August 12th, 2012 Has Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, over-reached himself? Are sycophantic lieutenants and desperate national leaders telling him everything he wants to hear? Last week he indicated that the Frankfurt-based institution was poised to embark on new round of sovereign bond buying. In particular Draghi is eyeing the sovereign bonds of […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: August 12th, 2012 STANDARD Chartered, the London-headquartered bank that does most of its business in Asia, was – until the beginning of last week – the last good bank standing. It was one of the select band of banks to characterise themselves as a cut above the rest, having […]
August 11th, 2012 According to a Reuters report earlier, Standard Chartered is this weekend in talks with US regulators with a view to reaching a carefully choreographed settlement along similar lines to the “sweetheart” deal that Barclays reached with the US department of justice for similar Iran-related criminality in August 2010. Reuters says the settlement may […]
August 7th, 2012 By Paul Moore Ian Fraser’s introduction: Paul Moore, the ‘HBOS whistleblower’, has launched a new organisation, the New Wilberforce Alliance, which aims to free the world from the modern-day slavery caused by the financialisation of our culture that took root in the 1980s. Here, Moore explains how the recent revelations of rampant […]
August 1st, 2012 (minor revisions September 4th 2012) by Rowan Bosworth-Davies The most prestigious names in the British banking and finance routinely engage in criminal activities on a scale that would make any Mafia family proud. Whether it’s by facilitating international money-laundering; manipulating markets through Libor rigging; institutionalised insider dealing; misappropriating money from clients’ pension savings […]
August 1st, 2012 Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor-in-chief of The Automatic Earth, wrote three weeks ago that Libor rigging was a criminal conspiracy from the start. Here he provides an update which summarizes how collusion between large banks and central banks/regulators allowed the rate-rigging scandal to continue unchecked, at the expense of society and the real economy, […]