Fed Knew LIBOR Rigged, Gas Prices Also Likely Rigged, Money Laundering by Banks & Vatican
Revealing News Articles
July 24, 2012

Dear friends,

Below are key excerpts of important news articles on regulators at the Fed knowing that the LIBOR rate was rigged in 2008, the high likelihood that gas prices are also rigged by traders, major banks and the Vatican being involved in money laundering, and more. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails to function, click here. The most important sentences are highlighted. And don't miss the "What you can do" box below the summaries. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can and will build a brighter future.

With best wishes,
Tod Fletcher and Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info

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Special note: For a very good summary by researcher David Wilcock which ties together a lot of loose ends on the financial manipulations and exposures going on, click here. For unreported news on high-level NSA whistleblower Andrew Drake revealing how the NSA has secretly being working towards total surveillance, click here. For the inspiring video "The Story of Change" from the makers of "The Story of Stuff," click here. For an intriguing exploration by a man who claims to have communicated extensively with the spirit of his dead wife, click here.

Libor: They all knew – and no one acted
July 14, 2012, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/libor-they-all-knew--and-no-one-acted-7942451.html

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic failed to act on clear warnings that the Libor interest rate was being falsely reported by banks during the financial crisis, it emerged last night. A cache of documents released yesterday by the New York Federal Reserve showed that US officials had evidence from April 2008 that Barclays was knowingly posting false reports about the rate at which it could borrow in order to assuage market concerns about its solvency. An unnamed Barclays employee told a New York Fed analyst, Fabiola Ravazzolo, on 11 April 2008: "So we know that we're not posting, um, an honest Libor." He said Barclays started under-reporting Libor because graphs showing the relatively high rates at which the bank had to borrow attracted "unwanted attention" and the "share price went down". The verbatim note of the call released by the Fed represents the starkest evidence yet that Libor-fiddling was discussed in high regulatory circles years before Barclays' recent �290m fine. The New York Fed said that, immediately after the call, Ms Ravazzolo informed her superiors of the information, who then passed on her concerns to Tim Geithner, who was head of the New York Fed at the time. Mr Geithner investigated and drew up a six-point proposal for ensuring the integrity of Libor which he presented to the British Bankers Association, which is responsible for producing the Libor rate daily. Mr Geithner, who is now US Treasury Secretary, also forwarded the six-point plan to the Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on regulatory and financial corruption and criminality, click here. For our highly revealing Banking Corruption Information Center, click here.

Regulators and HSBC Faulted in Report on Money Laundering
July 16, 2012, New York Times
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/scathing-report-details-money-laundering-problems-at-hsbc

The global bank HSBC has been used by Mexican drug cartels looking to get cash back into the United States, by Saudi Arabian banks that needed access to dollars despite their terrorist ties and by Iranians who wanted to circumvent United States sanctions, a Senate report says. The 335-page report released [on July 16] also says that executives at HSBC and regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ignored warning signs and failed to stop the illegal behavior at many points between 2001 and 2010. The problems at HSBC, Europe's largest financial institution, [are] indicators of a broader problem of illegal money flowing through international financial institutions into the United States. The report on HSBC is the latest of several scandals that have recently rocked global banks and highlighted the inability of regulators to catch what is claimed to be widespread wrongdoing in the financial industry. The British bank Barclays recently admitted that its traders tried to manipulate a crucial global interest rate, and multiple major banks are under investigation. JPMorgan Chase disclosed last week that its employees may have tried to hide trades that are likely to cost the bank billions of dollars. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has come under particularly harsh criticism for showing too much deference to the banks it regulates.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on regulatory and financial corruption and criminality, click here. For our highly revealing Banking Corruption Information Center, click here.

