YouSaid · the spoken record

Andy Verity

lines on the record: 128
first: 2024-01-16
most recent: 2024-01-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Exactly. So, how do you measure the price of something that's not changing hands at all? It was never really set up to do that. And before the credit crunch, that didn't really happen much. So it worked quite well up until then. You've just got to be careful what you wish for if you want to replace it with something that's not going to get out of central bank control, but then you might lose any indicator you might have if the banks have all got themselves into trouble. Mind you, we spent the last 15 years since the crisis shoring up the bank's finances effectively, arguably at the cost of the rest of the economy. So actually, that may not be the weak point next time round.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I suppose the only time it really didn't work, it wasn't designed to work. Know, you're making it a rate which is supposed to gauge cash changing hands, and then suddenly cash isn't changing hands. It's, as you say, it's like trying to measure the cost of my apples.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What if a bank had hidden losses? What if all the banks have hidden losses on, say, fixed-term products that we don't know about yet? And the market starts ferreting out this information. It's part of the normal functioning of the market. You try to get the information and then try to assess the credit quality of the bank. If you do see no evil, we don't want to know about this bank's losses. We don't want to know about their credit quality. We'll ignore any indicators that are going to tell us about that. then the risk is that it sort of creeps up on you and then you're sort of overwhelmed by it i guess i mean i'm not an expert on on credit measures or even indices but there are concerns which have been voiced even by the fed that if you that the replacement that sofa isn't doing the same job libor did in terms of indicating where there may be a general credit quality issue as there was in 2007”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Between 2017 and 2022, and they eventually get rid of it. But now the Fed itself has written papers admitting that it's a problem, that we don't have an indicator of credit quality because we need some kind of canary in the coal mine. If we're going to have another credit crunch, it's still going to be happening. It's just you won't have any numbers showing you how it's happening. Is that an improvement? Or is it just, so to some extent, there's a concern that central banks have wanted to reassert their control over interest rates. That's their power. But what they've actually done is they've created something they can control, which doesn't really reflect the market”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, that's right. And in a way, you're kind of underlining my point, which is that sofa doesn't reflect any concerns that there might or might not be about the quality of your counterparties. As you say, it's to do with secured finding. You can argue, though, that was a virtue, not a vice of libel. And it worked really well. Don't forget, it worked really well right up until a couple of years ago. It was still doing its job. They had to keep all the legacy loans that have been linked to LIBOR. Nothing went wrong with those loans, really. There wasn't a problem with that. Was the problem with LIBOR really that it was telling lies? It was in the crisis, but it wasn't before then. There was no problem at all with it before then, or was the problem that actually central banks couldn't control it in the crisis and they didn't want that ever to happen again. So you get a central bank kind of pushback. Let's get rid of this, even though it's a bureaucratic nightmare to get rid of.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, uh, so back in the day, banks funded themselves on repo based on very speculative, you know, CDOs, asset-based commercial paper. And then LIBOR was unsecured. So it was not secured by anything. So, I mean, that seems very. Seems very risky to me. How can you be worried about doing a re because even if you're doing a repo transaction with an insolvent party, you still have the treasury?”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the problem was what they came out with so far is supposedly more reliable because it's based on transactions. But what it doesn't do is indicate how the market's feeling about the credit quality of its counterparties. So because the central banks had lost control of interest rates, that was precisely because the market was worried. Now is the market's worried. You don't have an indicator that's going to say, look, they're worried about their counterparties. They're worried they might not get their money back. Sofa doesn't reflect assessments of the credit quality of counterparties.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, with LIBOR, after the scandal blew up in the UK in 2012 and they started fining banks and prosecuting them, so there's very much an anti-bank mood, there was a review commission to see whether they get rid of LIBOR in the UK. And the guy who later became the regulator, a guy called Martin Wheatley, went away for months, looked at it, said, has problems, has issues, but we can reform them. We should keep it. But then in 2017, I did a panorama for BBC which exposed the evidence pointing to the top, to the Bank of England and the UK government. A few months after that, a senior guy at the Bank of England gave a speech calling for the ending of Libor, and the Fed started making similar noises, I think, there was a committee which was set up to the Alternative Rates Committee, I think it was called, or something along those lines and sat for months to try to work out how you could have something like LIBOR that wasn't libel.