the british megabank barclays made some mad dollah dollahs illegally manipulating the so-called libor which stand force the london interbank offered rate, not to be confused with the european interbank offered rate or euribor. euribor of course also what you say to anybody talking about libor. now here's how libor works. every morning each of the big london banks has to tell the british banking association the lowest interest rate at which it thinks another bank would lend it money. now how does each bank determine their own rate? it's a complicate product ses that is of vos a multitude of factors like investor confidence, the money supply, the human anus and yanking things out of it. (laughter) but mostly just those last two. then-- (cheers and applause) round of a plaus for the human anus. then, then that libor rate is used to set interest rates everywhere on earth. well, of course not everywhere. just places that use money. i believe emperor penguins on the roth ice shelf are not affected. now here's the wrinkle. the banks that determine libor also employ traders who make bets on w

and as many as 20 other megabanks are now under investigation, including citigroup and jpmorgan chase. one m.i.t. authority on finance says, "this dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scams in the history of markets." all this explains why i wanted to talk to sheila bair. she's a hero to many of us for her long fight for an honest and accountable banking system. after years working on capitol hill, at the treasury department, the new york stock exchange and the commodity futures trading commission, she was appointed by president george w. bush to head the federal deposit insurance corporation, the fdic. now as senior advisor to the pew charitable trust, sheila bair has just organized a private group of financial experts called the systemic risk council. among its members, former fed chairman paul volcker, former senators t bilbradley and alan simpson, john reed, once the chairman of citigroup, and brooksley born, the former cftc chairman who back in the 1990s accurately predicted an economic meltdown. its mission, to prevent the banking industry from scuttling the reforms creat

the megabank posting better than expected earnings, getting a boost from a surge in mortgage activity in the u.s. and signs that losses for loans gone bad are starting to shrink. the bank hopes to resume paying shareholders a dividend next year. it revealed it has received inquiries from investigators in kwekz with the libor rate fixing investigation. >>> when it comes to funding college, the bank of mom and dad is cutting back according to a new study from sallie mae. apparent contributi parent contributions dropped to 28% of the total this year. faced with higher tuition, more families are shifting to lower-cost schools. 29% of students are attending two-year community colleges this year. that's up from just 21% in 2010 with more than half of the students living at home, the trend even among high-income families making more than $100,000 a year. a student loan trip from student finance experts, if you do take out a loan, a student starts freshman year paying $25 a month towards interest can save 30% in interest charges over the life of the loan and pay it off five years faster. if y

. >> it is certainly easy to imagine -- let me put it this way -- megabanks that borrowed money were advantaged by manipulation of libor that artificially pushed it down, correct? >> it's possible. >> if that happened, the taxpayer was disadvantaged? >> if you read carefully the s.e.c. settlement documents, you'll find that the attempted behavior went in both directions so what you don't now know is what impact that had on the rate itself or the direction of the impact. that's a very important issue and it's an issue which those agencies and the other agencies that are part of the council are going to examine very carefully. it's going to be a matter of litigation as well. >> you knew when using libor that it was manipulated so there was that potential so why did we use it? >> that's not quite accurate what you said. we knew the way the rate was designed as i said fully in the public domain that the rate was designed where banks, mostly foreign banks, were presented estimates of what they might pay to borrow across these different currencies and therefore as you might expect, any rat

. >> hell has frozen over and pigs are flying because the godfather of big megabanks is saying, waitarate investment banking from personal banking. sandy weill. >> why the change now? >> well, listen to what he said on cnbc. >> so i think what we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking and have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not going to be too big to fail. >> he says the world is different today than it was 10 years ago, and it deserves a different kind of a system i guess. when you talk about big banks, ceos flip flop, another person got a lot of attention this week. phil purcell, former ceo of morgan stanley. he said there's one benefit of break-ups that hasn't gotten much publicity. shareholders would get greater value for their investments. breaking these companies into separate businesses would double to triple the shareholder value of each institution. so you're hearing from people who have long been champions of big banks, financial market innovation, financial supermarket, who are now saying maybe shareh

issue a year ago because they were the lowest tier capital one rating of the three or four or five megabanksthey made movements. >> charge-offs and provision for credit loss $1.77 billion. >> they do say we always look to bank of america because it's one out of every two households has some form of banking for the chief executive officer, brian moynahan, making comments about how it is a challenging global economy. that's what we've heard from all of the ceos we've listened through. they make some improvement in terms of that tier one capital. >> it helps to have an atm around. >> you should on every corner. >> you know why? if you do bank at bank of america, you know the biggest thing you don't want to do is $3. you know what i mean? >> it's gotten up to $3. it wasn't always $3 and. >> if you go to your own, they don't do it. >> just for the charges. >> a buck and buck seven five. >> i take as much as i can, because it's the smallest percentage. >> i know. >> you're lowering your fees. >> you're in manhattan. you can go to chase, and it's free. >> really? >> there's joint rate every corner

kaptur: when six wall street megabanks control 2/3 of the wealth in our nation, it's too much economic power in too few hands. when undisclosed billionaires spend billions on political campaigns and they crush the voices of ordinary citizens, it's too much political power in too few hands. america must put an end to the influence of secret money on our elections. the disclose act of 2012 would shine the light on the secret money in political campaigns, but the republican leadership won't bring it up. even though americans, 3/4 of our voters think campaign finance reform is a key issue for the election, and 69% of the public believes that superpacks should be illegal. jet house republican leaders refuse to bring up the disclose act. it's long past due that we put power back in the hands of other ordinary citizens. let's rechannel the billions being wasted on campaign overkill to help our seniors afford food and balanced the national budget. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back. the chair lays before the house a message. the clerk: to

. >> it is certainly easy to imagine -- let me put it this way -- megabanks that borrowed money were advantaged by manipulation of libor that artificially pushed it down, correct? >> it's possible. >> if that happened, the taxpayer was disadvantaged? >> if you read carefully the s.e.c. settlement documents, you'll find that the attempted behavior went in both directions so what you don't now know is what impact that had on the rate itself or the direction of the impact. that's a very important issue and it's an issue which those agencies and the other agencies that are part of the council are going to examine very carefully. it's going to be a matter of litigation as well. >> you knew when using libor that it was manipulated so there was that potential so why did we use it? >> that's not quite accurate what you said. we knew the way the rate was designed as i said fully in the public domain that the rate was designed where banks, mostly foreign banks, were presented estimates of what they might pay to borrow across these different currencies and therefore as you might expect, any rat

. >> it is certainly easy to imagine -- let me put it this way -- megabanks that borrowed money were advantaged by manipulation of libor that artificially pushed it down, correct? >> it's possible. >> if that happened, the taxpayer was disadvantaged? >> if you read carefully the s.e.c. settlement documents, you'll find that the attempted behavior went in both directions so what you don't now know is what impact that had on the rate itself or the direction of the impact. that's a very important issue and it's an issue which those agencies and the other agencies that are part of the council are going to examine very carefully. it's going to be a matter of litigation as well. >> you knew when using libor that it was manipulated so there was that potential so why did we use it? >> that's not quite accurate what you said. we knew the way the rate was designed as i said fully in the public domain that the rate was designed where banks, mostly foreign banks, were presented estimates of what they might pay to borrow across these different currencies and therefore as you might expect, any rat