Better fasten those seatbelts, Gentle Readers. A scandal over key interest rates is about explode globally.
From the Economist Staff: The most memorable incidents in
earth-changing events are sometimes the most banal. In the rapidly spreading
scandal of LIBOR (the London inter-bank offered rate) it is the very
everydayness with which bank traders set about manipulating the most important
figure in finance. They joked, or offered small favours…..
What may still seem to many to be a parochial affair
involving Barclays, a 300-year-old British bank, rigging an obscure number, is
beginning to assume global significance. The number that the traders were
toying with determines the prices that people and corporations around the world
pay for loans or receive for their savings. It is used as a benchmark to set
payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from
complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages. The number determines
the global flow of billions of dollars each year. Yet it turns out to have been
flawed.
Over the past week damning evidence has emerged, in
documents detailing a settlement between Barclays and regulators in America and
Britain, that employees at the bank and at several other unnamed banks tried to
rig the number time and again over a period of at least five years. And worse
is likely to emerge. Investigations by regulators in several countries,
including Canada, America, Japan, the EU, Switzerland and Britain, are looking
into allegations that LIBOR and similar rates were rigged by large numbers of
banks. …As many as 20 big banks have been named in various investigations or
lawsuits alleging that LIBOR was rigged….
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