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, although now we have secured overnight financing rates and I mean at least it doesn't have that credit rate component so there's no incentive for there to be such a widespread maybe maybe I'm just being naive.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All those fixed rate loans or paper losses on those that haven't been crystallized, it's not too dissimilar to 2007. We can't learn the lessons of the past unless we know the truth about it.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly Exactly. You want me to report a rate that's going to be breaking the rules. There were emails written. People were trying to cover themselves because they knew they'd be breaking the rules. You're instructing me to break the rules and I will be doing this because I need to keep my job. But is management telling me to do it? Those emails were also known to regulators and they're set out in the book. And yet Parliament was never shown them and Congress was never shown them. Is that the sort of thing that Parliament or Congress is happy to let lie? The parliamentarians in the UK have certainly said they shouldn't, that it shouldn't be the case. And I think there will probably be American politicians too who would say, look, it can't be that this is a long time ago, yes, but this is important historic facts about what went on in the crisis and interest rates, something really, really key to understanding how we're going to deal with future crises. A lot of the same things are happening now. Interest rates looking a bit wobbly. Markets struggling. Undisclosed loss.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you think about these LIBOR estimates 3.54%, 3.55%. That was the sort of difference that you had before the crisis. And the traders were asking for one BIP, one hundredth of a percentage point up or down within the range where cash was trading. If it was outside that range, the cash traders would turn around to them and say, sorry, can't do that, I'd be lying. So they argue that it's never been proved that anybody put in anything false. Whereas with low boarding, it's very, very clear. you are putting in a rate saying we can borrow at 3.2 percent when actually you'd have to pay 3.6 or in the crisis 4.6 Know it was that far out, and it was a properly fraudulent, and that's”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, low bowling never came to court. The prosecutors knew about it from 2010 and they had evidence that it pointed to the top from April 2010. They never prosecuted that evidence. There was an attempt by the US authorities at one point to go after two employees of Societ ⁇ Generale in France for lowballing outside the crisis, but that never came to anything and they never prosecuted it. And the Serious Fraud Office sort of made a token attempt to go after the people who'd instructed Peter Johnson to lowball in 2019, but that never really came to anything either. They never brought it to trial. I suppose the prosecutors would argue, well, we tried.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, tell us about the prosecutions and as well as so that distinction between commercial requests and lowballing, you know, commercial requests, one or two, three basis points, and it's all on different sides of the trade by bank and lowballing, every bank is 10 basis points, 15. I mean, in some cases, the rate for one bank for one day was 27% and they were reporting live or 5%. That's an extreme, extreme example. Did any people who were going to go to jail for lowballing, even if they were the Peter Johnson, the actual cash traders and not the people at the top?”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who'd gone through hell and had never, you know, had been vilified in the media and elsewhere. And as far as they're concerned, were just doing their jobs. And this was the first time that anybody had actually suggested that they might have been mistreated. But unfortunately, the way things work in our society between the regulators and the prosecutors and the bank's lawyers, it means that you don't have much chance if they pick you to be thrown under the bus.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Overpaid traders, they're not a bunch of normal people from the street, I suppose you could say, but in a way they are normal, just like the rest of us. And if you get prosecuted, it doesn't matter who you are. It kind of ruins your life. It ruins your social life. It ruins your career. It can ruin your personal life. A lot of these people have had nervous breakdowns. And in Parliament, we had a session where some of the traders came in and I asked them to speak about their experiences. I really hadn't expected it. At the end, there were standing ovations and not a dry eye in the house because these were a bunch of guys in their 50s and 60s, 7 40s, 50s, 60s.