Friday 13 July 2012

LIBOR scandal may cost banks $22 billion

Analysts at Morgan Stanley opened up an Excel spreadsheet and tried to calculate the potential costs of the the LIBOR scandal. Potentially 11 bans are in frame for a mega-fine from US and UK regulators. Morgan Stanley reckon that banks could be hit with fines and penalties amounting to $22 billion.

However, will any banker actually go to jail? So far, it doesn't seem like it.

We want to see a sizable number of these villains taking the perp walk. We need to see a couple of high profile early morning raids in Mayfair. The authorities need to apply the heavy boot of policemen upon the doors of those devious bankers responsible for fixing LIBOR.

The time for fines is over. We need to see arrests.

7 comments:

Richard said...

And who would pay that $22bn? Not the banks, for sure. They would just pass it on to their customers. The little man pays, yet again.

amit said...
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Kitz said...

Having taken out large loans tied to the llibor rate I don't know if I am better or worse off , with their crooked fixing.
I do know it would be totally uneconomic to find out .

Electro-Kevin said...

Bankers need to go to prison to... pay their debt to society.

Maximum security.

It doesn't add up... said...

I agree. There is little point in parliamentary or judicial enquiries. Time to get the cuffs out - in Whitehall and Parliament too perhaps?

Jim said...

@Richard: of course 'the banks' wouldn't pay the $22bn, 'the banks' don't actually exist. They are a legal entity, they have no money of their own. All the money would come from real people, as all taxes do, of one type or another. Either from the investors in the business (shareholders/bondholders), or from the customers (in the form of higher prices) or the employees (in the form of lower wages or loss of employment).

Any punitive fine on 'the bank' is merely a punitive fine on all the people who own, work for and use banks. Which is pretty much everyone in one form or another. Many people have private pensions, which will be partly invested in banks, hundreds of thousands are directly employed in the banking sector, and 99.9% of people use the services of banks.

Richard said...

Jim, that was my point. Fines for these people are meaningless, just as when a hospital or local authority are 'fined'. It's just shuffling money around, and you and I will pay in the end. That's why prison sentences for the guilty are the only way. I see the price of piano wire is rocketing.