General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Robert Reich: The Wall Street Scandal of All Scandals [View all]Kaleko
(4,986 posts)or perhaps I should call them boils - all of which are getting ready to pop now or soon-ish. Boom! no more business as usual. The banking system as we've known and hated it is finished. I can't see any other way. This time they won't be able to bury the fallout. There are small armies of class action litigators all over the globe getting ready to pounce on the major international banks as we speak. High-powered law firms can make a killing if they win a class action civil suit against any single one of these banks because the litigators get a percentage of the trillions that are at stake here. Imagine lawyers salivating so hard, they're slobbering. Meanwhile, a German government regulatory agency is administering a probe to the asses at Deutsche Bank and will report on its findings within a week. Those German gov. agencies are not as thoroughly corrupted as their counterparts in London and the U.S. That German report could turn out to be fatally honest, and even if it's not, there is no way to put the lid back onto an already exploding volcano in this ring of fire.
The Canadian Press is also pretty good at highlighting the scope of this latest banking scandal:
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/07/05/fallout-from-libor-scandal-likely-to-hit-canadas-financial-industry/
Fallout from Libor scandal likely to hit Canadas financial industry
If major lenders were manipulating the Libor rate, then the number of businesses and consumers affected will be astronomical, said Steve Szentesilaw, a B.C.-based lawyer and expert in regulatory law.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the total value of the securities and derivatives
is about US$800-trillion,
including more than US$350-trillion in interest-rate swaps
and US$10-trillion in loans.
...
In one of the biggest Libor class actions so far, the mayor and city council of Baltimore is suing Royal Bank of Canada along with about 20 other big institutions over alleged losses from holding securities based on Libor.
Cheers. Have a nice quantum leap out of the old, decayed system, y'all.