More on the Libor Scandal from Robert Reich

Majia here: This is a follow up on my previous post about the Libor Scandal
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/libor-scandal.html

The Wall Street Scandal of All Scandals By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog 08 July 12
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002914211

[Excerpted] There are really two different Libor scandals. One has to do with a period just before the financial crisis, around 2007, when Barclays and other banks submitted fake Libor rates lower than the banks' actual borrowing costs in order to disguise how much trouble they were in. This was bad enough. Had the world known then, action might have been taken earlier to diminish the impact of the near financial meltdown of 2008.

But the other scandal is even worse. It involves a more general practice, starting around 2005 and continuing until - who knows? it might still be going on — to rig the Libor in whatever way necessary to assure the banks' bets on derivatives would be profitable.

This is insider trading on a gigantic scale. It makes the bankers winners and the rest of us - whose money they've used for to make their bets - losers and chumps....

Majia here: The scale of the malfeasance by the big banks is truly mind boggling.

These entities routinely operate outside the law in order to accumulate vast profits. 

They are money making machines that strip assets from government and from the public with no consequences other than personal enrichment for the banksters.