PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE
Herman Tiu Laurel
7/23-29/2012
First we are “Lie-bored”: On June 27, the international media reported that Barclays Bank had been fined by U.S. and U.K. regulators £ 290-M or $ 451-M for manipulating Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) between 2005 and 2009. It had been falsifying its submissions to the Libor setting mechanism on such its cost of borrowing from other banks to boost its standing, its high ratings to lower its interest costs. Libor is calculated by the BBA (British Bankers’ Association) and published by Thomson Reuters financial information group daily after 11:00 AM (London Time), fixing rates for three currencies: the U.S. Dollar, British Pound Sterling and the Japanese Yen. Evidence of the rate fixing included e-mails of Barclays executives, The Globe and Mail reports: “The scandal – complete with e-mails showing bankers boasting of manipulating interest rates and congratulating each other with offers of champagne – has triggered fierce criticism about the financial industry in general and Barclays in particular.”
Barclays dragged in other major banks, exposing what seems to be industry practice. Barclays’ manipulation from 2005 on also means this was done with knowledge of various authorities. The British paper Financial Spectator reports, “… the bank confirms that it had close contact with the Bank of England and other authorities regarding the liquidity crisis in October 2008. … Paul Tucker, the deputy governor of the Bank of England (BoE) …. advised that a number of senior figures within Whitehall were concerned (about) Barclays' Libor submissions ... Mr Diamond (Barclays’ head) explained this by advising Mr. Tucker that he believed other banks were ‘posting rates at levels that were not representative of where they would have to undertake business’", i.e. other banks were also falsifying to window dress their submissions. Now, the BoE and other major banks are dragged into the scandal.
Filipinos victims
The Barclays’ scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. One website reflecting my sentiment aptly called “Hang the Bankers”, reports other global banks being investigated and sued on Libor fixing: HSBC, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland, JP Morgan, Citibank, et al. Interest rate “rigging” comes in many forms, while these commercial banks do it and can be found criminal in the act, governments like the U.S. of A. can rig it and its accepted as law, as the almost 0% interest rate in the U.S. for its bankers is today. For Filipinos who labor to pay interest on everything with interest rates from just over 4% that the BSP (Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas) is paying for example to keep local banks’ moneys from OFWs and other inflows parked with it, to the $ 36-B U.S. bonds costing as much, to commercial rates of up to 10% or consumer finance that is much, much higher, the news of such bank manipulations of interest rates such as Barclays should cause an epiphany, and call for independence from Western banking enslavement.
Ten million Filipinos labor overseas, often in horrendous conditions, to send a few dollars home. Twenty-million Filipino families, labor daily to eke out a living to pay for food, water, electricity and other basics. Over and above everything they also pay for one thing that they never even completely understand – financial interest on everything. Paying interest for the P 5.1-Trillion National Debt that continues growing in interest, P 2-Trillion National Budget it includes P 800-B automatically appropriated for debt payment half of which is interest payments, interest on securitized projects of the PPP (Public Private Partnership projects), the MRT, the CCT, the power companies such as Meralco and the water companies such as Manila Water and Maynilad, ad nausea. The basic facts of Filipino life today are Death, Taxes, and Interest Rates on debt; then these global banks manipulate the interest rates for their advantage at the expense of Third World nations and folks.
The world is shanghaied
The July 18 financial headlines blared: “HSBC banks on Mexican drug cartels, terror funds“ after the US Senate initiated probes and finding the global banking giant HSBC (which began in the 19th Century as a British “opium bank” profiting from the Opium Trade in China). HSBC, euphemistically put, “exposed the United States and other countries, including India, to major risks of money laundering, terrorist financing and drug trafficking with its lax controls”. It’s US division provided money and banking services to some Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh banks that helped fund Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in India. “HSBC used its US bank as a gateway into the US financial system for some HSBC affiliates around the world to provide US dollar services to clients while playing fast and loose with US banking rules,” Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations, said.
What was HSBC’s response? “We will apologize, acknowledge these mistakes, answer for our actions and give our absolute commitment to fixing what went wrong,” said HSBC spokesman Robert Sherman. Some of its top executives were set to resign, but is that really punishment or is it just graceful exit and then reassignment? Again, what is being uncovered is just the tip of the financial iceberg. The U.S. investigation uncovered most shocking things of HSBC’s illegal activities, i.e. finding that HSBC allowed Mexican drug cartels to launder billions of dollars through its US operations. The Mexican affiliate of HSBC transported $7 billion in physical from HSBC-US from 2007 to 2008. “In an age of international terrorism, drug violence in our streets and on our borders, and organized crime, stopping illicit money flows that support those atrocities is a national security imperative,” noted Senator Carl Levin. An HSBC official resigns as head of it “compliance office” over drug money scandal but he will stay with the bank in a new capacity.
Whitewash will follow
The US Congress is also investigating the “Lie-bor” scandal but already Obama’s Justice Department Secretary Eric Holder has proposed “immunity” for the culprits. Glen Ford writes in ICH (Information Clearing House) that “Obama’s Justice Department Rushes to the Rescue of LIBOR Criminals … The Justice Department claims to be building criminal and civil cases in the LIBOR scandal ,…But that’s all a front, a farce. … He packed his administration with ’banksters’ (banker-gangsters), passed his own bailout and, in collaboration with the Federal Reserve, channeled at least $16 trillion dollars into the accounts of U.S. and even European banks – … His Attorney General, Eric Holder, a corporate lawyer to the core, is busily staging a pre-emptive LIBOR prosecution of bankers in order to shield them from legal action by a host of other government agencies…” The same strategy will apply in the HSBC case eventually and the guilty will eventually be let off. It will be no different from the 2008 financial scandals where the villains not only continue to operate but get huge bonuses still.
Western Banksters mock AMLA
Last June 11, 2012 I wrote a piece entitled “Lawmakers, Lawbreakers” and this is what I said, “The AMLA (Anti-Money Laundering Act) is a law inspired and lobbied for by the U.S. through the Philippine legislature, supposedly to track illegal and terrorist money. Guess what? The biggest illegal funds transactions in the world is the $ 500-B annual drug money transfers which include the Philippines as one of the biggest source. We have no data on the Philippines but we can see how the West and the U.S. banks break the global anti-money laundering rules. Read ‘Western banks, Immune, Enjoy Biggest Slice Of Drug Money Profits’ posted in The Agonist, and ‘American Banks “High” On Drug Money’ - about exposes of Martin Woods an expert at “sniffing out dirty money passing through International Banking Systems’. The U.S. and its Western allies as the originator of the global anti-money laundering rules and regulations also have its banks as the world’s also chief violators.” Law-abiding citizens of the World and the Philippines today should learn its lesson in the chicanery, hypocrisy and misanthropy of the Western financial system.
The Philippines and Filipinos have been Lie-bored and Shanghaied all the past decades and if it wants to end these financial victimization it must turn back the clock and restore the era of “Filipino First” financial policies from the time of President Carlos P. Garcia and Central Bank Gov. Mike Cuaderno of “currency and capital controls” and maybe, moving forward to the future, reinstate the primacy of public or National Banking over private and international banking.
(Watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., this week “New Sin Tax: Sin against Filipinos”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)
