Rate-swapping

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 pm, July 1st, 2012 - 13 comments
Categories: Economy - Tags:

Another scandal in Britain’s banks – interest rate-swapping on small business loans. Banks offered small businesses supposedly low hedging insurance on interest rate movements, knew they could get cheaper rates themselves because they had better market information, and pocketed the difference as guaranteed profit.

The process is explained in this Q+A. It would be interesting to know if the same thing happens here.

13 comments on “Rate-swapping ”

  1. bad12 1

    On one level this is right up there with Monty Pythons Flying Circus,one absolute gut-busting laugh right down to ‘The Bankster’s’ having thought the scam through to the point of ‘what would happen when caught fiddling the deals’,

    The Banksters get to choose the referee in the form of an assessor who determines The Banksters level of responsibility and what compensation if any will be paid,

    I havn’t heard of ‘hedging’ occurring between Banks and business in New Zealand over changes in interest rates, the ‘hedging’ scam here began with US based Banksters playing havoc with the value of the NZ Dollar so as to create a climate of uncertainty among NZ Exporters and thus the Banksters were able to plug the export sector into paying ‘hedging insurance’ to protect themselves from sudden erratic movements in the NZ Dollar,

    Once exporters were hooked firmly into ‘the need’ to have ‘hedging’ the US Banks at the center of the scam were able to stop their machinations in moving the NZ Dollar erratically either way and concentrate on the profits to be made from selling ‘hedging’ to NZ exporters,

    Slippery although never directly tarred with the smell of this unethical behaviour was non-the-less working in the industry and for one of the ‘firms’ which specialized in the plundering of our and various other country’s currency’s, and the Prime Minister could sure as hell tell us a few good yarns about by who,and how, these particular scams were dreamed up,

    ‘Too big to fail’ these banks at the center of such unethical behaviour may be, BUT, if their illegal and unethical behaviour is not strictly curtailed the ism of capitalism will be collapsed by the fifth column within,

    There can be only one reasonable outcome of such behaviour of these banks and that is the seizure of all their assets lock, stock, and barrell as being the proceeds of crime, anything else from any country’s Government will simply be seen as weakness by the psychopath’s heading and working in these institutions of finance and an encouragement to carry on with such immoral,unethical,corrupt, and, illegal processes…

  2. Colonial Viper 2

    Time to make basic banking a utility for the public good. Oh yeah, and take away private banks ability to print money into an economy by the creation of debt. Force them to become strict savings and loans operations.

    • RedLogix 2.1

      At some point there will have to be an accounting CV. Because the entire system is built on trust, without which it will grind to a halt.

      I have no idea what event will trigger this, when it might happen or how it might play out. But my gut feeling is that there are two monstrous forces at work here, one being the sheer inertia of the system, the extraordinary power of the embedded interests that are propping it up… the other being the immensity of the human overshoot, the crisis of some many resources peaking all at once, and the absolute inability of any political system to respond intelligently.

      Sooner or later the outrageously inflated fabulousness of the existing system will be punctured by reality on all fronts. I’d have to guess it will be ugly. Yet with all my heart I wish for something different.

      • Colonial Viper 2.1.1

        Sooner or later the outrageously inflated fabulousness of the existing system will be punctured by reality on all fronts. I’d have to guess it will be ugly. Yet with all my heart I wish for something different.

        Reminds me of a mate of mine. People ask him, hey, when peak oil and peak debt hits, what is it going to be like?

        He always replies…just look around.

        and the absolute inability of any political system to respond intelligently.

        This is a major problem. Although central government could do so much, its simply not going to do enough in time. Schemes which increase community based localisation is going to have to be the (imperfect) answer.

  3. Hami Shearlie 3

    I’ve heard there is an investigation going on into the behavior of all the big banks in the UK (I think) going right back into the 1990’s! Wonder what Slippery was getting up to at Merrill Lynch in the UK then?? Be funny if something emerged that embroiled Slippery up to his neck. Oh, one can only dream!!