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I've gone to Gary Gangster a number of times, including a detailed letter of more than 20 pages, which I sent to the SEC, a head of publishing the book. There was no response. I also went to him ahead of the radio series, The Low Ball Tapes, and again, there was no response. So we don't have an official line from them. The CFTC have said that they prosecuted LIBOR conscientiously. This is paraphrasing them. Also, the Bank of England has said that there was no regulation at the time. Now that's particularly interesting because central bank now wants to point out that back then there were no rules. And so therefore people shouldn't get crossed with the Bank of England. The traders would say, well, fine, you're right. There were no rules. Why do you prosecute us? That's what they've been saying. And now a lot of MPs have taken up the cause for the traders, even though they're inherently unsympathetic. You know, these are a bunch of.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Manipulating interest rates throughout nine criminal trials. That's why I say it's the biggest story I've come across, the most shocking story I've come across. The authorities all have their own things to say about this. The central banks say, no, we didn't ask them to do anything illegal. But as I say, I can agree with that. Nothing was illegal at the time. The law was created much later. But if you're going to retrospectively punish one thing, punish a thing that did the harm rather than the thing that didn't and apply the law universally and equally to people at the top as well as the people at the bottom. It shouldn't be that whether you get prosecuted or not depends on who you are.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so he's the only one in 2007 who cares where the LIBOR is true or false. He's the only one who cares whether it's fraudulent or one of very few. And he protests and tries to post more truth or keeps what we told by his bosses to post to lie. And then he, rather than thanking him, the authorities ignore him, and then they require more low balling. And then when it comes to be prosecuted later by the US authorities, they're able to escape culpability for anyone at the top and dump the blame on the whistleblowers, including Peter Johnson and another guy who alerted the ECB and the Fed called Colin Birmingham. They were both prosecuted for this small stuff, which was just commercial. And now the US courts don't think was wrong at all. And no one has been no accountability. There's been no scrutiny. And Congress has been kept in the dark as well as parliament about the true extent of government and central bank involvement in”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the most messed up things about the story is that the banks had an incentive to lie because it's a crisis. And if they are honest, then the Wall Street Journal is reporting about how is this having issues, you know, the spreads are blowing out. And the people at the top of central banks and all the authorities, they want to contain this crisis and they are putting pressure. So the only thing that is supporting the truth is Peter Johnson's integrity and he ends up being prosecuted.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he's really upset about it. And the real scandal is Peter Johnson, the whistleblower. Peter Johnson, it was, who was trying to alert the authorities to it. And Peter Johnson was prosecuted for this other thing, the trader request, which the US courts now say was not a crime at all.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the DLR Johnson call, which I sent you, you should be able to play that out. And that basically says. You're going to absolutely hate this. This is Dear Last saying to Peter Johnson PJ, you're going to absolutely hate this, but we've had some very serious pressure from the Bank of England and the UK government about pushing our LIBORs lower. And Peter Johnson replies, can I have the prices from them? Because he's making the point. They want to tell me to push it down. Right. Okay. So it's not a market rate anyway. Can they give me the prices? Because, you know, normally I set this off the market.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he was seen as it exactly like a Danosine conversion. St. Paul, I'm going to go after these people rather than pander to Wall Street. But what we know is that he heard, for example, that phone call, and that was what led to him actually launching, passing it onto the DOJ. That was what led to Americans launching criminal prosecutions, which turned out to be misconceived. But even though that was what led to it, this evidence pointed to the Bank of England and the UK government. That call was suppressed. It was suppressed throughout the trials, throughout everything that the CFTC said to Congress about this. It never said anything about that tape. It covered up the evidence pointing to the British government.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That so the progressives were really uncomfortable, and they only unblocked his appointment after they were promised that derivatives, the trade in derivatives would be regulated. So since then, after making a big noise about LIBOR, been seen as a progressive hero, someone who was willing to go after Wall Street, even though he was brought up on Wall Street almost.