LIBOR Scandal Set to Rock U.S. as Experts Warn it Could be ‘The Biggest Consumer Fraud in History’
As the investigation into the LIBOR interest rate-rigging in the United Kingdom becomes a financial scandal of tsunami-like proportions, some analysts are openly wondering whether 16 of the world’s largest banks have perpetrated the biggest fraud in history.
With the public coming round to the global significance of banks potentially colluding like a cartel to favourably set the LIBOR, those same analysts predict lawsuits worth tens of billions being brought against the Western world’s largest financial institutions by average consumers.
Early analysis suggests that for a period of several years before and after the 2008 financial crisis, the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) was manipulated to such an extent that a family with a $100,000 mortgage would have been $50 to $100 worse off a month because of the fixing.
As the fallout from Barclay’s $453 million fine for admitting influencing the LIBOR hits the U.S., Europe and Japan, banks such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC and Deutsche Bank have admitted they are now under investigation for interest rate manipulation.
Economist and financial analysts are predicting that as the scale of the potential fraud becomes clear, the fines and litigation that engulfs the banking sector could dwarf the penalty handed to Barclay’s and even herald further, more stringent regulation on Wall Street and multinational banks.
Or as Karl puts it…
LIBOR: Get In Front Of This Or Get Buried
As the investigation into the LIBOR interest rate-rigging in the United Kingdom becomes a financial scandal of tsunami-like proportions, some analysts are openly wondering whether 16 of the world’s largest banks have perpetrated the biggest fraud in history.
…..
Early analysis suggests that for a period of several years before and after the 2008 financial crisis, the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) was manipulated to such an extent that a family with a $100,000 mortgage would have been $50 to $100 worse off a month because of the fixing.
$100/month per family x ~100 million families = $10 billion stolen per month in the United States alone.
Or $120 billion per year.
For several years.
In the United States alone this is quite-plausibly a half-trillion dollar heist.
Rest here…
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So this means that anyone who paid on anything that was conneceted to the libor has been cheated????
This started way before 2008.I keep telling people the first time I heard the term LIBOR was back in 1998 with the Mortgage Dr. when I was trying to finance my mom and dads house to pay my sister her 1/2 fair market value for the year that I was doing this in.Oh by the way thats about the same time Beneficial Finance Co.(alias HSBC) was allowed to do business in the state of WA. on homes when they were not licensed to do so.This is when I woke up to a bunch of different ways the banks were breaking the law and being allowed to do so.This did not just start they’ve been at this for years and years.Wake up America this was taking place when we were just kids.