    • Slippery was up to his neck in the Derivatives trade and the currency wars destabilising the Thai Bath and the other Asian currencies which was an exercise in Naked Short selling (speculating in Currencies on a truly massive scale without actually owning any of them) in order to destabilise their economies and take over with the IMF and buying their assets for cents on the dollar. Exactly what he is doing here now.

      Johnnie Derivatives Key is a very bad boy indeed with a massive conflict of interest to boot.
      What is interesting is that only a couple of weeks ago Johnnie Derivatives Key met with Mervyn King the Governor of the Bank of England and that this “Central/Reserve” bank is now drawn into the LIBOR scandal.

      You’d think that Johnnie Derivatives Key would be disgusted and shocked about this scandal and demand an investigation into how New Zealand which invested $112 Billion off the books in derivatives in recent years which rely heavily on the LIBOR ratings might have been affected.

      But perhaps he doesn’t do that because on breakfast TV a while ago he said that the bankers must have known in their heart of hearts that they would never get the money invested in Derivatives back indicating he knows full well what the hell is going on.

      • ghostwhowalksnz 3.1.1

        The Koreans got very upset over a bit of market manipulation of their currency, which originated out of Hong Kong.

        The plunge occurred during a G10 summit or something in Korea, which meant the hosts lost face. A small group of traders from one of the usual suspects were responsible.

      • Herodotus 3.1.2

        from reading your links you were going to respond to Theo as to his questions regarding netting off the effect of derivatives on the govts B/S. There are valid reasons for this I could think of, in the respect of instruments like SWAP’s. But does the govt have to follow IAS standards in reporting and if so then would they not have to revalue such derivates and report the de/re valuations into the current surplus/deficits of the govts accounts.

  4. DH 4

    One trick banks here used to play was reducing the rate on savings plans, not sure if they still do it (they probably do). My bank would promote to its customers a savings plan with a reasonably high interest rate. People would swap to it. Then the bank would, over time, cut the interest rate to almost zero. They know that most people won’t notice, few people work out a percentage in their head when they get a statement, and even if they did notice it would take a long time for everyone to move to another savings plan. Then they’d start again with a new savings plan…

  5. I think you will find that there are many other World Wide national and international banks involved, not just the UK.
    This is only the tip of the iceberg.
    Banks as far away as Singapore and HongKong are possibly involved.
    Not the Aussie banks – they are too small.
    All will be revealed shortly.

  6. Herodotus 6

    Would not the RSB have an obligation to inform the authorities as criminal actions may have taken place ?
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rbs-sacks-four-of-its-traders-over-liborfixing-scandal-7902731.html

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2166379/RBS-boss-Stephen-Hester-forgoes-bonus-revealed-IT-glitch-originated-Edinburgh-NOT-India.html
    How is it that “The Bank” pays fines when they result from the actions of boards and senior managers ?
    “The bank is thought to have accepted that it will probably have to pay about half as much as the £291 million in fines imposed on Barclays, according to the Times.”
    and if such action is held that criminal activity took place this is where white crime deserves lengthy time as a guest of HMP.
    “A string of mis-selling cases has rocked the financial services industry for over two decades and banks are already likely to pay upwards of £9 billion in compensation for mis-selling loan insurance.” and from people who after being bailed out by the tax payers for them to return to their removed business practices all obscene bonuses!!!
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rbs-sacks-four-of-its-traders-over-liborfixing-scandal-7902731.html

    • mike e 6.1

      The UKTory front bench is going to look very thin very soon this is a much bigger scandal than MP’s troughing.Camorons front is deeply mired in these scandals any attempt to side line them will only make the corruption worse.
      Keys mates could be spending in the old bailey.
      Key is being surrounded by more and more scandal he’s in bedded and indebted to these global pariahs
      The bigger the crime the less the time behind bars
      Goldman Sachs is under investigation for their part in the Greek scandal.
      As well as the sub prime scandals.

  7. Herodotus 7

    from reading your links you were going to respond to Theo as to his questions regarding netting off the effect of derivatives on the govts B/S. There are valid reasons for this I could think of, in the respect of instruments like SWAP’s. But does the govt have to follow IAS standards in reporting and if so then would they not have to revalue such derivates and report the de/re valuations into the current surplus/deficits of the govts accounts.

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