Judge Rejects Much of Libor Lawsuit - hands banks a major victory

[spanone]

The world’s biggest banks won a major victory on Friday when a judge dismissed a “substantial portion” of the claims in private lawsuits accusing them of rigging global benchmark interest rates.

Sixteen banks had faced claims totaling billions of dollars in the case, which had been considered their biggest legal threat aside from investigations being pursued by regulators in the United States and Europe into manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor. The list of banks includes Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and JPMorgan Chase.

The banks had been accused by a diverse body of plaintiffs, as varied as bondholders and the City of Baltimore, of conspiring to manipulate Libor, a benchmark at the heart of more than $550 trillion in financial products.

But in the ruling on Friday, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of United States District Court in Manhattan, while acknowledging that her decision “might be unexpected,” granted the banks’ motion to dismiss federal antitrust claims and partly dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims of commodities manipulation. She also dismissed racketeering and state-law claims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/business/global/judge-rejects-much-of-libor-lawsuit-against-banks.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

[The Second Stone]

1. too big to be accused of breaking the law

what a disaster

[Octafish]

2. Banksters walk free.

We the People pay them for the privilege of living on the same planet.

Their Profit is Our Loss

The Dark Heart of the Libor Scandal

by MARK VORPAHL
CounterPunch, August 07, 2012

Though, for most, the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate (Libor) interest rate fixing scandal appears to be distant and far too complex to understand, its potential consequences may be as economically devastating as a world war.

The Libor is used to set payments on $800 trillion worth of financial instruments. It sets the prices that people and corporations pay for loans and receive for savings. Given that the fraud impacted $10 trillion in consumer loans, the Libor scandal will likely leave a long list of previous financial scandals that contributed to the Great Recession look like child’s play.

It also pulls back the curtain on the mechanisms behind the world economy, its anti-social priorities, its willingness to gamble away the future of billions of people, and the government’s collusion in these operations. The Libor scandal reveals that the “invisible hand” Adam Smith spoke of in explaining how a capitalist economy regulates itself has been transformed into the trained hand of a swindler.

SNIP...

Barclays Bank is just the tip of the iceberg. In several countries, 20 big banks are under investigation, including such behemoths as Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, RBS and UBS.

Current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Chairman Ben Bernanke have had to defend the Fed’s response when it first became aware of the fraud in 2008. While Geithner said he was “aggressive” in expressing his concerns, this on-going scandal did not come to light until four years later.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/07/the-dark-heart-of-the-libor-scandal/

Here in Detroit, since 2008, many of my friends have lost their homes. Almost always, their jobs went first. Banksters, though, never lose.

[dsc]

3. It would be nice if one of the reports on this gave some insight into her reasoning

I have read now three different stories and all three have sucked.

[Octafish]

4. Same judge dismissed case against Monsanto in 2012.

Not that they're tied together, but she seems to understand the corporate perspective very well.

[Newest Reality]

5. This is a good time

to downgrade or eliminate the term, "public servant/service" unless it is actually being performed by someone in obvious and beneficial ways.

The term and title has become ludicrous and belies to whose service many in politics and the "justice" system are obligated.

Yes, that may not be knew, but we have obviously crossed the line. Making a clear distinction is important.

For that matter, "representation" and "representative" are becoming more like Newspeak, also.

[WillyT]

6. K & R !!!

Jesus...

[Overseas]

7. Depressed K&R.