Login with Facebook to see what your friends are reading Enable Social Reading i Mark Gongloff Mark Gongloff Chief financial writer, The Huffington Post GET UPDATES FROM Mark Gongloff Like 760 Tim Geithner Admits Banks Bailed Out With Rigged Libor, Costing Taxpayers Huge Amount

Mark Gongloff: Tim Geithner Admits Banks Bailed Out With Rigged Libor, Costing Taxpayers Huge Amount

Timothy Geithner claimed on Wednesday that the government had no choice during the financial crisis but to lend to banks and AIG using an interest rate, Libor, that everybody knew was flawed.
Call it a back-door bailout: By using an artificially low Libor, the government saved the banks and AIG millions, maybe billions -- and cost the taxpayers the same amount.