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a guy who was in the Clinton government, but yes, what you say is pretty much right. So in the late 90s, he was one of the guys who opposed a bill to regulate derivatives, which the head of the SCFTC then, Brooksley Bourne, had said, we need this. And it turns out that you really did need to regulate derivatives, but he resisted regulating derivatives. So when he was proposed by the Obama administration to be head of the CFTC, Bernie Sanders and another progressive, Maria Campwell, opposed him in Congress and said, no, we can't have this guy. You're putting someone in charge of cleaning up the mess who's responsible for causing that mess. So he had a point to prove. He really had a point to prove that he was not Wall Street's guy. He'd made reportedly $62 million in a division of Goldman Sachs, which specialized in helping corporations avoid tax and therefore arguably denuding the US taxpayer of tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions. Anyway, he made a lot of money.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and when the your book starts, Gary Gensler has just appointed the head of the CFTC and it starts with quite a favorable impression of Gary Gensler as he's listening to the LIBOR scandal he's smiling. He's saying, oh, the crooks are being found out. And he had a reputation. He made a lot of money as working at Goldman Sachs. And then he was, I think, according to your book, supported a deregulation of Wall Street. But he had a multifaceted. He turned around and actually he was opposed by the progressive, but initially he was quite hard on Wall Street, hard on the banks. And so that's how your book begins, described his journey.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Name's Gary Gensler. Gary Gensler, the head of the SEC, I sent writer reply letters to him. He hasn't replied to a single one. Maybe he doesn't feel accountable to the British media. But perhaps the American media should be asking why they're regulator who's taken all this kudos for pursuing banks for LIBOR has never told anybody about this evidence that pointed to governments and central banks.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But certainly, we know from Ben Bernanke at the time that all kinds of extraordinary things were being done. And I think it's also important to say that I don't think anybody acted with criminal intent. You know, the law has been created retrospectively to try to prosecute traders. But if you do that, apply your standard universally. The law is supposed to be applied universally. If manipulation of LIBOR to make it false was bad by traders, it was also bad by central banks. It was also bad by government officials. But what we know now is that it's something that really all of your listeners, I think, would be interested to know. Somebody who knows all this, somebody who knows all about the evidence that pointed to the top and hasn't made it public, somebody who's watched has 37 people have been prosecuted, watched as banks have paid $9 billion of fines, and then the US courts have subsequently said, no, this was all nonsense the case against them. Well, that's somebody is the man Joe Biden appointed to regulate Wall Street.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The market for borrowing euros can't be market factors. It can only be national factors, and you can see it. I've set all that evidence out in a timeline which is publicly available. It's called Rigged You Be the Judge. If you Google that in my name, you can see the timeline and you can hear the evidence yourself and look at the data that shows that all the banks were dropping at once. Now, the only way that can have happened is coordinated by a national central bank. And then there's other evidence, other audio, which suggests there's a call from Barclays to the UCB, where the ECB is hinting that banks are going to be told to lower their euro rates. And altogether, what a former government prosecutor in the UK has said is overwhelming evidence of orders from the top to lower libel. In the case of the Fed, the evidence of the direct instructions is less clear. It's more in the realm of rumour. Well, why is Chase come into the market when no one else is? Why is it giving a below market bid? The rumor at the time was that the Fed had asked it to do.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Prime Minister, and 11 Downing Street is where the Chancellor is. So the evidence indicates that it was coming from Downing Street, the pressure to lower libel. Whether Downing Street knew the LIBOR was already fraudulent, I can't say or not, and therefore whether it was instructing a fraud, I don't know whether Downing Street knew at the time. Did anyone tell them? That's the sort of thing that a public inquiry could perhaps try to establish, which is what David Davis MP and John McDonnell MP have been calling for. But you do have plentiful evidence of instructions coming from the top. The evidence of instructions coming from the top in Europe is also pretty strong. You look at the data and you can see that all the French banks, for example, suddenly drop their URI borimits of the cost of borrowing euros all at once by more than they've ever dropped before, more than they did after 9-11. So how does that happen all at once just in France, but not in Germany when they're all dealing in the same market?”