Associated Press
Bob Diamond, disgraced former Barclays CEO and Mitt Romney pal
As financial scandals go, this week's Barclays fiasco is just ugly. But even if you don't care at all about British finances, there are domestic angles to the controversy.
Libor, the London interbank offered rate, is a standard interest rate for loans between banks. It serves as a benchmark for more than $10 trillion in lending to businesses and consumers worldwide. In the United States, it is linked to the interest rates on student loans, credit cards and even some mortgages.
But London-based Barclays, one of world's largest banks, admitted last week that it schemed to rig the benchmark rate during the financial crisis. On Tuesday, the bank's chief executive, Bob Diamond, its chairman, Marcus Agius, and its chief operating officer, Jerry del Missier, resigned. The bank also released documents implying that England's central bank was involved in the plan. [...]
That the controversy has infiltrated the highest levels of British finance suggests that the cracks in Libor may run deeper than previously thought.
For Americans, the scandal could certainly prove problematic. After all, Libor's credibility has global reach, and its manipulation by Barclays undermines confidence in a metric that was believed to be entirely credible. What's more, the Washington Post report added that the U.S. Justice Department "is investigating other banks" as part of the larger probe.
But there's a political element, too -- Barclays's disgraced CEO, Bob Diamond, allegedly at the heart of the Libor scandal, is a leading fundraiser for none other than Mitt Romney. In fact, while President Obama isn't going to Europe for a fundraising, his Republican challenger is -- Romney will be rewarded with a high-priced fundraiser in London later this summer, and Diamond was supposed to be one of the event's leading hosts.
This week, Diamond quietly backed out of the Romney fundraiser, choosing instead to focus his energies on not going to jail. As Slate joked, "Wealthy investment bankers are great fundraiser hosts during your campaign for president -- unless they just resigned in scandal."
The larger takeaway for Americans is pretty obvious: Romney, if elected, intends to eliminate safeguards and layers of accountability for the financial industry, benefiting guys like his buddy Bob Diamond.
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This comes as no surprise at all to anyone familiar with British banking - a pool of vicious corruption that makes Wall Street look positively naive and trusting.
Careful lest you strike the wrong place and instead of a many faceted diamond you end up with dust.
When so few hold so much of the world's wealth we can assume without regret that the truth will be buried in the rubble of a lost democracy.
I would like a discussion regarding the truth on 501(4)c Super Pac's. I think that there should be after every ad right or left to have them fact check the ad right after the ad appears. There is no way to over turn the Supreme Court ruling but having the public know if the ad they just saw was true, bending the truth or an out and out lie would be beneficial. Since the press is not doing it's job it is important that as a public service both cable and non cable tv and radio stations do their duty of public service and have to run the true facts. I ran this past a couple of senators office's and both seemed interested in this as part of the FCC duty and responsibilities for the general public to know what they are hearing is not a lie or half truth or the truth....This would undercut the pac's most of all Crossroads. I am tired of people trying to buy the government.
I'm sorry. How, exactly, is it legal, even in the post-Citizens United era, for a presidential candidate to travel overseas to raise campaign money from employees of foreign financial entities?
And, while we're on the subject, how is it possible, even in this post-fact, post-journalism age, that a presidential candidate to travel overseas to raise campaign money from employees of foreign financial entities who played a critical role in the creation of the worst financial crisis since 1929, isn't an act of campaign suicide? How the hell did we let ourselves reach the point where him doing this is just one more thing for the opposition to put into a negative ad rather than a scandal of the first order that's the lead-off story on the nightly news and the recipient of above the fold headlines?
Christ, not so much of a mention of this even at Huffenpuff. Less important than "Supermodel Wows in Teeny, Tiny Bikini" on the site dedicated to hyperbolic headlines.
And wasn't this one of the warning signs coming out of Citizens United about foreign money going into our campaigns? President Obama had it right from the beginning... bad, bad decision from the Supremes. And by the way, poor Jamie Diamond got no love at all in England... they roasted him!
