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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Wharton Grad Confuses Libor And Libra During Powell Hearing; Hilarity Ensues

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Confusing money laundering and overnight funding rates when speaking to the Fed chairman is embarrassing. It is positively humiliating when the confused person is also a Wharton grad.

That's what happened to Democratic Representative from Georgia's 13th district, David Scott.

After a brief preamble, in which Scott urged Powell to "stay strong and courageous" – maybe even join the #resistance, why not – as it is important for the world that the "Fed remain strongly independent" and both "democrats and republicans got your back", he got right to business declaring that "this Libra business is really disturbing and it’s a serious problem. Let me tell you why…first of all, I think we all know, Libra is the London Interbank Offered Rate, very critical. It has and is the standard for the base rate for hundreds of trillions of dollars, both overnight and term loans, debt, derivatives; and it is the standard that has been used internationally and extensively in the United States, affecting individuals, small businesses, large corporations. So we got a big issue here."

"But because of pervasive manipulation, it is apparent that Libra is going to leave us, be removed within the next year or so" he droned on, clearly seeking to impress the world with his extensive Wikipedia-derived knowledge of a major transition in the overnight funding world, where SOFR is set to replace the current regime.

Of course, the Wharton grad was off from the beginning, and instead of discussing Facebook's attempt to control every monetary transaction with its own "cryptocurrency" token, which incidentally is anything but a cryptocurrency, was discussing Libor.

Luckily for Scott, Powell was smart enough to grasp what was going on and promptly responded to the representative's question, without missing a beat or even correcting him.

Twitter, however, was far less forgiving and during today's House Panel hearing, which was less about monetary policy and more about a free ad for Facebook's attempt to compete with Bitcoin, unleashed a wave of far more appropriate responses, to wit:

 

And so on.

Once again, this is a member of the House Financial Services Committee – one of the supposedly "smart" ones – and he is also a Wharton grad. And yes, these are the people crafting the financial legislation for over 300 million Americans.

Watch the full exchange 54 minutes into the hearing.

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