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, if that was all the evidence there was, that would be one thing. But that chimes in with evidence from the same day that came out in Parliament in 2012 where Paul Tucker of the Bank of England got in touch with Bob Diamond, who was the boss, the American boss of Barclays at the time, or actually he was deputy at the time. He later became boss. He got in touch with him and said gave him a suggestion that Barclays should get its LIBORs down that came from Whitehall from the government. And then we have further evidence set out in the book that indicates that the pressure was coming from Downing Street. So 10 Downing Street are a version of the White House.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The bottom line is you're going to absolutely hate this, but we've had some very serious pressure from the UK government and the bank thinking about pushing our libels lower. Below a realistic level of where I think I can go money. PJ, I'm completely 100% on your side on this. You and I agree that it's the wrong thing to do. I am as reluctant as you are, and these guys have just turned around and said, just do it.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's one smoking gun which is as good as any journalistic smoking gun you could get, which is the audio evidence, the phone call that I referred to earlier between Mark Deerlove, incidentally the nephew of Sir Richard Dearlove, who is the head of the security services in the UK at MI6. But that's just an indication of his background. Mark Dearlove, I'm getting in touch with Peter Johnson and telling him to lower his LIBOR below what it really is. And it's very clear from that audio. You can listen to it yourself, that it's telling him to do something against his wishes that's ordered from the top, from the Bank of England and the UK government.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People at the Bank of England, at the Federal Reserve, at the BBA, which manages LIBOR, were very aware of this, and they were kind of pulling the strings. But the people who often, the people who are caught on tape are the traders who are saying, oh, yeah, the Bank of England said this, the Bank of England said that. Take us back to 2007. What is the evidence of the higher ups blessing or, you know, telling people, no, keep LIBOR low? You know, in other words, where's the smoking gun of people at the very top saying manipulate LIBOR lower instead of the cash traders keeping LIBOR low and the people at the top approving of?”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sink and your innocence swim and you'll be hanged as a witch or burned as a witch. So it's kind of similar to some extent. If you went to try and say, no, I'm honest, I didn't do anything wrong, likelihood is your life would be destroyed and you'd be prosecuted and you might end up in jail. But if you went along with something you didn't believe, then you might be all right. And that comes out really clearly in the book. So here we've got now this caused a splash in parliament, this book when it was published. in the middle of last year and the mps on both left and right asked for there to be a parliamentary inquiry we haven't got that yet but we do have these courts of appeal hearings and if they do reverse the convictions we've already had like one guy tom hayes who was initially sentenced to 14 years in jail if they overturn those convictions well it basically reverses more than 10 years of cover up more than 10 years of what may turn out to be having prosecution”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, bankers have paid their fat bonuses and their pensions and they get away with it. There seems to be no accountability. And anger really came down when the regulators put out their statements condemning Barclays in June 2012. And here we had a whole week of it where all this anger was fizzing up in Parliament and the public and the media. And people saying, we need criminal prosecutions. And so they got criminal prosecutions. The serious fraud office in this country had decided a year before that there was no case, that they weren't going to prosecute it. But they changed their minds for political reasons because there was so much noise in Parliament. So in a way, in that regard, we're not that different to the witch trials of the past, where in Salem or in England early 17th century, there was a hysteria against a certain group of people. And, you know, the evidence and the trials were twisted. There's an element of sink or swim as well here, you know, the witches were told.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The book sets out how power and wealth can manipulate justice and at the hands of banks cooperating with prosecutors a lot of scapegoats were thrown under the bus and carried the can effectively for the financial crisis because this all blew up in 2012 in the UK. The crisis had happened in 2007-2008. There was a huge public anger that was festering over the fact that no banker had seemed to pay any price for all the irresponsible reckless lending that we were bailing them out for them all the taxpayers were being told we've got to go through austerity, we've got to repair the public finances, we've got to cut back public services.