And wasn't this one of the warning signs coming out of Citizens United about foreign money going into our campaigns? President Obama had it right from the beginning... bad, bad decision from the Supremes. And by the way, poor Jamie Diamond got no love at all in England... they roasted him!
More Romney Financial Issues
The recently cancelled London fundraiser for Romney has not received a lot of press yet. It was being hosted by the recently disgraced Barclay CEO, Bob Diamond. He was forced to resign. It appears that CEO Diamond was rigging the LIBOR rate used to set world interests rates. The even bigger problem; the scam was so complicated that it required participation by other equally situated heads of banks.
BlackRock , a very sophisticated company, is rumored to be a substantial victim of the scam. I heard that these corporate bank thieves scammed trillions while calling for less bank regulations. Less bank regulation is major component of the Republican campaign platform. I guess these guys think the American voter is dense and loves getting screwed.
But Romney’s problems are even more significant. We all know of his penchant to hide his personal finances. Alright, but what about providing that list of attendees for the cancelled London fundraiser. We will never, ever see that list, my friends. The embarrassing reason is the LIBOR scandal now being investigated in London. A number of the names on that fundraiser list will also appear on a list of bankers that will be indicted. I wonder which national press reporter will be the first to ask for that fundraising list, and be denied. This scandal is going to make Watergate look like that proverbial “Tempest in a Teapot”!
this is the company Willard keeps
Correction: It's not England's central bank, it's the United Kingdom's central bank which is called the Bank of England (the bank pre-dates both Act of Unions).
Also Marcus Agius has un-fired himself as regulators would not be happy with a bank that has no chairman or CEO.
"After all, Libor's credibility has global reach, and its manipulation by Barclays undermines confidence in a metric that was believed to be entirely credible."
Is that the same "confidence" that sunk Arthur Anderson's accounting firm after Enron went belly up? Frankly maybe it's time to scrap this nonsense and start all over again with real rules & regulations, and maybe putting a few of these jokers in jail!
tRomney seems devious enough but not brave enough to be a mastermind behind any of this. Believing he can be of benefit to the big boys and thus get the ultimate American title as a reward seems to have made him more willing to wallow with the pigs in the muck. He is a little fish despite the damage he helped to cause with Bane Capital. If justice is served, he will get to feel what the kid felt when the gang cut his hair. A little humiliation may help him feel less omnipotent.
Michael McManus, are you unaware that all last week the hard-core conservative right had been apoplectic over an Obama July 4th fundraiser in Paris (France, not Texas) and in numerous blogs they were falsely implying that Obama was planning to attend? The Maddow blog covered it with a posting entitled "Where Obama Won't Be On July 4" or something to that effect. This was one or two days prior to Bob Diamond resigning as CEO of Barclay.
As it so happens, Americans living abroad often hold fundraisers for political candidates and, also as it happens, Bob Diamond is from Massachusetts. According to The Telegraph*, those that attend the $25,000 to $75,000 per plate dinner with Romney, will be asked at the door to provide passports (Arizona, eat your heart out), although it didn't stipulate which country's passport holders would be denied access, if any.
Typically the candidate doesn't attend these foreign fundraisers because it might look bad and especially one where the host is in deep doo-doo (the Barclay scandal has been going on for some time, put perhaps Romney didn't know... or did know and chose not to know). However, I know of no politician in their right mind that wouldn't have tried to distance themselves from those involved with this financial scandal which leads me to think that Romney is nothing more than the cardboard cut-out that he appears to be. He believes he'll win just by showing up and ending every speech with, "God bless America." The sad part is that half the voting American citizenry thinks that that's okay.
*<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9360144/US-election-2012-Mitt-Romney-to-attend-London-fundraising-dinner-hosted-by-Barclays-boss-Bob-Diamond.html>
Correction: Reply not meant for Michael McManus. My browser has a mind of it's own this morning and I can't do a thing with it.
Just a question, Steve. Why did you wait till Thursday to post this article? This was Monday's news!!! It would have been MUCH better to put it out while Romney's off shore accounts were being talked about in the press!!! I think the "bang" would have been bigger!!!