LIBOR Ain’t Nothing But an Acronym: We Must Abolish the Finance Capitalist Class

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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The LIBOR scandal is only a big deal, in that it shows once again that global capital is a thoroughly criminal enterprise. Tinkering will not do – the class that created the system must be disempowered. The $1,000 trillion derivatives casino “is a bomb – a world-threatening monstrosity – that must be dismantled.” LIBOR is merely “a gauge on the console of the bankers’ crime machine.”

LIBOR Ain’t Nothing But an Acronym: We Must Abolish the Finance Capitalist Class

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The system itself is a criminal enterprise that preys on the entire planet.”

The latest finance scandal concerns the LIBOR, the acronym for the interest rates banks offer each other for loans. Because the LIBOR rate is used as the basis for so many other financial calculations, some people say the scandal is potentially the biggest in the world. And then, there are those of us who wonder if the LIBOR case, in and of itself, really matters at all.

It is almost as if a bank has just been robbed, and the customers are all worried about the way that the robbers are calculating the value of the loot. The fact of the matter is, the robbery was an inside job. In this case, it appears that virtually all the big bankers and the people who were supposed to be regulating them were in on the crime – although, so far, only Barclays Bank in Britain has been fined. The banking system was not victimized by some shadowy group of predators who could be quarantined – after which all would be well. No, the system itself is a criminal enterprise that preys on the entire planet. What we have observed, most dramatically since the meltdown of 2008, is that the banksters who run the global financial criminal enterprise also control the political mechanisms of the western world. The state and, ultimately, the people pay the cost of the bankers’ crimes. Not only are the criminals not punished, they are rewarded with trillions of dollars in virtually free money from world’s central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve. This allows them to grow even bigger, and to commit ever larger criminal transactions, which the banks ultimately record as profits or pass on as losses to the public at-large.

“It appears that virtually all the big bankers and the people who were supposed to be regulating them were in on the crime.”

Mathematically speaking, the biggest impact of LIBOR rate-fixing occurs in the world of derivatives, a universe inhabited solely by finance capitalists. The realm of derivatives dwarfs the one in which the rest of humanity lives. There are, perhaps, $1,000 trillion in derivatives hovering over a real world economy that is valued at only $70 to $80 trillion a year. That means the derivatives economy that is the playground of Wall Street is 12 and-a-half to 14 times bigger, on paper, than the real economy. Put another way, the bankers routinely place bets that are bigger than the real world’s actual worth – much, much bigger than the value of all the goods and services produced by every man, woman and child on the planet. Clearly, the derivatives trade is a bomb – a world-threatening monstrosity – that must be dismantled.

The public’s interest is not in how phony LIBOR rates affect the prices of a thousand trillion dollars in derivatives. Rather, humanity desperately needs to abolish the derivative trade, altogether, before it crushes the real economy.

To abolish derivatives, we will have to put the banking class out of business.

Noted economist Nouriel Roubini says some of the bankers ought to be hanged in the streets, to teach them a lesson. What’s certain is, if you don’t hang them, they will use their control of the government to hang thousands of you. Forget LIBOR. It’s just a gauge on the console of the bankers’ crime machine. The criminal class, itself, must be eliminated from public life.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.