Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There’s no price the big banks can’t fix

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

By Matt Taibbi

April 25, 2013 1:00 PM ET

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that’s trillion, with a “t”) worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it “dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets.”

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world’s largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world’s largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It’s about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia

Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.

“It’s a double conspiracy,” says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. “It’s the height of criminality.”

The bad news didn’t stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. “Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry,” CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.

But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants’ incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.

“A farce,” was one antitrust lawyer’s response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.

“Incredible,” says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation’s GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it’s increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it’s no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2RyZKShtI

Citizen Hearing On Disclosure

April 29 To May 3, 2013 – Washington, DC

“If the Congress won’t do it’s job, the people will.”

An event with historical implications will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC from April 29 to May 3, 2013. At that time as many as forty researchers and military/agency witnesses will testify for thirty hours over five days before former members of the United States Congress.

Note: the full Citizen Hearing will be Webcast live on the Internet. Subscribe here.

The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race will attempt to accomplish what the Congress has failed to do for forty-five years – seek out the facts surrounding the most important issue of this or any other time.

For this reason the motto for the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure is “If the Congress won’t do its job, the people will.”

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Frightening evolution: China reports new bird flu case spreads to Hunan province: 23 dead

 

Posted on April 27, 2013by The Extinction Protocol

Looking for the culprit: Health officers examine a pigeon for H7N9 at a poultry market in Changsha, Hunan province April 7, 2013. Credit: Reuters/China Daily

April 27, 2013 – CHINA – China on Saturday reported its first case of H7N9 bird flu in the southern province of Hunan, the latest sign the virus that has killed 23 people in the country is continuing to spread. The official Xinhua news agency said the patient was a 64-year-old woman from Shaoyang city who developed a fever on April 14, four days after having contact with poultry. Her condition had improved with treatment, it added. The flu was first detected in March. This week, the World Health Organization called the virus “one of the most lethal,” and said it is more easily transmitted than an earlier strain that has killed hundreds around the world since 2003.None of the 41 people who had come into contact with the newly-confirmed Hunan patient, identified only by the surname Guan, had shown symptoms, Xinhua said. A 54-year-old man who fell ill in Jiangxi province was also being treated in Hunan, where he was diagnosed with H7N9, Xinhua said. The Hunan cases come a day after the eastern province of Fujian reported its first case and during the same week that a man in Taiwan become the first case of the flu outside mainland China. He caught the flu while travelling in China. Chinese scientists confirmed on Thursday that chickens had transmitted the flu to humans. –Reuters

Flu mutating 8 times faster than any flu virus known: The new bird flu could be mutating up to eight times faster than an average flu virus around a protein that binds it to humans, a team of research scientists in Shenzhen says. Dr .He Jiankui, an associate professor at South University of Science and Technology of China, said yesterday that the authorities should be alarmed by the results of their research and step up monitoring and control efforts to prevent a possible pandemic. With genetic code of the virus obtained from mainland authorities, the team scrutinized haemagglutinin, a protein that plays a crucial rule in the process of infection. The protein binds the virus to an animal cell, such as respiratory cells in humans, and bores a hole in the cell’s membrane to allow entry by the virus. The researchers found dramatic mutation of haemagglutinin in one of the four flu strains released for study by the central government. Nine of the protein’s 560 amino acids had changed. In a typical flu virus, only one or two amino acids could change in such a short period of time, He said. “It happened in just one or two weeks. The speed may not have caught up with the HIV, but it’s quite unusual for a flu.” The fast mutation makes the virus’ evolutionary development very hard to predict. “We don’t know whether it will evolve into something harmless or dangerous,” He said. “Our samples are too limited. But the authorities should definitely be alarmed and get prepared for the worst-case scenario.” The origin of the virus was puzzling due to its novelty, but his research suggested some clues that differ from the mainland authorities’ theories. His team compared the new virus strain to all other H7N9 viruses identified in Europe and in other Asian countries that were cited by the Ministry of Agriculture as possible origins of the new bird flu, but found them all very different. In fact, the new bird flu was quite similar to some familiar domestic viruses such as H9N2, H11N9 and H7N3 found in Zhejiang and Jiangsu. He said researchers could not rule out the possibility that the new virus was carried into China by wild birds, but it was more likely to be of local origin. –South China Morning Post

 Source  http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/frightening-evolution-china-reports-new-bird-flu-case-spreads-to-hunan-province-23-dead/

Earth’s Core Temperature 1,000 Degrees Hotter Than Previously Measured, Study Shows

Earth has multiple layers: the crust, the mantle, the liquid outer core and the solid inner core.

