Tag Archives: Libor

LIBOR: History’s Largest Financial Crime that the WSJ and NYT Would Like You to Forget

Posted on July 10, 2015 by William Black | 10 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: July 8, 2015

I read a BBC story about the LIBOR criminal trial in the UK and was going to write to criticize its woeful analytics. In preparation I checked the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to see how they reported the devastating testimony in the trial. I could not, however, find any coverage in my electronic searches and viewing their web pages.

To review the bidding, the LIBOR bid rigging cartel was the largest cartel in history, manipulating the prices of an estimated $300+ trillion in assets. That is a figure considerably larger than the world’s combined GDP. Here are typical statements by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the LIBOR cartel.

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged Deutsche Bank, Libor, UBS

The Most Dishonest Number in the World: LIBOR

Posted on March 15, 2014 by William Black | 13 comments

By William K. Black

The FDIC has sued 16 of the largest banks in the world plus the British Bankers Association (BBA) alleging that they engaged in fraud and collusion to manipulate the London Inter-bank Offered Rate (LIBOR). BBA called LIBOR “The most important number in the world.”

LIBOR is actually many numbers that depend on the currency and term (maturity) of the loan. The collusion involved manipulating most of these rates. A vast number of loans and derivatives are priced off of these “numbers.” Estimates of the notional dollar amount of deals affected by the collusion range from $300-550 trillion in deals manipulated at any given time. The LIBOR frauds began no later than 2005 and continued through 2011.

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