Letter to the Editor: Congressional Candidate Bill Roberts Rails Against LIBOR

In the past week, it has been revealed that the LIBOR, the mechanism which directs the setting of interest rates throughout the trans-Atlantic financial system, has been a lie. The LIBOR (London Inter Bank Offered Rate) is the average interest offered on inter-bank loans reported by the top private investment banks that make up the British Bankers' Association. For the past several years, the LIBOR has essentially been rigged against bond issuers, like municipalities and states, costing them millions upon millions of dollars in artificially high interest payments.

Don't call this “insider trading” as if this were just another scam where the big banks won out against the little guy. Call it what it is: murder. In recent years, municipalities like Detroit have been forced to reduce police and firefighters to levels that have cost many residents their lives.

Leaders of municipalities and states that have been put through such horrors need to stand up and demand that these bankers be sent to jail for crimes against the American people. This includes Timothy Geithner, who knew about the LIBOR scam as President of the New York Federal Reserve and did nothing, thus allowing the murderous scam to continue for another four-plus years.

Local officials must reject budget cuts that endanger the lives of residents and instead fight for the alternative: the immediate re-implementation of the Glass Steagall Act. It will end the bailout of these criminals, which has gone on for four years, first under Bush and Paulson, and now, under Obama and Geithner. Glass Steagall breaks up the too-big-to fail-banks, separating un-payable gambling debts from legitimate assets. With Glass Steagall in place, federal credit can be made available to rescue services essential to the protection of the lives and well being of the American citizen: police, fire, hospitals and schools. This will function as part of a Federal Credit System, organized to bring about gainful re-employment of the American workforce, much in the same way that Franklin Roosevelt utilized the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to issue Congressionally authorized bills of credit.

LIBOR-gate is not a scandal. It is an indictment of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system, a system rotted out with the un-payable toxic debts created in the wake of massive banking deregulations. It is the giant lie behind the mantra that was used to justify the $30 trillion in bailouts to Wall Street: “we must maintain the health of the investment banking sector.”

Even the presidential candidacies of Obama and Romney, whose top campaign contribution bundlers carried out this scam, are not exempt from the doom of this now dead system. There is still time before the Democratic National Convention to dump Obama from the ticket and select a candidate who is not tied to the largest murder and theft operation on the planet.

Bill Roberts (D-MI), LaRouche National Candidates Slate
Redford, MI 

Bill Roberts is running for U.S. Congress to represent Michigan's 11th Congressional District against fellow Democrat Dr. Syed Taj of Canton, Republican Kerry Bentivolio of Milford and several Republican write-in candidates, including Nancy Cassis of Novi and Drexel Morton of Canton.