By: Elizabeth Howell, OurAmazingPlanet Contributor
Published: 04/25/2013 02:07 PM EDT on LiveScience

Earth’s internal engine is running about 1,000 degrees Celsius (about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than previously measured, providing a better explanation for how the planet generates a magnetic field, a new study has found.

A team of scientists has measured the melting point of iron at high precision in a laboratory, and then drew from that result to calculate the temperature at the boundary of Earth’s inner and outer core — now estimated at 6,000 C (about 10,800 F). That’s as hot as the surface of the sun.

The difference in temperature matters, because this explains how the Earth generates its magnetic field. The Earth has a solid inner core surrounded by a liquid outer core, which, in turn, has the solid, but flowing, mantle above it. There needs to be a 2,700-degree F (1,500 C) difference between the inner core and the mantle to spur “thermal movements” that — along with Earth’s spin — create the magnetic field.

The previously measured core temperature didn’t demonstrate enough of a differential, puzzling researchers for two decades. The new results are detailed in the April 26 issue of the journal Science.

The centerpiece of the experiment was a new X-ray technique that takes measurements faster than before. Iron samples compressed in the laboratory typically last for only a few seconds, making it difficult to determine in previous experiments if the iron is still a solid, or if it is starting to melt.

 

Read more…http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/26/earths-core-temperature-1000-degrees-hotter_n_3162098.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Should a life-saving drug that can be profitably sold for far less cost more than $100,000 per year?

A group of more than 120 cancer researchers and physicians took the unusual step this week of publishing a research paper taking aim at pharmaceutical prices they see as exorbitant and unjustifiable.

Drug companies are profiteering, the doctors say, by charging whatever the market will bear for medications that patients literally can’t live without.

The paper, published online in the American Society of Hematology’s medical journal Blood, analyzes and criticizes the cost of drugs used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a rare type of cancer that responds very well to drug therapy. The 10-year survival rate for CML patients now tops 80% for those who receive targeted drugs — but the annual price tag for the treatment is usually in the six-figure range.

Those prices bear little relation to what the drugs actually cost to develop and produce, the doctors say. As an example, they zero in on the case of imatinib, a drug sold by Novartis(NVS) as Gleevec (in the U.S.) or Glivec (in most international markets).

Gleevec is the kind of miracle pill cancer researchers dream about. Introduced in 2001, the drug and others in its class dramatically increased the survival rate for CML and transformed it from a lethal disease to one that is usually chronic but manageable. It’s like having hypertension or diabetes, doctors say — so long as you take your daily drugs.

Novartis first sold Gleevec in 2001 for an annual cost of $30,000, a price the company acknowledged was steep.

“We agree with those who say the price we have set for Gleevec is high. But given all the factors, we believe it is a fair price,” Daniel Vasella, Novartis’ CEO at the time, wrote inMagic Cancer Bullet, a 2003 book he penned about his company’s wonder drug.

That “fair price” nearly tripled over the past decade. An annual course of Gleevec now wholesales for more than $76,000 in the U.S., according to Novartis. The retail price that patients or their insurers pay is typically much higher.

The Blood authors say lowering those prices will help save the lives of patients who cannot afford to pay. “We believe the unsustainable drug prices in CML and cancer may be causing harm to patients,” they wrote.

Read more  http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/25/news/economy/cancer-drug-cost/index.html

ATS thread  http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread943438/pg1

[Out of control] Tritium leaked from 4 of 7 reservoirs, “1,100,000,000Bq/m3 from reservoir No.1″

By Mochizuki on April 25th, 2013

About the major leakage of highly contaminated water, radioactive water Tritium was detected outside of 4 of the 7 reservoirs.

According to Tepco, Tritium was detected from the drain hole water (outside of the reservoirs) of reservoir No.1, 2, 4, and 6.

The samples were collected on 4/17/2013. Tepco took 8 days to release the data.

Tepco transfered the leaking water from No.3 to No.6, but this No.6 is also leaking Tritium.

They also detected Tritium from leakage detector hole water of 3 reservoirs, No.1, 2 and 3.

