  Published on Common Dreams   As US and European prosecutors
prepared arrest warrants, will banks escape scrutiny as traders
take fall?  Common Dreams staff  US prosecutors and European
regulators are close to arresting individual traders and
charging them with colluding to manipulate global benchmark
interest rates, according to Reuters.  Citing people familiar
with a "sweeping investigation" into the rigging scandal, the
report suggests that employees of Barclays, Citigroup, Credit
Agricole, HSBC and Deutsche Bank are the focus of indictments.
The focus of prosecutors will be on a "small group of traders"
from the various banks and not, it seems, high-level bank
executives in Europe or the US who may have known about or
condoned such practices.  Some observers wonder if the targeting
of low-level traders will allow for the systemic manipulation of
Libor by big banking institutions to escape the necessary
scrutiny.  The libor rate helps set the price for trillions of
dollars in financial products including