Monday, 2 July 2012

FT Alphaville » Libor manipulation and the invisible whistle

There was a piece in the Telegraph on Sunday that may well sum up the thoughts on the Libor scandal of many who worked, or are still working, in banks. It’s called “Libor scandal: How I manipulated the bank borrowing rate“. It gives a sense of how it is that a hell of a lot of people didn’t question the manipulation of the rate.

Frankly, anyone with a Bloomberg terminal in 2008 would have been in on this, as one could see that the rates various banks had submitted did not reflect where they could fund. Deals were getting torn apart all over the place because no one could ramp up funding at a decent rate, despite what those screens said.

People knew how Libor was constructed, that it was a survey with barely a disciplinary mechanism in sight (other than being kicked off a panel, which seemed a ridiculous threat when so many were lowballing rates at the same time).

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