Crazy Bob Diamond’s signed – now blame Ed Miliband and Ed Balls for the LIBOR mess
SO. Bob Diamond has done it, resigned as CEO of Barclays, fallen on his sword and signed on for the dole we assume.
However, there’s a lot more to come out about this LIBOR rigging scandal than most seem to realise at the moment. For example, we’ve got Ed Balls running around the place insisting that there must be a full, judge led, inquiry into what really happened. Ed Milipede seems to be shouting for the same thing.
There’s a problem for them here. As the FT is reporting, anyone who had a Bloomberg screen (hint, the computer terminal that tells you what is happening in the markets) could have told you back in 2008, LIBOR was in no way indicative of what was actually happening in the markets. Everyone knew it was wildly off.
Which is something of a problem for those who were in government at the time really: our two Eds. Especially as Ed Balls was one of those who, with Gordon Brown, designed the regulatory system that we had: that mixture of the Treasury, FSA and Bank of England.
If anyone with a market terminal could see that LIBOR was obviously wrong then why couldn’t they? If they couldn’t then what the hell is the point of having such regulators?
But if they could see it and then didn’t do anything about it, then that’s worse. And finally, if what they did do about it after having seen it was “well, you know boys, we’re really very relaxed about this” then shouldn’t we all be calling for those regulators to go to jail along with the bankers?
If not, why not?
Quite seriously, if I were a Labour Party politician right now I would be keeping very quiet indeed about the whole thing. Because there’s a good chance that it’s going to come back and bite the arse of those who were in power when it happened.
Posted: 3rd, July 2012 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
