The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap Highlight

It also came out during this investigation that Timothy Geithner himself knew about some of the LIBOR shenanigans, as far back as 2008. But he did nothing about it other than send a letter to the Bank of England with some recommendations for how to prevent future manipulations. When asked why he didn’t contact the Department of Justice to help it begin a criminal investigation, Geithner essentially said that the DOJ had access to the information from media reports and didn’t need his help. The primary banking regulator in America didn’t contact the Justice Department because he said it could read about the case in the newspapers! Forced to answer questions about the LIBOR incident in Congress, Geithner was presented with a transcript of conversations between a Barclays employee and a Fed official in which the Barclays employee admitted to fixing LIBOR rates. “Is there any element of criminal fraud that isn’t admitted to in this transcript?” North Carolina Democrat Brad Miller asked Geithner, wondering aloud how someone could openly admit a crime to a government official, a regulator no less, and not face charges for it. Geithner avoided the question, saying that lawyers were working on the issue. By then, four years had elapsed since the scandal.