It’s hard not to laugh when some NeoLib Freshwater Friedmanite starts pontificating about ‘the invisible hand of the Market’ and ‘price discovering rational actors’ when it’s such a load of fucking bullshit.
Those concepts were developed by Adam Smith in his book Wealth of Nations in response to the prevailing practice of Royal Grants of Monopoly and Crony Capitalism as part of the Merchantilist system of Colonial wealth extraction and prohibitive Tariffs designed to protect ‘favored’ industries and individuals.
He spends far more time in that work inveighing against collusive business interests that form cabals and monopolies to engage in price fixing, a “conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices” to maximize the amount “which can be squeezed out of the buyers”.
Smith also warned that a business-dominated political system would allow a conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers, with the former scheming to influence politics and legislation. Smith states that the interest of manufacturers and merchants “…in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.”
This is NOT “Free Enterprise”, it is a criminal enterprise and should be prosecuted under RICO–
HSBC, JPMorgan and Credit Agricole charged with alleged euro rates fixing
Reuters
Tuesday 20 May 2014 14.25 EDT
Brussels has charged Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC, its US peer JPMorgan and France’s Crédit Agricole with rigging financial benchmarks linked to the euro.
The European commission said it would soon charge the broker ICAP for suspected manipulation of the yen Libor financial benchmark.
…
Prosecutors have charged 16 men with fraud-related offences.“The commission has concerns that the three banks may have taken part in a collusive scheme aimed at distorting the normal course of pricing components for euro interest rate derivatives,” the commission said.
The three banks and ICAP, which refused to settle the case in December, could face penalties of up to 10% of their global turnover if found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules.
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