Prediction: This election will to be BainGate vs. LiborGate.....

[Junkdrawer]

And in order to mitigate LiborGate BEFORE it hit the headlines, Obama's team decided to shoot 2 MONTHS BEFORE THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION.

Wait. Republicans are turning LiborGate into a Democratic Scandal? Yep:

What did Tim know?

The latest development in the Libor-manipulation scandal is that the banks weren’t really fixing the price of the key interest rate in total secret — US regulators were aware of the sleazy activities at the time, and seemed to have done nothing.

Which should surprise no one.

I can’t tell you how much federal officials knew about the activities of Barclay’s, JPMorgan, Citigroup and the other big banks at the center of the maelstrom. In coming weeks, both Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will inevitably discuss the mess when they appear before Congress.

Bernanke testifies before the Senate Banking Committee next week, but the more important hearing by far will come a week later — when the House Financial Services Committee questions Geithner, who headed the New York Fed when the sleaze was going down.

If the right questions get asked, the American people will get a firsthand account not just about how much our government knew about the Libor mess, but also of the cozy, corrosive relationship between the nation’s big banks and the bureaucrats who are supposed to regulate them.

....

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/what_did_tim_know_NQ113lKVCrJPZHUhVCVVfM#ixzz20WFKJtQf

I can only hope we have some GREAT goods on whomever replaces Romney.

[snot]

1. This is what Obama gets for appointing the architects of the meltdown as heads of US finance.

[Junkdrawer]

2. This IS how third parties get started...

Top two parties neutralize each other.

Kinda like WWII: Germany and Britain bomb each other back to the Stone Age and America emerges as the new Colossus.

Just saying.

[coalition_unwilling]

10. Historical note: Britain was mostly a has-been after World War I. Better to say, Germany

and the USSR fight along a 2,000-mile front and between them lose 30 million people. USA emerges as the new Colossus.

My take on WWII.

[grantcart]

3. "seems to have done nothing"

and yet Geithner is bashed in another thread today because he did contact British authorities to eliminate LIBOR manipulations.

[Junkdrawer]

4. Between you, me and the wall....

given all the other ways of "solving" the Big Bank Liquidity Crisis, giving the Big Banks almost-free money, allowing them to leverage the hell out of said "free money", and then turning a blind eye while they rig the game and make SURE the leveraged bets pay off, may have been the least hurtful to the Common Man.

I mean aside from nationalizing the banks.

[progressivebydesign]

5. doubt it highly. Voters, unless they're rabid rethugs, aren't going to care...

.. but Baingate hits them where it matters... it relates DIRECTLY to the candidate, and it relates to outsourcing of jobs, and relates to lying by the candidate himself, and it reinforces the unease many independent and moderate republicans have about Romney.

The two are not going to be head to head. The Libor thing is just red meat for the anti-corporate crowd, the talking heads on Fox (and who is really going to watch Fox and vote for Obama?)

Reminds me of the Sesame Street song.. "which of these things is not like the other?"

[Zalatix]

7. Anti-Corporate crowd? Wait, what?

Are you saying the anti-corporate crowd and the anti-Obama crowd are related?

Besides, LIBOR has been going on long before Obama came along. Its links to him, besides a few people that he has hired, is tenuous at best. It looks like this problem goes a long way back. If it hits Obama head-on it should dent up his fender but it should DESTROY the GOP, who has a known history of fighting banking regulations.

LIBOR: Vote for the guy who let a few roaches in the house, or vote for the guy who's breeding them? If you're a real anti-Corporate person you'll vote for the former, or a third party candidate. (And that ain't Ron "no Government" Paul.)

[HiPointDem]

12. rigging interest rates doesn't have meaning to the common man? au contraire, when that interest

rate affects all others.

The LIBOR is widely used as a reference rate for many financial instruments, such as:

forward rate agreements
short-term-interest-rate futures contracts
interest rate swaps
inflation swaps
floating rate notes
syndicated loans
variable rate mortgages
currencies, especially the US dollar

They, thus, provide the basis for some of the world's most liquid and active interest-rate markets.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange's Eurodollar contracts are based on three-month US dollar Libor rates. They are the world's most heavily traded short term interest rate futures contracts and extend up to ten years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor

[scheming daemons]

6. thanks for your concern

Geithner actually is laudable in the LIBOR thing, because he advised Barclays to change the way the set the rates four years ago.

Geithner comes out of this looking pretty good.



Nice try.

[girl gone mad]

9. Geithner was aware that crimes were being committed..

yet he turned a blind eye. Even after gaining immense influence and power, he stood back and allowed it to continue.

He comes out of this looking like a massive bank fluffer, yet again.

(Nice try.)

[BT021]

11. Fast and Furious, worse than Libor

just my 2 cents