Mark Vorpahl \u00a0|<\/p>\n
<\/strong>Though, for most, the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate (Libor) interest rate fixing scandal appears to be distant and far too complex to understand, its potential consequences may be as economically devastating as a world war.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Libor\u00a0is used to set payments on $800 trillion worth of financial instruments. It sets the prices that people and corporations pay for loans and receive for savings. Given that the fraud impacted $10 trillion in consumer loans, the Libor scandal will likely leave a long list of previous financial scandals that contributed to the Great Recession look like child\u2019s play.<\/p>\n It also pulls back the curtain on the mechanisms behind the world economy, its anti-social priorities, its willingness to gamble away the future of billions of people, and the government\u2019s collusion in these operations. The Libor scandal reveals that the \u201cinvisible hand\u201d Adam Smith spoke of in explaining how a capitalist economy regulates itself has been transformed into the trained hand of a swindler.<\/p>\n