to add a full percentage point to this most critical of debt sustainability ratios: but fear not, with just under $1 trillion in new debt issuance on deck in the next 9 months, we will be at 110% in no time.
Still, this trend made us curious to see who has been buying (and selling) US debt over the past year. The results are somewhat surprising. As the chart below, which highlights some of the biggest and most notable holders of US paper, shows, in the period December 31, 2010 to December 31, 2011, there have been two very distinct shifts: those who are going all in on the ponzi, and those who are gradually shifting away from the greenback, and just as quietly, and without much fanfare of their own, reinvesting their trade surplus in something distinctly other than US paper.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/us-debt-gdp-passes-101-global-debt-ponzi-enters-its-final-stages
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Keep the money recirculating in the local economy.
Why should my neighbor borrow money at 15% when I get less than 1% on my deposit?
Why can't the local banks connect us so to speak?
Savers get hosed and also get the pleasure of bailing out the TBTF banks.
What a deal!