A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from July 05, 2012
Liebor or Limor (London Interbank Offered Rate or Libor nickname)

Entry in progress—B.P.
 
Wikipedia: Libor
The London Interbank Offered Rate is the average interest rate estimated by leading banks in London that they would be charged if borrowing from other banks. It is usually abbreviated to Libor ( /ˈlaɪbɔr/) or LIBOR, or more officially to BBA Libor (for British Bankers’ Association Libor) or the trademark bbalibor. It is a benchmark, along with the Euribor, for interest rates all around the world.

Libor rates are calculated for different lending periods: overnight, one week, one month, two months, six months, etc., and published daily at 11:00 by the British Bankers’ Association. Many financial institutions, mortgage lenders and credit card agencies set their own rates relative to (and typically higher than) Libor.
 
Introduction
In 1984, it became apparent that an increasing number of banks were trading actively in a variety of relatively new market instruments, notably interest rate swaps, foreign currency options and forward rate agreements. While recognizing that such instruments brought more business and greater depth to the London Interbank market, bankers worried that future growth could be inhibited unless a measure of uniformity was introduced. In October 1984, the British Bankers’ Association (BBA)—working with other parties, such as the Bank of England—established various working parties, which eventually culminated in the production of the BBA standard for interest rate swaps, or “BBAIRS” terms. Part of this standard included the fixing of BBA interest-settlement rates, the predecessor of BBA Libor. From 2 September 1985, the BBAIRS terms became standard market practice.
(...)
On 27 June 2012, Barclays Bank was fined $200m by The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, $150m by the United States Department of Justice and £59.5m by the FSA for attempted manipulation of the LIBOR and EURIBOR rates. The United States Department of Justice stated further that “the manipulation of the submissions affected the fixed rate on some occasions”.
   
Zero Hedge
Shocking Details Of Barclays Epic Lie-bor Fraud: “Duuuude…Whats Up With Ur Guys 34.5 3m Fix…Tell Him To Get It Up!”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/27/2012 09:54 -0400
(...)
Our advice to anyone who had an adjustable rate mortgage in the period between 2005 and today: speak to a lawyer immediately about suing the living feces out of Barclays, and all other banks who crawl out of the woodwork with purported settlements. Because due to their undisputed mark manipulation, it is absolutely safe to say that ARMs, which rely on Libor for interest rate formation, were grossly manipulated by the same idiot traders who left written evidence of their manipulation year after year. Now it is their turn to pay.
 
The Atlantic
‘Lie-Bor’ is an Existential Crisis for the Big Banks
By Matthew O’Brien
Jul 3 2012, 5:12 PM ET10
The Libor cheating scandal shows there is still something rotten in the state of banking.
What if I told you that Wall Street banks set the most important interest rate in the world by telling us what they think their borrowing costs are? You’d probably say that sounds like a bad idea. Why wouldn’t they just lie? And collude?
 
Shock of the century: That’s exactly what happened.
 
The big revelation—and I use that term lightly—is that Barclays deliberately manipulated Libor from 2005 through 2009. It’s already cost the Barclays Chairman, CEO, and COO their jobs—and they’re trying to drag Bank of England (BOE) officials down with them. But the rot likely doesn’t end there. A handful of other big banks—including JPMorgan, Citibank, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank—are under investigation as well.
 
Zero Hedge
Banking Regulators Drop Libor … Adopt New Standard
Submitted by George Washington on 07/04/2012 13:51 -0400
Given the loss of confidence in the big banks in the wake of revelations that they have been manipulating the world’s most important economic benchmark – Libor – regulators in the U.S. and UK have announced that they will abandon Libor and adopt a new standard.
(...)
They call it Limor (pronouced “LieMore”).
 
Unlike it’s predecessor, Limor – Let’s Immaculately Makeup Official-sounding Rates – reflects the prevailing view of the political class and top mainstream economists that bankers are saints who can do no wrong, whose every movement and release of gas creates jobs and stimulates the economy … in the same way that flowers spontaneously grow wherever a holy man walks.
 
Mortgage Introducer
LIE-BOR, integrity and ring-fencing
Richard Saunders, chief executive of the Investment Management Association, shares his thoughts on the latest scandal to hit the banking world.

5 July, 2012
“The revelation of attempts to manipulate LIBOR and other rates is truly shocking. Not just because of the impacts on financial contracts ranging from mortgages to derivatives. There is also a deeper reason.
 
“Capital markets require trust if they are to work well. If you cannot trust the intermediaries who make up those markets to operate with integrity, that has a corrosive effect on the whole system.

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New York CityBanking/Finance/Insurance • Thursday, July 05, 2012 • Permalink


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