LIBOR scandal: Barclays Chairman and CEO resign, mass confussion follows

I really don't know why you are making such a big deal out of this. The LIBOR really only effects a few hundred trillion dollars in transactions every year.

I think a lot of conspiracy theorists wonder if they jacked up everyone's rates or lowered their own around the time the US Treasury were wondering / asking if Barclays could have bailed out Lehman...though of course it may be a blessing in disguise they didn't as that would have just kicked the can further and further down the road. Once the meltdown took place the of course, then Merv King gave them a waiver by the looks of it to manipulate the rates by the looks of it. Now say the US Government and Hank Paulson refused to give matching funds to Barclays to bail out Lehman and then Barclays subsequently tried to borrow the money at a cheaper rate to save the investment banking industry? I don't know that Barclays could have swallowed up all that toxic debt anyhow, but the assets would have been covered under TARP so maybe we would have avoided this entire banking crisis to begin with, who knows.

Originally Posted by lutherf

I really don't know why you are making such a big deal out of this. The LIBOR really only effects a few hundred trillion dollars in transactions every year.

Well, politicians routinely don't...I wonder why hmmmm.

Originally Posted by Chloe

. . . Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg by the looks of it with a dozen banks around the world looking at similar if not the same case in conjunction with Barclays, of abuse of inter bank and lending practices. HSBC, Citi, UBS and others are all in the firing line atm.

Of course none of this even addresses the political fallout of all this including the apparent astonishing admission that the Deputy Governor of the Bank Of England managed to give the green light to all this years ago! Now the British leaders are bickering as to how best investigate all this, whether it be a select committee, judicial inquiry, public inquiry etc which is on top of the FSA investigating a civil investigation and the SFO to decide within a month or less whether to bring in criminal charges or not, too.

(link omitted)

It is likely Diamond will keep most, if not all of his compensation, 6 months of salary after a voluntary resignation, and will not lose most of his bonuses due to a time limit on claw backs, and will likely head back to the US, a multi-millionaire facing little to no punishment for any of his role in any of the rate rigging scandal.

. . .

That's it in a nutshell because we'll likely see this again. The banks have been doing shit like this all over the place. It's helped put the whole Western economy in the tank with damage so significant it will still hamper restoration to fiscal heath for quite a while. Did the politicians from the US across Europe permit it? Yep. Did they even know about it and look the other way with 'oversight' whilst it grew and then exploded? Yep. Did they ever enact or perform proper regulations to prevent it? Nope. It's no secret that they're in bed together. And here's how the game is played with the meltdowns...to make the politicians look good insofar as damage done, they hold these big 'investigations'. In the end, it's the same old shit...those who did it walk away with their wealth they gouged and leave the wreck on society to subsidise and suffer. Until actual regulations and oversights that are worth a shit are enacted and the public insists on it via the ballot box, and also--this is key--penal sanctions exist to imprison bad faith reckless banking officials with significant prison sentences where they're certain to die in prison for serious misconduct, this will continue.

ahoy Chloe,

imma glad ye posted this, but can ye explain to me in really, really simple terms what happened?

me low brow pirate intellect can grasp that this be a momentous thing, but beyond that i don't understand what hath occured. i've followed this tale in the New York Times, but i still can't quite understand whats goin' on. from the sound 'o it, this story should dominate USPO...i mean, this be a bigger development than the Treyvon Martin story, aye?

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York learned in April 2008, as the financial crisis was brewing, that at least one bank was reporting false interest rates.

At the time, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed official that “we know that we’re not posting um, an honest” rate, according to documents released by the regulator on Friday. The employee indicated that other big banks made similarly bogus reports, saying that the British institution wanted to “fit in with the rest of the crowd.”

Although the New York Fed conferred with Britain and American regulators about the problems and recommended reforms, it failed to stop the illegal activity, which persisted through 2009.

British regulators have said that they did not have explicit proof then of wrongdoing by banks. But the Fed’s documents, which were released at the request of lawmakers, appear to undermine those claims.

New York Fed Was Aware of False Reporting on Rates - NYTimes.com

it appears that thar was some kinda a) collusion or b) lookin' the other way, durin' this rate manipulation, and that seems important....but again, i don't quite understand the ramifications.

- MeadHallPirate

ps - what part 'o the forums be this, anyway?

Depends on where you posted it from / to as it will end up in both places. If you put it on the main page of the site (not to do with the forums) it would have been listed through the CMS:

http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/cont...n-follows.html

It reads as an article which i created, published and coded and through selective tool management copied the same through here as a thread, though i did copy one into the breaking news forum, too as this section of the site (The CMS forum and articles / content) is available to contributing members only. I haven't opened up the CMS yet for reading purposes to non registered members / guests because it will generate as the main search for our site through engines. I need to set out a very defined and rigid set of rules of what i and isn't acceptable, even from contributing members and staff alone in that one format, as our site will look functionally retarded to the rest of the world otherwise.

I specifically coded the copy to avoid the rest of the site having nowhere else to discuss the issue if they weren't contributing members, and you can really tell the difference between this version, and the version some of our more "trollish" posters have given a shot at:

LIBOR scandal: Barclays Chairman and CEO resign, mass confussion follows

Basically, we don't want that sort of crap all over the front page of the site and would rather it stayed clean and polite / professional.

You can create the articles accordingly not to have them copied though and the highest (platinum membership group) will also have the ability to use HTML / static eval / PhP code etc, along with publishing tools and all sorts of other fun that a photographer such as yourself could have fun with. I just need to put in the guidelines of use etc.

I will go through some of the replies in a bit and add my thoughts in, back to the original issue of the Scandal.

From what you hear about this issue, it has been an open secret for years that there was something wrong with the with the way the LIBOR is being determined. But that didn't seem to have any consequences at all. I guess during the 2008 crisis Governments and Regulators had other concerns. But given the importance or the LIBOR for derivatives, interest rates, etc. it's really hard to understand how how this was possible at all. Some traders, knowing each other, talking on the telephone .... that's it. Hardly any regulation at all it seems. The banks that participated obviously deserve the blame, but IMHO it is mainly a failure or rather a total lack of reasonable control and regulation. It's hard to understand how this was possible. But I wonder what the consequences for the future system will be, apart from some penalties. It's naive that you can avoid any scandals from happening with tighter regulation, but such loopholes have to be addressed in a proper way ... or the whole financial system will be compromised even more.