Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has resigned with immediate effect

tbrguy

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"Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has resigned with immediate effect, the bank says.

Barclays boss Bob Diamond resigns after a rate-rigging scandal that has sparked a government inquiry and prompted calls for criminal investigations."

Read all about it... BBC News - Home


So, a banker goes, and not just any old banker but the one who told the commons select committee that it was time time to stop bashing bankers and to learn to love them.

And all the while he must have known that the bank for which he was responsible was being investigated for rigging the LIBOR.

So, my verdict on this bit of news? Not sure, perhaps it's tactical, he is due to appear again tomorrow to give more evidence; does this mean he won't go?

All in all though, I think it's a cause for celebration - pour encourager les autres...
 

ScotRandom

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I doubt there is either the political will or public appetite to tackle the oligarchy which has invaded British (& global) society. The political parties don't care sufficiently to worry about the fact that every four years or so the public may or may not get up off their arses to vote them in/out as they're alright jack so long as they still get paid whilst in opposition. Whether it's scandal after scandal on pensions, the media, bankers, or politicians expenses all it appears to do is make the electorate more weary than the last time. It's no wonder ordinary folk think "if it's good enough for those at the top to get away with it, it's good enough for me". It seems more & more that the general public become accustomed to each new scandal with transpondency, apathy or worse looting, rioting & anarchy. These fat cats & politicians only have themselves to blame the time when inevitably the tide turns, whilst leaving good, hard working, law abiding people are to try & attempt to sort out their mess.
So just how much extra have we all paid in mortgages, loans etc have we all paid during this current scandal & how do we treat those responsible? Jail sentences? Fines for guilty institutions? Where will the money come from either to pay for enquiries or investigations? Will other countries (also involved in rate rigging) take a serious approach to this scandal? Does the UK coalition think it can sweep this under the carpet? There's so many questions need answers it's difficult to know where to start!
The world needs to tackle inequality & prove to the electorate that they are serious on greed, close legal loopholes where fat cats are allowed to legally rob us all blind, & show taxpayers that we won't continue to fund these thieves.
 

JJumbo

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I love the Politics threads. Do you think in a parallel universe there is a Large Pay Support Group where bankers have a thread to talk about huge cocks?
 

Jason

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There are a lot of issues around this LIBOR fixing.

First of all it matters a lot. The credit worthiness of a nation depends on right practice in banking, and this is a massive fraud which could well risk the UK's AAA rating. The consequencies of the fraud have been that a lot of businesses and individuals have paid a bit more than they should have one, and there will be businesses that went under as a consequence.

There are issues around just how any government could regulate - in the end you cannot regulate for morality. But they can oversee the banking system. This is something that I think will come to the fore in the months to come. The smoking gun is that Blair and Brown new this was happening or even told the banks to act this way. Criminal prosecution has the potential to go this high.

The old system would have had the banks regulated by some committee of trusty old peers in their tweed jackets and a sense of "one just doesn't do that old boy". It worked. Under Labour we came up with the crazy system that the banks were regulated by the banks.
 

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Lol @ JJ. Yeah in a parallel universe they talk about how meagre their £21 million payout just isn't enough to feed the family, pay the soaring fuel costs, or help them pay the pool boy.
Jason has a very good point in that how many business' went under whilst certain members of the Big Society helped themselves to huge payouts. These fat cats do need to be held accountable - worldwide! Whether it's billion dollar fines for Glaxo or individual CEOs of banks & other institutions, or the Civil Servants who offshored their tax responsibilities. Politicians need to remember they are public servants & accountable to the populace.
 

dandelion

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perhaps it's tactical, he is due to appear again tomorrow to give more evidence; does this mean he won't go?
He does now have the option of simply defending himself and not having to defend Barclays because he doesnt work there any more.

Last I heard Diamonds retirement package was still undisclosed. He may be retiring on 3 years advance pay and perks instead of working 3 years of his contract. Many regard it an advantage to get the money but not have to do the work.

Just remember, the fine Barclays paid goes to the regulator in the UK and they use it pay their staff. If they dont have income ffrom fines, then they bill the banks to cover their costs. Nineteen more banks under investigation. So in the end, none of them will suffer at all, just pay their fees early.


All in all though, I think it's a cause for celebration - pour encourager les autres...
Banks get fined nothing and staff get paid without having to work. Umm..lets think..who will ultimately pay for the staff getting paid twice over...its the customers!

