Libor

[redandguilty]

Is anyone following this one yet? It's crazy. LIBOR is the London inter-bank offered rate. It's a basis rate for a lot of other rates that bank charge eachother. It's tough to manipulate because 16 banks get together to set it and the top and bottom 4 rates get thrown out, so it takes collusion between many or most of the banks to screw with it. Turns out, they somehow figured out how to make a crapload of money by screwing with it. Why am I complaining in a political board? Because the fundamental requirement for chasing down Ayn Rand ideals is protection of property rights. So why don't libertarians push for a high level of banking regulation?

 

[Michchamp]

Is anyone following this one yet? ...

yes.

 

[TheVictors]

Is anyone following this one yet? It's crazy. LIBOR is the London inter-bank offered rate. It's a basis rate for a lot of other rates that bank charge eachother. It's tough to manipulate because 16 banks get together to set it and the top and bottom 4 rates get thrown out, so it takes collusion between many or most of the banks to screw with it. Turns out, they somehow figured out how to make a crapload of money by screwing with it. Why am I complaining in a political board? Because the fundamental requirement for chasing down Ayn Rand ideals is protection of property rights. So why don't libertarians push for a high level of banking regulation?

Because, for one thing, 8 of the Top 10 contributors to both Obama and McCain in 2008 were the megabanks (or Venti Financials as some Starbucks-drunk wonk coined them).

Goldman, Citi, BofA, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan ...

 

[cheeno]

The best part was the CEO of Barclays pulling a Gordon Gekko, his excuse for it all was basically, "greed is good".

 

[Michchamp]

they're getting the ball rolling on the investigation in the UK.

in the US... not so much.

it's not hyperbole anymore to compare our justice system to that of some third-world dung heap. the corruption and sleaze in America trumps everyone else right now: Mexico, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Russia... hell, those places are small time compared to the billions flowing between Wall Street & Congress, and the revolving door between Wall Street, and the people supposed to be policing wall street, the SEC & the DOJ.

 

[redandguilty]

The best part was the CEO of Barclays pulling a Gordon Gekko, his excuse for it all was basically, "greed is good".

greed is good...so cheating/rigging the system must be great!

 

[TheVictors]

this question is over tsmith's head until he can get on the Drudge Report and see what he can find.

 

[Michchamp]

this question is over tsmith's head until he can get on the Drudge Report and see what he can find.

neither Drudge, nor Fox have anything about it.

weird there's nothing about "Fast and Furious" either. Hmm... I thought that was "the final nail" in the Obama administration's coffin.

Although I did find this: link. The HORROR.

It's absolutely terrifying to me that a sitting US president wouldn't insist that a poor third-world nation with a population that is less than 1/10th of the US wasn't the most serious threat ever since Nazi Germany... we better vote him out immediately. Only Romney can save us from this threat.

 

[cheeno]

greed is good...so cheating/rigging the system must be great!

These guys put money ahead of everything, including the rules of the game. I know there was some study out there showing a disproportionate number of sociopaths work in finance.

 

[TheVictors]

neither Drudge, nor Fox have anything about it.

weird there's nothing about "Fast and Furious" either. Hmm... I thought that was "the final nail" in the Obama administration's coffin.

Although I did find this: link. The HORROR.

It's absolutely terrifying to me that a sitting US president wouldn't insist that a poor third-world nation with a population that is less than 1/10th of the US wasn't the most serious threat ever since Nazi Germany... we better vote him out immediately. Only Romney can save us from this threat.

Have you seen the man's hair? It's absolutely fantastic and with hair like that, how can you go wrong!?

 

[redandguilty]

Have you seen the man's hair? It's absolutely fantastic and with hair like that, how can you go wrong!?

That's why I vote Colbert, sponsored by Doritos.

 

[redandguilty]

These guys put money ahead of everything, including the rules of the game. I know there was some study out there showing a disproportionate number of sociopaths work in finance.

I need to figure out which book it was that also called out people coming from ohio*'s B-school.

 

[Michchamp]

I need to figure out which book it was that also called out people coming from ohio*'s B-school.

You're thinking of Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. The book was written in the late 80s about the Wall Street I-banking sales culture. His comments related to ohio weren't in the book, but made in a later interview when he expressed with dismay that his book wasn't heeded as a cautionary tale and call to action, but as a "how to get rich quick" guide by young impressionable college kids who all suddenly dreamed of working on Wall Street. He used ohio* to represent all non-Ivy schools, but given their propensity for cheating, it's surprisingly apt.

If you want to understand the 2008 financial crisis (it's no longer just "THE" financial crisis, since it seems like it's been one after another since then) you should really read Lewis' other book, The Big Short.

 

[Michchamp]

I found the quote I think Rednuts was looking for:

Lewis once claimed that his unofficial goal for writing Liar?s was to convince ?some bright kid at Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer [to]? spurn the offer from Goldman Sachs, and set out to sea.? This backfired dramatically. ?Six months after Liar?s Poker was published,? Lewis writes, ?I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State University who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They?d read my book as a how-to manual.?


If the cautionary aspects of the book were lost on readers, Lewis? follow-up, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, takes pains to avoiding repeating the same mistake, and this time, he?s got a painful recent history to help him make his case. In The Big Short, Lewis returns to Wall Street twenty-one years later to pick through the ruins of the post-crash markets and figure out who, if anybody, foresaw the apocalypse and came out triumphant.

​

 

[tinselwolverine]

It's tough to manipulate because 16 banks get together to set it and the top and bottom 4 rates get thrown out, so it takes collusion between many or most of the banks to screw with it. Turns out, they somehow figured out how to make a crapload of money by screwing with it.

Yeah, that is pretty amazing that something like that could have actually happened...

 

[redandguilty]

I found the quote I think Rednuts was looking for:

Lewis once claimed that his unofficial goal for writing Liar?s was to convince ?some bright kid at Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer [to]? spurn the offer from Goldman Sachs, and set out to sea.? This backfired dramatically. ?Six months after Liar?s Poker was published,? Lewis writes, ?I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State University who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They?d read my book as a how-to manual.?


If the cautionary aspects of the book were lost on readers, Lewis? follow-up, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, takes pains to avoiding repeating the same mistake, and this time, he?s got a painful recent history to help him make his case. In The Big Short, Lewis returns to Wall Street twenty-one years later to pick through the ruins of the post-crash markets and figure out who, if anybody, foresaw the apocalypse and came out triumphant.

​

Yup. Sounds right. You were probably the one that posted this and planted the idea in my head in the 1st place.

 

[tinselwolverine]

And all along I thought Libor was the medication that is used for both erectile dysfunction AND high cholesterol...

 

[TheVictors]

Shows how much idiot Michael Lewis knows ....it's THEEEEEE Ohio State University.


Doy


As for Liar's Poker and the more recent The Big Short -- one key difference is that Lewis actually worked for Soloman Bros and lived Liar's Poker whereas for TBS, he was more a journalist/writer seeking to shed light on what had actually happened.

The fact that TBS is so recent also lends to the cautionary and criminal tone.

 

[tigersofjustice]

Is anyone following this one yet? It's crazy. LIBOR is the London inter-bank offered rate. It's a basis rate for a lot of other rates that bank charge eachother. It's tough to manipulate because 16 banks get together to set it and the top and bottom 4 rates get thrown out, so it takes collusion between many or most of the banks to screw with it. Turns out, they somehow figured out how to make a crapload of money by screwing with it. Why am I complaining in a political board? Because the fundamental requirement for chasing down Ayn Rand ideals is protection of property rights. So why don't libertarians push for a high level of banking regulation?

Because they only care to protect their buddies property rights to their own + other people's property. As long as the donors are happy so are they.