Was the petrol price rigged too?
July 12, 2012, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fuel/9401934/Libor-scandal-Was-the-petrol-price-rigged-too.html

Motorists may have been paying too much for their petrol because banks and other traders are likely to have tried to manipulate oil prices in the same way they rigged interest rates, an official report has warned. Concerns are growing about the reliability of oil prices, after a report for the G20 found the market is wide open to "manipulation or distortion". Traders from banks, oil companies or hedge funds have an "incentive" to distort the market and are likely to try to report false prices, it said. Petrol retailers use oil price "benchmarks" to decide how much to pay for future supplies. The rate is calculated by data companies based on submissions from firms which trade oil on a daily basis – such as banks, hedge funds and energy companies. However, like Libor ... the market is unregulated and relies on the honesty of the firms to submit accurate data about all their trades. This is one of the major concerns raised in the G20 report, published last month by the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). In the study for global finance ministers, including George Osborne, the regulator warns that traders have opportunities to influence oil prices for their own profit. It points out that the whole market is "voluntary", meaning banks and energy companies can choose which trades to make public. IOSCO says this "creates opportunity for a trader to submit a partial picture in order to influence the [price] to the trader's advantage".

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on regulatory and financial corruption and criminality, click here.

Prosecutors investigate Vatican Bank mafia link
June 10, 2012, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/9323288/Prosecutors...

Anti-Mafia prosecutors have asked the secretive Vatican Bank to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation. The official request was made more than a month ago but so far the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, has refused to disclose any records of the account held by father Ninni Treppiedi – who is currently suspended from serving as a priest. Investigators want to know more about vast sums of money that are said to have passed through his account to establish if they were money laundering operations by [the fugitive] Mafia Godfather, Matteo Messina Denaro. The reports emerged in the Italian media and came just two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was sacked amid claims of power struggles and corruption within the Holy See which have been linked to the leaking of sensitive documents belonging to Pope Benedict XVI. It is not the first time that the Vatican Bank has been embroiled in claims of Mafia money laundering. Thirty years ago this month financier Roberto Calvi was found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge with cash and bricks stuffed into his pockets. Initially City of London police recorded the death as suicide but Italian authorities believe it was murder after it emerged Calvi, known as God's Banker because of his links to the Vatican Bank, had been trying to launder millions of pounds of mob money via its accounts and through his own Banco Ambrosiano which had collapsed spectacularly.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on institutional secrecy, click here.

Prostate cancer surgery won't boost survival in men with early-stage disease, study finds
July 19, 2012, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57475720-10391704/prostate-cancer-surgery-wont-boost...

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds men who opt to surgically remove their prostate gland - a procedure called a radical prostatectomy - are no less likely to die than men who choose wait and monitor their symptoms to see if the cancer progresses. The study adds to the ongoing debate surrounding prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing and whether the tests pick up cancers that may be too slow-growing to ever cause a problem. In May, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force ... reported in its final recommendation that healthy men of all ages should not take a PSA test because the potential harms from a positive test outweigh the benefits from catching the cancer early. The researchers found that out of 364 men who had their prostate removed, 171 died (47 percent), and 21 of those men (6 percent) died from prostate cancer or treatment. In comparison, 183 of 367 people who were assigned for watchful waiting died (50 percent), and 31 of the men died from prostate cancer (8 percent). The differences between groups were not statistically significant, meaning prostate cancer surgery did not significantly reduce the men's risk of dying from the cancer or any cause, as compared with the observation approach. Within two years of surgery, the researchers found that 81 percent of the men who underwent the procedure experienced erectile dysfunction, 17 percent had urinary incontinence with symptoms such as "dribbling" or having "no control over urine," and 12 percent reported bowel dysfunction.

Note: For revealing reports from reliable major media sources on health issues, click here.

Abuse Scandal Inquiry Damns Paterno and Penn State
July 13, 2012, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/sports/ncaafootball/13pennstate.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

In 1998, officials at Penn State, including its president and its legendary football coach, were aware Jerry Sandusky was being investigated by the university's police department for possibly molesting two young boys in the football building's showers. They followed the investigation closely, updating one another along the way. The officials did nothing. No one so much as spoke to Mr. Sandusky. Last month, Mr. Sandusky, for three decades one of Joe Paterno's top coaching lieutenants, was convicted of sexually attacking 10 young boys, nine of them after the 1998 investigation, and several of them in the same football building showers. Louis J. Freeh, the former federal judge and director of the F.B.I. who spent the last seven months examining the Sandusky scandal at Penn State, issued a damning conclusion [on July 12]: The most senior officials at Penn State had shown a "total and consistent disregard" for the welfare of children, had worked together to actively conceal Mr. Sandusky's assaults, and had done so for one central reason: fear of bad publicity. That publicity, Mr. Freeh said, would have hurt the nationally ranked football program, Mr. Paterno's reputation as a coach of high principles, the Penn State "brand" and the university's ability to raise money as one of the most respected public institutions in the country.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on institutional sexual abuse, click here. For powerful evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government, click here.