The old system would have had the banks regulated by some committee of trusty old peers in their tweed jackets and a sense of "one just doesn't do that old boy". It worked. Under Labour we came up with the crazy system that the banks were regulated by the banks.
The old system did not allow banks to act as they do now. Was it Thatcher started deregulation and changed the rules which labour inherited? If we are going to assign blame to someone in the past, lets be clear who started bank deregulation and this mess we are in. The last labour government just tinkered a bit, and famously gave the BofE more independance. It was conservatives who thought allowing banks to do what they wanted was a good idea. From the way they have been stalling on bank regulation now, they havnt changed minds either. Cable's lib dem attempts to introduce tougher regulation were stomped on by the tories.

Thats twice Cable has been right and the tories wrong. Once over Murdoch, and over banks.
 

brinzaulsschwul

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Oh they make me sick, the lies, the high rates, the robbery of the customers. Time to pay off all debts, so not to pay their outrageous salaries and bonuses for stealing from the poor to pay themselves. Time to pay cash for everything. We would all be twice as rich because we would not be paying interest.

Im so angry now
 
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Jason

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The old system did not allow banks to act as they do now. Was it Thatcher started deregulation and changed the rules which labour inherited? If we are going to assign blame to someone in the past, lets be clear who started bank deregulation and this mess we are in. The last labour government just tinkered a bit, and famously gave the BofE more independance. It was conservatives who thought allowing banks to do what they wanted was a good idea.

Labour were in power for a lot of years with a big majority. The idea that they can somehow blame changes made under Thatcher is laughable.

The changes Labour did make were an absurd attempt to replace morality with legislation. The old system was that you do what is right because it is right - the new that you do what the regulations allow.

I think Labour are desperate for a public enquiry because it will take forever and ensure that no criminal prosecutions can subsequently be brought because it would not be possible for anyone to get a fair trial post public enquiry. What we do need is exactly what the conservatives are suggesting - a quick parliamentary enquiry plus criminal prosecution. If we really are going to be forced down the public enquiry route we have to delay this until after criminal prosecutions are brought (by which time the public enquiry is irrelevant). The smoking gun is that ALL our big banks are involved in this scam not because they were all simultaneously nasty in the same way but because the last government instructed them to act in this way. The criminal prosecutions should therefore be against Blair, Brown and Balls.
 

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i see only one solution... We have to close every bank witch is involved in the manipulation scandal.

The banks have manipulated the libor and euribor, this is the basis to calculate all intrests. Even for a house credit...
The question is, since when are they doing this?
Long enough, that the to high intrests let the spanish house bubble burst, or even created the crisis in 2008 in the USA?

With a lower libor/euribor even bonds (italy spain portugal) would be lower

By manipulating the libor they are reliable for every credit that burst cause of to high intrest.

This is the end of the city of london


Bertolt brecht:
How small is the crime of a bank robbery, compared to found a bank
 
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tbrguy

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Oh they make me sick, the lies, the high rates, the robbery of the customers. Time to pay off all debts, so not to pay their outrageous salaries and bonuses for stealing from the poor to pay themselves. Time to pay cash for everything. We would all be twice as rich because we would not be paying interest.

Im so angry now

Unfortunately, since fattie Lawson repealed the 'Truck Act' you no longer have the right to be paid in cash - so you have to have a bank account...
 

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Labour were in power for a lot of years with a big majority. The idea that they can somehow blame changes made under Thatcher is laughable.
The BBc analysing the changes in bank regulation put the blame, or credit if you so consider it, squarely at the door of the tory administration starting with Thatcher and ending with major. See Big Bang (financial markets) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 1986, Thatcher.


The changes Labour did make were an absurd attempt to replace morality with legislation.
Morality? Every bank crisis there has ever been has been about someone exploiting someone else in order to make money for themselves. Government MUST hold the ring and prevent those with power exploiting those without.


The old system was that you do what is right because it is right - the new that you do what the regulations allow.
The old regulations simply did not allow trading on the scale we now have. As soon as the city was given its head it started doing all sorts of things which regulators have tried to stop peicemeal ever since.

I think Labour are desperate for a public enquiry because it will take forever and ensure that no criminal prosecutions can subsequently be brought because it would not be possible for anyone to get a fair trial post public enquiry.
Dont worry, no one is going to jail whatever happens. Allegations of fraud are very difficult to prove. Exactly who is going to be giving evidence...against themselves. The only way anyone is likely to go to jail is if parliament right now introduces specific crimes which will be applied retrospectively. Its highly questionable whether the conservatives will introduce such new crimes even to apply from now.

The smoking gun is that ALL our big banks are involved in this scam not because they were all simultaneously nasty in the same way but because the last government instructed them to act in this way.
Diamond or Barclays just issued a statement where apparently Diamond (or whoever was talking to government while the bank crash was going on, might have been diamond who was then in charge of the investment arm, I didnt catch this but it will be in the news) said to the government official that although Barclays had not been fixing the libor rate, