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Comment count is 14
Oscar Wildcat - 2012-07-10

Shocking. I always thought the libor was calculated from shining 1.75 THz RF on an excited cesium atom and counting the resulting state transitions.

Hey, here's the thing. If the libor was manipulated to dampen the effects of the crisis, all for the good. If done to exacerbate it, call out the hounds. I find it hard to imagine the number _not_ being manipulated. Don't you?


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2012-07-10

If the libor was manipulated, it was to make some small group of people a great deal of money, and that's a big no-no for investing, no matter what the result is.

If it had any positive economic effects (beyond making the aforementioned people lots of money), you can be pretty sure that such results were only coincidental.


Oscar Wildcat - 2012-07-10

Finance is a zero sum world. Any manipulation will cause someone to gain and others to lose. An example of a "positive" manipulation would be for (insert your world leader here) to call up the bank CEO(s) and say "Hey bro, that fuckin' numbah is too high. Dial it down a notch" during the depths of the crisis.

I'm sure you can think of the contrary cases. But it needs to be spelled out what was actually done and by whom.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2012-07-10

If you're including investment and stock markets in "finance," then no, it's not a zero-sum game. If it were, then you couldn't actually make money. Any profits would have to come out of someone else's portfolio, and that's not always the case. For example, if I buy some gold at over the market price, the seller has made money. I keep that gold and sell it a year later for more than I paid for it. I make money. Nobody lost anything, unless you want to somehow contend that my year-long storage of the gold is a "loss" of whatever space it took up.

Besides, saying that any attempt to reign in a way someone is making money is a "loss" is the same logic used to justify things like closing newspapers. Very often, newspapers ARE profitable, they just aren't, to the mind of the current crop of investment sociopaths, profitable ENOUGH because they don't give you the double-digit returns that, up until a decade or so ago, were considered irrational.


Oscar Wildcat - 2012-07-10

Four men sit down at a poker table, each with 100USD. Can one man walk away with > 400USD? Can all men walk away with more than 100USD?

There is always someone at the other end of your trade. Otherwise the market couldn't exist. If you win, that guy loses. I'm having trouble understanding your confusion on that point. If trading precious metals is something of interest to you, actually try it and I think you'll understand what I am driving at.


memedumpster - 2012-07-10

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Poker analogy.


fatatty - 2012-07-10

I'm far from knowledgeable on the subject but there has already been resignations from Libor manipulation in Europe, so I doubt this is the one time that Taibbi is off base on his accusations. There could be more definitive accusations in this piece but I think we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg at this point.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/08/libor-commissioner-id INL6E8I849I20120708


Bort - 2012-07-10

The entire point of banking is that wealth can spring from effort; for that matter, our entire economy works that way. Poker games do not.


jangbones - 2012-07-10

I keep thinking about Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe. All these years later you would think the metaphors and literary devices would have stopped being appropritate, but these motherfuckers just keep returning to the same flat out robbery without shame that characterized them four decades ago.

American politicians are corrupt but these guys are creating new levels and standards of corruption. They are redefining the word corruption.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2012-07-10

What's worse is they and their corporate counterparts are doing everything they can to make sure that their corrupt practices are deemed legal, or, at the very least, never declared illegal.

Adding to this is the idiotic view many Americans, especially conservatives who make under k a year, have about giving the wealthy all of this power and money through their taxes and votes: They seem to be under the delusion that they're not poor dupes, but rather future millionaires who will actually benefit from the corporate feudal system they're letting the rich build.


SolRo - 2012-07-10

I literally had a hickish sounding guy in voice chat spouting the job creator/don't tax them shit.

when I mentioned their increasing wealth and lowered tax rate over the past decade vs job decline he had no reply


Oscar Wildcat - 2012-07-10

Yes. Given how well our wealthy have been treated since the mid 80's you'd expect we'd be swimming in jobs. But of course, the wealthy don't create jobs, as we all know. The middle class does.


jangbones - 2012-07-10

You know what else is an efficient job creator? Government programs.


The Mothership - 2012-07-10

The FT is a leftist rag.


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