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you look at the actual maths, usually the requests by the traders of their cash desks before the crisis to put LIBOR high or low were of a range of one or two or three basis points max. So no more than 0.03 percentage points, no more than three hundredths of a percentage points, usually two or one, not enough to materially damage the amount that small banks in the states would collect for lending at LIBOR. Whereas the lowballing was really damaging and people were collecting a lot less than they would have done and banks actually went under for it. And people made money as well, the banks, by understating what they were really paying to borrow cash. They gained a commercial advantage. It really was a fraud. So where you have evidence of a fraud, including audio evidence, that it was ordered from the top, that's not prosecuted, whereas it was for something that wasn't a fraud at all. That's kind of why it's rigged.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And so I wonder is the reason that victims of lowballing was able to find victims of lowballing, but it was not able to find victims of traitor's request Low balling was all one directional. All the banks were saying Liber was lower than it actually was, whereas HSBC is too high by five basis points. Lloyds is too low by five basis points. And so that didn't affect the overall reported Libor.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of them went under and had to be rescued by the US taxpayer. They'd lost some mitigation about it, and they went under because LIBOR was too low. So those were real victims. In all of the trials of the traders for asking for these tiny requests for adjustments commercially within the range of rates on offer, in all of those trials, there was never one victim produced. And real victims, in a way, are those people who've been prosecuted and those people who lost money. But what makes me still indignant about it is that no one has investigated the original wrong, the low balling during the crisis. And it's only by publishing a book that anybody knows about this and a radio series you can listen to the global tapes before if you want to hear the story before you buy the book, you can give that a listen. The global tapes by BBC. And that will give you a short condensed account of the story and why the real crime has been covered up while what the US courts now say wasn't a crime.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And because everybody's so afraid of the US courts, because you get threatened with a great big jail term if you go to trial and you don't win and you could get off with no jail. Ironically, the most honest, those guys who are saying, no, I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. It was just what had always been the practice. It was a commercial thing, high or low within the range where cash was trading. And the US courts have eventually agreed with that. The UK courts may too. But it still shocks me to reflect, really, Jack. Although you can frown if you like on commercial quoting, which is what we really looking at here. No, banks on charities. They do what's according to their self-interest. And the traders in doing that are actually doing their job. The job is to uphold the bank's self-interest as much as they possibly can. And arguably, the central bankers too were only doing their job. But look at who had the victims. The victims were of lowballing. There were banks who'd lent out loans at LIBOR. And therefore, because it was too low, we're collecting less money than they needed to fund.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The offers coming in. So the cash traders would have look at the office on the market, one would be from JP Morgan, one would be from, say, HSBC, Beijing or something. And one would be a 3.45, one would be at 3.43. If the desks wanted it low, they could reflect the lower offer. If the desk wanted it high, they would reflect the higher offer. But both of them were accurate answers to the LIBOR question at what interest rate could you borrow. And so long as they were answering that accurately, they weren't making any false statements. And that's what the US court originally said. But instead of acknowledging that and seeing that early on, the prosecutors and authorities had what I regard as confirmation bias. So when they were going through the evidence, they looked at the lowballing evidence. Okay, that's clearly false. 20 or 30 basis points off the truth, right? With this, it's still within the band of the truth. But instead of saying, okay, well, that's fair enough and understanding properly, they just pushed ahead with their case.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Morally right or wrong. I mean, what the US courts have now decided is that there was no law or rules against them. What they were doing was commercial, I think, rather than amoral. No one's ever, there were never any complaints from victims throughout nine criminal trials on both sides of the Atlantic. There was never one victim produced. And that was for a really good reason, that no one could identify any losses. They didn't identify any losses. They didn't even identify the theory of the crime was this. So just to explain what traders' requests were, the people who were prosecuted. had made requests every day. Could we have a high libel? Could we have a low libel? And it was their job to look at the trading position of the bank and say, is it in which way is the bank facing? Is it in our interest for libel to go high or for it to go low? When they were making a request from the cash test, those swaps traders, they were saying, could we have it high or low? They weren't saying where? They weren't saying up here or down there because it was only the cash traders who could see.