Barclay's LIBOR manipulation

Graham_Devon

The share boards suggest that the serious fraud office may be looking to investigate this.

Graham_Devon

Wonder if RBS were involved?

That could get tricky!

ChrisDuane

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Wonder if RBS were involved?

That could get tricky!

On the BBC this morning they had Martin from Radio4's moneybox live in.

At the end he seemed to imply that all the trouble with Natwest/RBS and the banks in Ireland had something to do with this manipulation. The cover story about a computer glitch was just to distract from the truth.

JasonLVC

kabayiri wrote: »

'Interesting' take this morning from David Buik - BGC partners, on the radio.

He basically said that since the wholesale money market didn't really exist post-crunch, the LIBOR was indeed a fictional concept. How can you be guilty of manipulating fiction?

Well if LIBOR is a fictional concept....and my mortgages are tied to the fictional LIBOR rates, then can I make up my own interest rates, say 0% and tell the bank that this is the fictional rate i intend to pay for the remainder of my mortgage

...and if traders get bonuses based on LIBOR movements and those LIBOR movements are fictional, do they have to pay back their very real, non-fictional bonuses?:cool:

Wookster

If fraud (which is a criminal offence) is obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception, then why isn't manipulation of LIBOR a criminal offence that should see these traders and the senior managers who instructed them locked up for a few years?

Can someone with a legal brain explain this to me please?

worldtraveller

Cameron saying that Bob Diamond and Barclays' management team have some "serious questions to answer'".

Miliband is calling for a criminal investigation.

Osborne to make a statement to MPs at 12.15pm.

JasonLVC

worldtraveller wrote: »

Cameron saying that Bob Diamond and Barclays' management team have some "serious questions to answer'".

Miliband is calling for a criminal investigation.

Osborne to make a statement to MPs at 12.15pm.

Milliband is right, whether or not a conviction can be made, this still appears to be a criminal matter and so should be properly investigated by the police.

I'm not a bank basher, more a pragmatist but this LIBOR manipulation is just so wrong on so many levels as there really is no other basis for doing it other than for material gain.

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Wonder if RBS were involved?

That could get tricky!

Apparently RBS fired someone who tried to unduly influence their rate setters

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-27/rbs-rate-traders-sat-with-libor-setter-fired-employee-tan-says.html

I can't see Barclay's Bob Diamond surviving this. If he's got any sense he'll make the decision himself. This is by far the biggest pants down moment for the banks of the last few years.

The public don't understand LIBOR, but the language used in the exchanges will tell them all they need to know.

Can anyone hear a PPI style bandwagon being started up?

homelessskilledworker

And now this, after all the stuff with RBS and Fred the shred, undeserved bonuses, rigged AAA ratings, Bank bailouts etc etc.

Would anyone not believe that it is in the realms of possibilty that the property market is rigged.

GeorgeHowell

Nobody should be shocked or even surprised by this because :-

Successive governments, enthusiastically assisted by the civil service, have made the British economy more or less dependent on financial services to survive. Therefore much of the sector is "too big to fail" and conventional wisdom has been that nothing must be done to seriously curtail its activities

The Blair/Brown governments were very happy to lunch off tax from the financial sector in order to fund their profligate socialist programmes, without knowing or caring much about how the money was made. Therefore regulation of the sector was watered down to the point of almost complete ineffectiveness

We live in a largely wealth & status obsessed, godless society where honesty and integrity are seen as a charter for losers

Some large organisations have a way of overlooking unacceptable behaviour among subordinates in the quest for profit -- cf News Corporation

In a 180 degree turn, the old school "my word is my bond" senior bankers have been replaced by people like Bob Diamond

So the British banks in particular have been set up in all sorts of ways to develop a culture which grossly excessively rewards the making of short term gains for the banks by whatever means it can be got away with


Saying all of this might be accused of stating the bleedin' obvious by people who are in a state of shock and indignation at this latest revelation about the big banks. The same sort of accusation has been levelled today at Mr Alan Shearer for saying that the England football team are a million miles away from winning a tournament.

But in both cases it's true, in both cases too many people have been in denial for too long, and in both cases it will take a long, long time to rectify because it requires a major culture change. But look on the bright side -- at least the England football team cannot bankrupt the country.