Stand-off looms over U.S. plans to cut GMO crop oversight
July 17, 2012, Chicago Tribune/Reuters
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-usa-agriculture-biotech...

Efforts to write benefits for biotech seed companies into U.S. legislation, including the new Farm Bill, are sparking a backlash from groups that say the multiple measures would severely limit U.S. oversight of genetically modified crops. From online petitions to face-to-face lobbying on Capitol Hill, an array of consumer and environmental organizations and individuals are ringing alarm bells over moves they say will eradicate badly needed safety checks on crops genetically modified to withstand herbicides, pests and pesticides. The measures could speed the path to market for big biotech companies like Monsanto and Dow Chemical that make billions of dollars from genetically altered corn, soybeans, cotton and other crops. "They are trying to change the rules," said George Kimbrell, senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety, which has lawsuits pending against government regulators for failing to follow the law in approving certain biotech crops. "It is to the detriment of good governance, farmers and to the environment." As early as next week the U.S. House of Representatives could take up one of the more controversial measures - a provision included in the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations bill known as Section 733 that would allow biotech crops to be planted even if courts rule they were approved illegally. Opponents call it the "Monsanto Rider" because Monsanto's genetically altered alfalfa and sugar beets have been subject to court challenges for illegal regulatory approvals.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the dangers of genetically modified organisms, click here. Multiple reliable sources show that you may be eating genetically modified food daily which scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause sickness and even death in lab animals. Click here to verify.

New Homeland Security Laser Scanner Reads People At Molecular Level
July 11, 2012, CBS-DC (Washington DC CBS affiliate)
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/07/11/new-homeland-security-laser-scanner-reads-people...

The Department of Homeland Security will soon be using a laser at airports that can detect everything about you from over 160 feet away. This laser-based scanner ... could read everything from a person's adrenaline levels, to traces of gun powder on a person's clothes, to illegal substances – and it can all be done without a physical search. It also could be used on multiple people at a time, eliminating random searches at airports. The scanner is called the Picosecond Programmable Laser. The device works by blasting its target with lasers which vibrate molecules that are then read by the machine that determine what substances a person has been exposed to. The inventor of this invasive technology is Genia Photonics. Active since 2009, they hold 30 patents on laser technology designed for scanning. In 2011, they formed a partnership with In-Q-Tel, a company chartered by the CIA and Congress to build "a bridge between the Agency and a new set of technology innovators." Although the technology could be used by "Big Brother," Genia Photonics states that the device could be far more beneficial being used for medical purposes to check for cancer in real time, lipids detection, and patient monitoring.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government threats to privacy, click here.

Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?
March 13, 2012, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/article/166757/why-president-obama-keeping-journalist-prison-yemen?page=full#

On February 2, 2011, President Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two discussed counterterrorism cooperation and the battle against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At the end of the call, according to a White House read-out, Obama "expressed concern" over the release of a man named Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whom Obama said "had been sentenced to five years in prison for his association with AQAP." It turned out that Shaye had not yet been released at the time of the call, but Saleh did have a pardon for him prepared and was ready to sign it. But ... Abdulelah Haider Shaye is not an Islamist militant or an Al Qaeda operative. He is a journalist. Shaye risked his life to travel to areas controlled by Al Qaeda and to interview its leaders. He also conducted several interviews with the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. Shaye did the last known interview with Awlaki just before it was revealed that Awlaki, a US citizen, was on a CIA/JSOC hit list. "We were only exposed to Western media and Arab media funded by the West, which depicts only one image of Al Qaeda," recalls his best friend Kamal Sharaf, a well-known dissident Yemeni political cartoonist. "But Abdulelah brought a different viewpoint." Shaye had no reverence for Al Qaeda, but viewed the group as an important story, according to Sharaf.