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The true scandal and the cover up is lowballing, and that goes all the way to the top central banks, SEC, Bank of England, Fed. Yeah, I would agree with you, but I would say I don't necessarily think that traders' requests are morally right or any way, but I would just say that the point of your book is that there's something that was way, way worse that was covered up.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The stated LIBOR rates. And yeah, I think people who have a belief of what your LIBOR often referred to as Euro dollars or your futures, LIBOR futures, euro dollar futures, the euro dollar curve, people refer to that as the truth as, oh, this curve is telling us this. There's a message in this curve. I mean, and as well as Librar has been replaced by SOFA security overnight financing rate, people say Sofur is horrible. We need to go back to the days of Libor. I think that is just those they're driving off an intellectual cliff and this book rigged is a guide to rescue people from that. That is just so, so wrong because your book reveals just how, as the book says, rigged it is. And by the way, you're saying, okay, the people who went to jail for these things that weren't a crime of, I don't have a word for it, but not lowballing, but just...”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when you say central banks were encouraging the banks to lower their rates of LIBOR, make it lower. I mean, they would want the banks to lend at lower rates, but the banks aren't going to do that. So instead, they said lower the stated rate. So basically lie and encourage them. I just want to, a few things I want to highlight. Earlier you referenced Sterling. Of course, that's you'll reference the UK currency, the British pound. When we're talking about real rates, we're not talking about inflation adjusted rates, we're talking about true rates compared to”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This had and kept from the public in Congress and never followed instead of prosecuting the fraud, the real fraud, the real lie that pointed to the top, they went after something that the US courts now say wasn't a fraud at all.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By his boss, Mark Dear Love to push his rates down in the middle of the crisis on the 29th of October 2008, just a few days after the Fed's been told that rates are too low, he's told to make them even lower. And he's reluctant to do it. He doesn't want to be telling even more of the lie than most of the banks already are, but his boss, Mark Dilov, tells him that the instructions come from the UK government and the Bank of England. And the evidence in the book suggests that that was actually an international thing. So that was just after there'd been a meeting of G7 finance ministers and also an emergency meeting in Paris of Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel and other world leaders how to manage a crisis. They talked about coordinated moves. They talked about how it had to be coordinated at a national level. And just at that same time, you can see on the charts the rates for LIBOR and Euribor go down. So there's really strong evidence that the prosecutors who knew about”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly, especially when prices are concerned. So prices are not a true or false reflection of some underlying commodity. They always also reflect other commercial considerations. So, you know, the price of lemonade might go up when it's hot and down when it's cold, you know, the price of an airline ticket might cost more when you're closer to the date because the airline has an interest in planning. So it gives people discounts for booking early. Those aren't any con. You know, the electrician might charge you more for coming out on the weekend. Is he conning? No, he's not. These are just commercial considerations. And what happened though was the information about lowballing came bubbling out during the crisis. Wall Street Journal printed stuff about it. The regulators started looking into it. But lowballing was inconvenient to prosecute because it pointed to the top. You're going to have the Bank of England implicated, the UK government. There's a tape where Peter Johnson, a Barclays trader, is instructed.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bid or offer, and so if I a good example is if you ask me the price of oranges today, how would I give you an answer? Well, I'd probably go online and look it up at my local store. What's it? What's it at Costco? What's it at Walmart? They're not going to have exactly the same prices on their oranges. They'll have a small range, a few pennies apart, right? So how do I choose between those? Well, I can flip a coin, you know, but if I happen to be in the oranges business, you know, I might prefer the price of oranges to be lower if I'm a net buyer or higher if I'm a net seller. So should I ignore that consideration about the fact that I'm a net buyer or a net seller? Well, the law now says you must, otherwise you're doing something corrupt. But actually at the time they were just thinking, well, there's nothing to choose between them. We might as well choose the one that's in our interest. So they were quoting commercially. If I ask me for a price on your house and I said it's going to be $245,000, $113, you'd look at.”
2024-01-16 · Forward Guidance · Andy Verity on LIE-BOR: Shocking New Evidence Suggest Interest Rate Scandal Is Much, Much, Bigger Than Originally Reported · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT