Max Keiser: Too Big to Fail Banks Are Stopping You From Getting 5 Percent on Your Savings

Max Keiser: Too Big to Fail Banks Are Stopping You From Getting 5 Percent on Your Savings

The LIBOR interest rate manipulation by Barclays, and various other banks including the Bank of England has a bias toward manipulating rates lower. Low rates feed the speculation that drives the biggest profit centers of the Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks. Central banks are not independent, but centralized rate setting and money printing institutions created by large banks to serve large banks and they engage in the bias toward lower rates. Ostensibly, central banks fill the role of 'lender of last resort.' In fact, central banks are now the primary lender to large banks -- at zero percent interest -- with the role of 'lender of last resort' now being played by savers and pensioners whose accounts are being drained as interest rates are manipulated lower.
The banking lobby misrepresents the situation in two ways. First, they foster the belief that the economy needs lower rates to 'get going.' Second, the banking lobby likes to pretend that there is no alternative. In the first case, lower rates -- by and large -- have the effect of lowering the value of a country's currency and destroys its purchasing power and this drags the economy down. In the second case, we do have an alternative. A perfect example is the Burnley Savings and Loans in the U.K. run by Dave Fishwick, an entrepreneur who got tired of the lies and deceit at the big banks and decided to open his own.