Libor Scandal: British Documents Reveal Regulators Did Little

The New York Times:

As the interest rate manipulation scandal grips the banking industry, regulators have defended their actions and trumpeted their efforts to overhaul the flawed system during the financial crisis.

Read the whole story at The New York Times

Comments

[Dad of Marine]

03:35 PM on 07/25/2012

We as a people should have learned something from the Jonestown massacre, where members of the People's Temple, gave themselves up with nary a fight. They just believed in their master and perished.
Well, this is a little different but at the same time bears some resemblance. We as a country, as a people continue to just be sheep, just follow those in the 1% who control the purse strings by believing nearly everything they say. This is what has allowed them to control the rest of us, the 99% masses. They continue to tell us that what they are doing, their economic strategy is good for all of us, when in fact, all they care about is their own personal wealth and greed at the expense of the rest of us. We continue to spiral downward, the 99%, while they, the 1% greedy continue to take and take. When are we going to learn!

[l78lancer]

08:56 PM on 07/23/2012

There is a certain level of exhaustion that comes with calling these coward, COWARDS. Truly the lunatics were running the assylum, while the hired help stood in the rain and watched through the window.

[parrotfish]

11:52 PM on 07/22/2012

Those so called regulators are cowards and did not do their jobs. They should also go to jail as well for incompetence. If we can't depend on them, and the evidence so far says we can't, then the "barbarians" in the guise of the banksters are not just at the gates they are occupying the building behind the gates and have now shown themselves as having been in total and complete command for a very long time. Not that we needed anymore evidence.

[Skeetshooter]

07:01 PM on 07/22/2012

It's intellectually dishonest for governments to go after Somali pirates, drug cartels and tax cheats when our entire global banking system is one huge criminal enterprise. Citizen's United doubles down on this hypocrisy, and turns these criminals into the wholesale purchasers of elected office in what purports to be the world's leading democracy. We are rotten to the core. Time to sweep away the whole system and start over. Shame on the Supreme Court and its crony capitalist appointees. And shame on all of us for allowing it.

[SGillLondonUK]

02:46 PM on 07/22/2012

GOP should return any funds recieved from any LIBOR banks.

[ThugsDeserveHugs]

04:50 PM on 07/22/2012

More likely they'll get medals for their service. I'm a little tired of servicing the 1% and their backers of whatever Party myself.

[SGillLondonUK]

05:01 PM on 07/22/2012

Then you should do everything to help ensure that the other 99% vote them out

[AKARON]

02:29 PM on 07/22/2012

Timid regulators of bribe taking regulators? I find timid hard to believe, I am more inclined to believe bribes were being handed out than they were "timid".

[moby49]

12:05 PM on 07/22/2012

Come on, we all know the revolving door assures that industry 1) knows what's coming and 2) is shielded from accountability. Eliminate the revolving door and pay the regulators well if you want things to get better.

[AKARON]

02:29 PM on 07/22/2012

Id say they were being paid very well, by the bankers.

[crrunch]

11:50 AM on 07/22/2012

All these people gave up their rights to anonymity when they chose to work with other people's money. Can you say moral hazzard?

[MoiWirl]

10:58 AM on 07/22/2012

At least the UK isn't burrying the disaster. Not that much will change there either but we are not even covering the libor scandal in national media here.

[SGillLondonUK]

02:45 PM on 07/22/2012

The big banks are being broken up, and being forced to sell off part of their estate as punishment

[IgnoranceIsStrength]

10:55 AM on 07/22/2012

There has to be a cost to regulators for doing nothing or it will happen again. The name of Captain of the Exxon Valdez was public when he crashed a Ship. Why not the name of the people who helped crash the world economy ?

[centauro962]

10:47 AM on 07/22/2012

Step forward and speak up with names and documents of all those responsible of this scam all over the world, let start the trial of every single one of them.

[mikennz]

10:08 AM on 07/22/2012

So, tell me. If you're going to pay for government employees whose purpose it is to make sure nobody is breaking the rules and you're doing "little", then why have them? This is the conundrum even here in the US. Put in lots of regulation (which mostly just strangles business) and then not have it be effective because the government employees that are supposed to monitor either don't know what they're doing or don't really care. Let's cut the malarkey. If it ain't workin', then stop doin' it.

[IgnoranceIsStrength]

11:13 AM on 07/22/2012

Can you GOOGLE this up:

Somehow over the last 30 years our economic system, capitalism, has lost its way. Most citizens believe a free market means government should have no control how the private sector operates and should just get out of the way. This is contrary to the teaching of the founder of capitalism, Adam Smith, and one of its biggest advocates, Milton Friedman.

[mikennz]

06:34 PM on 07/24/2012

Our economic system has lost its way mainly because there is a complete lack of ethics.  It isn't taught.  In trying to fix some of these problems, the government has gone way over the top.  It winds up putting a full nelson on the business world, something the business world is in part at fault for.  Beyond that, if regulation is just a knee-jerk that isn't going to be effective, then stop wasting taxpayer money.  Government is just looking for headlines to make it look like they're doing something.  Obviously, it is failing.

[halfpricefaustian]

09:41 AM on 07/22/2012

If Geithner thought something should be done about libor, why did he send his suggestions to the BOE, which has no oversight of libor, and not to BBA or FSA?
When the British parliament was interrogating the major parties from Barclays, why did none of them ask them if they took their concerns to the BOE, FSA, or BBA, and if they did, when and to whom did they speak? Does anyone really believe that Barclays went first to the new york fed? I get the impression that all the parties that are responsible for the integrity of the financial system are mostly interested in making sure no one is punished for this.

[schatsie]

09:44 AM on 07/22/2012

Well that would halt the money flow to Washington...It was no just by chance that Abramoff could give away $25,000 golf jaunts.....

[mikennz]

10:09 AM on 07/22/2012

Because Geithner (imo) in incompetent and should be fired immediately. Nothing but an Obama mouthpiece making the rounds on Sunday morning.

[krazzicraig]

09:33 AM on 07/22/2012

The EU is slowly becoming a time bomb. There are good reason to believe this . When a group has never had any freedom and the goverment controls all ,it is easy to keep people from revolting . That is not the case in the EU. Million in the EU now believe their goverment has failed them and the banks are at the heart of the problem . As they see it ,it is the bankers controlling the goverment. This gives them who to blame for their problems. Think not ,then one only needs to look at the cause of WW2.

[gcymru5491]

09:27 AM on 07/22/2012

Time to send a dozen or so "greysuits" to the slammer...and hard time at that.

Banking and corp. CEO's and upper level mgrs. won't change their ways otherwise.

[schatsie]

09:31 AM on 07/22/2012

I hate to say this, but they did not learn from the 'Smartest Guys in the Room" going to jail....Time to apply Sarbanes Oxley and recover the wealth that resulted from this corruption.... Even Charles Keating, convicted of RICO for over a blllion dollars went to jail for 5 years at a country club prison.... Maybe send them to Rikers instead and cut off something important to them and I don't mean their right hand like the Arabs would do...Maybe cut off something like the Chinese would do....

[Hmmmmmmm7]

10:34 AM on 07/22/2012

Although I understand your anger, I think that what's really important to these kinds of criminals is their quest for money and power and control. If you want to have impact on them it would be important to remove what they value: ie money, power and control. Take away their assets, ban them from any financial institutions, post their sentences and where they serve them, have terms of their parole posted and monthly reports of how they are doing, huge amounts of community service time, etc.. Their sex drives have been sublimated into drives for money, control, and power. Just an idea.