The highest reading was 1,100,000,000 Bq/m3 from the Northeast side of No.1.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/2013/images/chosui_13042501-e.pdf

Source  http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/04/out-of-control-tritium-leaked-from-4-of-7-reservoirs-1100000000bqm3-from-reservoir-no-1/

UFO ALIEN INVASION IN 2013 – DOOMSDAY PREDICTION – UFO NEWS – Is Richard Atkins FOR REAL?

 

“On August 18th, 2013, the alien invasion will begin. The government has been under the thumb of these reptoids for years and now, the truth will be revealed. There will be rivers of blood and natural disasters on a scale that this world has never seen. The end of the world will come for many and the rest will be awakened to the fact that we are not free, have never been free and will never be free. We are under the thumb of a race that sees no value in our existence outside of slavery. We are mindless drones to them and when the 8th month of 2013 is upon us, they will show us their wicked hand.”  Richard Atkins.

 

Source  http://ringsidereport.com/?p=21089

ATS thread  http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread943194/pg1

THE PHASE

 Who stunted human development?

“It’s an astounding coincidence: in the absolute majority of accounts of the supernatural, be they biblical miracles or paranormal phenomena, the protagonist had been falling asleep or waking up at the crucial moment. As a result, there is something out there that has forever altered human history and culture — something we know nothing about.

What are they keeping from us? Who stunted human development and who has something to gain from that? What’s hidden inside each and every one of us — and what does it hold for the future?”

THE PHASE (2013, 33 minutes)
A documentary film by Michael Raduga

A Deadly Paradox: Scientists Discover the Agent Used in Gulf Spill Cleanup Is Destroying Marine Life

Three years after the BP oil spill, new truths come to light—from deep down inside the ocean.

By David Kirby

April 25, 2013

 

Recent studies find that the chemical Corexit, used to clean the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, seem to have worsened the impact on marine life—from dolphins down to oysters. (Photo: Universal Images Group/Getty)

Three years ago, when BP’s Deepwater Horizon began leaking some 210 million gallons of Louisiana Crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. government allowed the company to apply chemical “dispersants” to the blossoming oil slick to prevent toxic gunk from reaching the fragile bays, beaches, and mangroves of the coast, where so much marine life originates. But a number of recent studies show that BP and the feds may have made a huge mistake, for which everything from microscopic organisms to bottlenose dolphins are now paying the highest price.

After the spill, BP secured about a third of the world’s supply of dispersants, namely Corexit 9500 and 9527, according to The New York Times. Of the two, 9527 is more toxic. Corexit dispersants emulsify oil into tiny beads, causing them to sink toward the bottom. Wave action and wind turbulence degrade the oil further, and evaporation concentrates the toxins in the oil-Corexit mixture, including dangerous compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), known to cause cancer and developmental disorders.

When BP began spraying the Gulf, critics cried foul. They said Corexit is not only toxic to marine life on its own, but when combined with crude oil, the mixture becomes several times more toxic than oil or dispersant alone.

Not surprisingly, BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley defended use of the dispersant. “The toxicity of Corexit is about the same as dish soap, which is effectively what it is and how it works,” he told stockholders. “In hindsight no one believes that that was the wrong thing and it would have been much worse without the use of it. I do not believe anybody—anybody with almost common sense—would say waves of black oil washing into the marshes and beaches would have been a better thing, under any circumstances.”

BP says that Corexit is harmless to marine life, while the Environmental Protection Agency has waffled, saying both that “long term effects [of dispersants] on aquatic life are unknown” and that data “do not indicate any significant effects on aquatic life. Moreover, decreased size of the oil droplets is a good indication that, so far, the dispersant is effective.”

But many scientists, such as Dr. William Sawyer, a Louisiana toxicologist, argue that Corexit can be deadly to people and sea creatures alike. “Corexit components are also known as deodorized kerosene,” Sawyer said in a written statement for the Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery Group, a legal consortium representing environmental groups and individuals affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill. “With respect to marine toxicity and potential human health risks, studies of kerosene exposures strongly indicate potential health risks to volunteers, workers, sea turtles, dolphins, breathing reptiles and all species which need to surface for air exchanges, as well as birds and all other mammals.” When Corexit mixes with and breaks down crude, it makes the oil far more “bioavailable” to plants and animals, critics allege, because it is more easily absorbed in its emulsified state.

