Salon.com > Barclays

A crisis worse than 2008?

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:27:00 +0000

Seeing Barclays and other global banks rig interest rates on an estimated $800 trillion worth of municipal bonds, corporate loans, adjustable rate mortgages, car loans, credit card payments, credit default swaps and other derivatives should give us a clue: We can’t trust the jerks. But the rot goes far beyond the destruction of trust, as damaging as that is. According to legal findings by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.K.’s Financial Services Administration, the wrongdoing extended to nothing less than criminal conspiracies within Barclays and between it and its competitors, all on a global scale.

Will Wall Street turn on its own over Libor?

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 11:45:00 +0000

What's easy to miss in the story of Barclays' attempted manipulation of the Libor -- see here for what the Libor is and why its manipulation is a Big Deal -- is that Barclays itself highlighted its malfeasance by coming clean and settling with regulators. Thus, they've borne the brunt of the furious response from legislators and citizens in two nations, even though it's been known for some time that ... everyone was doing it. Or, at least, a bunch of other banks did the same thing -- we don't yet know for sure which ones and to what extent because no other bank has agreed, as Barclays did, to admit involvement.

The other banks still under investigation have, according to a Reuters report, strongly considered all jumping into the pool at the same time and trying for a group settlement with regulators. The regulators like the idea because it will involve a great big number and a big list of names. The banks are warming to the idea because the big list of names means no one firm gets the Barclays treatment for a week or three. In other words, settle quick and hope no one digs too much into how much criminal activity each member of the family is responsible for.

Bankers constantly lying, defrauding; most still not in jail

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:45:00 +0000

Has there ever been a better time to be a disastrously inept banker? Well, probably -- over the course of human civilization it's almost always been a pretty good time to be a banker -- but today's finance titans seem uniquely immune to punishment of any sort.

Remember how JPMorgan Chase accidentally lost $2 billion in a "hedge"-slash-huge stupid bet placed by a guy in the Chief Investment Office? Funny story, it will actually end up being closer to $6 billion, or maybe like $9 billion -- who can be sure, math is pretty complicated, it's all imaginary money anyway -- as the bank attempts to extricate itself from the insanely complex losing trade made by the office that is supposed to manage the bank's risk.