Note: We generally avoid using sources with a strong bias like The Nation, but as none of the other major media have touched this most important story, we're including it here. For more on this revealing story, click here and here

US recession's other victim: public universities
July 19, 2012, MSNBC/Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48249642/ns/us_news-life

For generations, most college-bound Americans paid reasonable fees to attend publicly financed state universities. But the bedrock of that system is fracturing as cash-strapped states slash funding to these schools just as attendance has soared. Places like Ohio State, Penn State and the University of Michigan now receive less than 7 percent of their budgets from state appropriations. As a result, public universities – which historically have graduated the majority of U.S. college students – are eliminating programs, raising tuition and accepting more out-of-state students, who typically pay significantly higher rates. The upshot of it all? Students face greater competition for admission, significantly higher tuition bills and bigger debt loads upon graduation. The state cutbacks also mean students are attending larger classes, frequently taught by part-time professors earning dismal salaries. In 2009, less than a quarter of all university faculty were full-time, compared with 45 percent in 1975, according to the American Association of University Professors. State and local spending for public university students dropped to a 25-year low in 2011. Tuition and fees at public, four-year colleges have jumped by more than 70 percent on average over the last decade. Those costs hit $8,240 in 2011-12, up from $4,790 in 2001-02.

Note: Is the military more important than education? Why do huge military budgets continue to be well funded while educational budgets are slashed? Is this the future we want to give our children?

What is Media Manipulation? A Definition and Explanation
July 16, 2012, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholiday/2012/07/16/what-is-media-manipulation...

Media manipulation currently shapes everything you read, hear and watch online. Everything. In the old days, we only had a few threats to fear when it came to media manipulation: the government propagandist and the hustling publicist. They exploited the fact that the media was trusted and reliable. Today, with our blog and web driven media cycle, nothing can escape exaggeration, distortion, fabrication and simplification. Media manipulation is the status quo. It becomes, as Daniel Boorstin, author [of] The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, once put it, a "thicket ... which stands between us and the facts of life." Today the media -– driven by blogs -– is assailed on all sides, by the crushing economics of their business, dishonest sources, inhuman deadlines, pageview quotas, inaccurate information, greedy publishers, poor training, the demands of the audience, and so much more. These incentives are real, whether you're the Huffington Post or CNN or some tiny blog. They warp everything you read online. Everyone is in on the game, from bloggers to non-profits to marketers to the New York Times itself. And when everyone is running the same racket, the line between the real and the fake becomes indistinguishable. Media manipulation exploits the difference between perception and reality. This all happens because of the poor incentives. When readers don't PAY for news, the creators of the news don't have any loyalty to the readers. To combat these manipulations, we must change the incentives. If we want loyalty to the truth, we must be loyal to the people who provide us with it. This probably means paying for information in one form or another.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable sources on mass media cover-ups and distortions, click here. Thanks to the generous support of our readers and our lack of advertising, WantToKnow.info is one of the few news sources not subject to pressure from financial incentives which drive news manipulation for others. To support our work so that we can continue to be free of these market pressures, click here.

Researchers blame antibiotics in chicken for superbugs transmitted to women
July 11, 2012, WCPO-TV (The Cincinnati ABC affiliate)
http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/health/healthy_living/researchers-blame-anitbiotics...

Medical researchers tell ABC News that more than 8 million women are at risk for hard-to-treat bladder infections, because superbugs from chicken are being transmitted to humans. If the researchers are right, there is compelling new evidence of a direct link between the superbugs and the antibiotic-fed chicken we buy at the grocery store. The Food and Drug Administration says 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the US are fed to livestock and chickens to protect them from disease in cramped quarters. Researchers say they do not have a definitive link between the E. coli in chicken and infection in women, but they say there is "persuasive" evidence that chicken carries the same bacteria with the highest levels of resistance to medicine as causes the drug resistant infection in women.

Note: For revealing reports from reliable major media sources on health issues, click here.

Parties Perpetuate Illusion of Differences
July 19, 2012, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Tax-debate-is-over-1-butler-or-3-3721215.php

For all the superheated rhetoric of yet another election cycle, it's as clear as ever that the Republican and Democratic parties in Washington pretty much support the same economic policies. Indeed, any honest perusal of congressional votes proves that the party establishments are roughly the same when it comes to financial deregulation (less of it), job-killing free trade (more of it), bailouts (more of them) and corporate taxes (less of them). Politicians and partisan media outlets deny this obvious reality, of course. But they do so because they have a vested interest in the red-versus-blue "polarization" narrative from which they generate campaign contributions and ratings, respectively. It's also why more Americans are tuning out of politics. Pretending this is some big divide is a farce. Both parties are proposing to enrich the already rich while hiding the two-headed monster behind a mask of conflict.