When Corexit mixes with and breaks down crude, it makes the oil far more “bioavailable” to plants and animals, critics allegeSawyer tested edible fish and shellfish from the Gulf for absorption of petroleum hydrocarbon (PHC), believed to have been facilitated by Corexit. Tissue samples taken prior to the accident had no measurable PHC. But after the oil spill, Sawyer found tissue concentrations up to 10,000 parts per million, or 1 percent of the total. The study, he said, “shows that the absorption [of the oil] was enhanced by the Corexit.”

In April 2012, Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences was finding lesions and grotesque deformities in sea life—including millions of shrimp with no eyes and crabs without eyes or claws—possibly linked to oil and dispersants.

The shocking story was ignored by major U.S. media, but covered in depth by Al Jazeera. BP said such deformities were “common” in aquatic life in the Gulf and caused by bacteria or parasites. But further studies point back to the spill.

A just-released study from the University of South Florida found that underwater plumes of BP oil, dispersed by Corexit, had produced a “massive die-off” of foraminifera, microscopic organisms at the base of the food chain. Other studies show that, as a result of oil and dispersants, plankton have either been killed or have absorbed PAHs before being consumed by other sea creatures.

 Read more at http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/04/24/corexit-bp-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-effects-marine-life

 

Turkey says it is prepared for possibility of war with Israel

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said Monday in Cairo that he is prepared for the worst case scenario with Israel, while Israel scrambles to cover its flanks in a multifront diplomatic crisis.

By Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer / September 13, 2011

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Palestinian schoolboys hold a poster depicting Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a rally at Gaza Seaport calling on Erdogan to visit the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Sept. 13.

Ismail Zaydah/Reuters

Amid a diplomatic assault from three directions that has Israel‘s foreign service reeling, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey is prepared for a military confrontation with Israel should the diplomatic row between the two countries escalate.

In an interview Monday with Egyptian newspaper Al Shuruq, Mr. Erdogan said the “Turkish Navy is prepared for every scenario – even the worst one.”

Israeli-Turkish ties have been nearly severed in recent weeks. That’s not the only challenge. Over the weekend, angry protesters breached the Israeli embassy in Cairo, and there was rapid movement toward a Palestinian declaration of statehood when theUnited Nations meets later this month. The trio of challenges has put Israel at a tough diplomatic intersection, The Christian Science Monitor reports.

Think you know the Middle East? Take our geography quiz

Erdogan, who downgraded Israel’s diplomatic mission to Turkey after Israel refused to apologize for its May 2010 raid on the Gaza flotilla that killed nine people, including eight Turks, would not speculate about Turkey’s next move, according to Israeli news organization Ynet News, which carried a translation of the Al Shuruq interview.

“I don’t want to put the cart before the horses,” he said, “because any such plan is hinged upon Israel’s response and its willingness to accept a just solution that will preserve Turkey’s honor.”

“What I can say is that we are committed to four things: Protecting the rights and honor of the Turkish people, stopping Israel from disregarding international treaties and customs, implementation of Turkish demands through international tribunals, and ending the blockade on Gaza.”

Erdogan is in the middle of a visit to Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, his first since all three countries ousted longstanding dictators.

Other Arab countries, both those friendly and hostile to Israel, heaped blame on Israel for its isolation from two of its former regional allies. King Abdullah of Jordan, whose country joins Egypt as the only two Arab-majority states that have peace agreements with Israel, said Monday that “Israel’s situation is more difficult than ever before,” according to Ynet. The Saudi newspaper Almedina wrote that Israel is “more isolated than ever.”

An Israeli official downplayed King Abdullah’s remarks, framing them as merely his way of smoothing over “internal sensitivities within the kingdom…. The king has strong ties with the US, and has strong interests with Israel,” he said. “We should keep that front calm, and follow the developments.”

However, Reuters notes that Israel’s situation might not be as dire as it appears, at least when it comes to Egypt. Despite public sentiment, the new government cannot afford to lose the billions of dollars in US military aid that it receives as part of its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which it affirmed to Washington after the embassy attack in Cairo.

Adel Soliman, head of Cairo’s International Centre for Future and Strategic Studies, also told Reuters that concerns about a Turkish-Egyptian alliance against Israel were overblown and that Erdogan is merely trying to fill Egypt’s void as a regional leader.

“Egypt is not in a position to play such a role at the moment so Erdogan is trying to take advantage of that,” Mr. Soliman said. “I don’t think they will have any big agreements when it comes to Israel. There is a lot of exaggeration. I see it more as theatrics than anything practical.”