Update: Putting a Face to the LIBOR scandal

Sometimes having a clearer picture helps understand the issue or situation. The Financial Times just published an update on the LIBOR scandal. There are now legal proceedings being exercised against perpetrators who allegedly contributed to the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. This posting is not meant as a “dart board” but further explanation of “what happened.”

This is a reprint of my blog article “Laboring over LIBOR scandal.”

A definition of what LIBOR is:  “a benchmark rate that some of the world’s leading banks charge each other for short-term loans. It stands for Intercontinental Exchange London Interbank Offered Rate and serves as the first step to calculating interest rates on various loans throughout the world.”  Definition by investopedia.com.

Read more: Investopedia’s definition of LIBOR.
Source: Investopedia

Here’s a short video presentation on what LIBOR is, made by CNBC and lectured by Salman Kahn, Libor:CNBC Explains.

Now for some details of the scandal, first a quote from the New York Times newspaper:

“…Now, the regulatory void has spawned another round of criminal accusations and multibillion-dollar penalties — enough to wipe out nearly all the revenue that major investment banks generated from their foreign exchange businesses last year.

On Wednesday, four large global banks —Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland — pleaded guilty to a series of federal crimes over a scheme to manipulate the value of the world’s currencies…”   Michael Corkery and Ben Protess, NYTimes, 5/20/2015

Well, just when we thought it was “safe to go back into the pool”, the LIBOR scandal started to unfold. I can’t pinpoint when the popular media “got the scent” and the LIBOR story “broke” to the general public but I’m offering three (3) timelines for your perusal.

Reuters timeline for the LIBOR scandal.  Reuters timeline

ProPublica’s timeline for the LIBOR scandal.   ProPublica timeline

New York Time’s timeline for the LIBOR scandal.    New York Times timeline

Here’s the link to the complete article by Corkery and Protess of the New York Times. Title of their article is Rigging of Foreign Exchange Market Makes Felons of Top Banks.  Corkery and Protess article

To close out this blog item, here’s PBS and Frontline’s documentary entitled The Untouchables. It was produced in January of year 2013. The Untouchables

Punishment