Note: For a powerful essay revealing the deeper agenda behind largely fabricated polarizations, click here.

U.S. must do more to fight false ads
July 18, 2012, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/U-S-must-do-more-to-fight-false-ads-3714639.php

The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a settlement in the largest health care fraud case in U.S. history. The ruling, which included accusations of false advertising, forced the once widely respected British drugmaker, GlaxoSmithKline ... to pay a record-shattering $3 billion to various plaintiffs and the Department of Justice. Despite this $3 billion settlement, advertising fraud is on the rise in the United States. Expert public relations teams are called in to spin stories and confuse consumers. It is clear there is not enough being done to prevent, stop or resolve matters of false advertising in this country. The effect of the GlaxoSmithKline case has yet to be fully seen. If GlaxoSmithKline is [creative and deceptive] then we might see it roll out ads that skew the $3 billion loss in its favor - blatantly distorting the ruling as an endorsement of its products. At this point, even as regulators secure record-breaking settlements, the American people are losing, and the corporate spin teams are winning, the fight. Record settlements mean little if the deception continues. While winning lawsuits is a first step, what really matters is changing corporate behavior.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.

One Random Act of Kindness Turned $93 Into $100,000!
August 27, 2010, Yahoo! News
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/one-random-act-of-kindness-turned-93-into-100-000-2375828.html

Let's say you were at Trader Joe's Menlo Park, Calif., and you saw a woman standing at the checkout counter who couldn't find her wallet. Would you pick up the tab? Well, that's what Carolee Hazard did last summer. When she saw that Jenni Ware wasn't able to pay the bill because her wallet was missing, a knee-jerk reaction inspired her to hand over $207, the exact amount Ware needed for her groceries. The next day, Hazard received a check for $300 in the mail and a thank you card from Ware suggesting that she use the extra $93 dollars to get a massage. Uncomfortable with keeping the money, Hazard asked her Facebook friends what they'd do. Several suggested giving it to charity, which Carolee liked a lot, and she decided to match the money with $93 of her own. Again, she turned to her Facebook friends asking to whom should she donate the $186. Given the food connection, she decided to donate the money to her local Second Harvest Food Bank. To her great surprise, a friend added another $93. So did another and another and another! Soon the story was being posted and reposted on Facebook, inspiring others to donated as well. Thus was born the 93 Dollar Club. In just one year, the 93 Dollar Club has raised a whopping $100,000 for Second Harvest.

Note: For lots more highly inspiring articles from the major media, click here.

Man Celebrates 65th Birthday by Giving Away Free Money
July 13, 2012, Yahoo! News
http://shine.yahoo.com/work-money/man-celebrates-65th-birthday-giving-away-free-money-174400395.html

Doug Eaton wanted to celebrate his birthday on June 11 in a big way, so he turned to his friends for ideas [and] ended up marking the day with random acts of kindness, including handing out free money to people passing by. "I asked a bunch of my friends ... what should I do on my 65th and I got a whole long list of stuff," he told KFOR-TV. "And one of my friends said, 'Why don't you do 65 random acts of kindness?'" So that's exactly what he did, spending 65 minutes standing on the corner of NW 39th Street and May Avenue in Oklahoma City, handing out $5 bills to people who passed by. From a distance, Eaton looked a bit like any other panhandler holding a sign at a street corner. But instead of a plea for money, his sign read: "I have a home... and a car... and a job. Do you need a few bucks for some coffee?" Many people murmured "I can't believe this" or "bless you" as he handed them the cash. Others were reluctant to take his money, and he had to tell them "It's OK, it's just a blessing" and explain that this was his way of celebrating his milestone birthday. "This day has been one of the biggest blessings of my recent life," he [said]. "I don't know if I can wait until another birthday to do this again. But what if it became a habit? Or what if everyone or a lot of people did their birthday number of random acts of kindness on their birthday? How good would that be?"

Note: For lots more highly inspiring articles from the major media, click here.

Please note that most of the summarizing of the revealing news articles in the above summary was done by Tod Fletcher of WantToKnow.info. Many thanks to Tod for all the time and skill he puts into this. The box below provides several ideas on what you can do to spread the news.

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