While here in the US, we are barely hearing a peep about it in our mainstream news, in Europe, the LIBOR scandal is being understood as the greatest financial scam perpetrated thus far in the kleptocratic 21st Century.  LIBOR shows that a handful of banks have used their power — which is supposed to be limited by honest statistics — to define the interest exchange value of currency dishonestly and to their own advantage.   It is being revealed that these “banks” (and they hardly qualify as banks anymore) have been dishonestly manipulating the unthinkable sum of approximately 800 trillion dollars  on a regular basis.

For those who have been decrying the occult (hidden) nature behind our signifiers of value, this scandal provides the greatest opportunity ever to demand that the issuance and valuation of currency be made transparent to all.

Indeed, for those who have been trying to expose — or at least start a discussion about — the arbitrary nature of contemporary monetary value, LIBOR is not merely the last best lesson but an opportunity to flip the script.  Rather than being perceived as trying to “upset the apple cart” by trying to delegitimize the value of currency, advocates for transparency can actually be in the forefront of legitimizing or religitimizing currency on a global scale, while at the same time, opening space for diverse, multiplex, independently coded “alternative” currencies that lean towards transparent and nonhierarchical values.

LIBOR throws everything open, including the legitimacy of national debts and deficits and provides an opportunity to carefully and intelligently hit the reset button in a way that everybody — or almost everybody — wins.  Grab hold of this puppy for dear life and use it to end the scarcity/austerity squeeze.