Political Quotes

“Mr. President, It was recently revealed that at least one bank--Barclays Bank of Great Britain--attempted to manipulate LIBOR over a 4-year period beginning in 2005. LIBOR stands for the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate. This rate is a benchmark used by industries all over the world to set interest rates for nearly $800 trillion worth of financial instruments. LIBOR determines how much people across the world pay for student loans, mortgages, and credit card fees. The higher LIBOR is, the more it costs a college student to borrow money for school or a business to obtain a line of credit. This means that people across the world with student loans, mortgages and credit cards, and municipalities selling bonds may have paid more to borrow money because of Barclays' actions. Barclays settled with U.S. and British authorities and paid over $450 million in penalties to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and British regulators. Now, as many as 20 megabanks, including several U.S. banks, are under investigation or named in lawsuits alleging they also rigged LIBOR. Over the next several weeks and months we will learn more details about exactly what happened. But it seems clear we are facing a scenario that is all too familiar: the largest banks have once again put greed and profit above the best interests of their customers and the economies of at least six nations, including the United States.…”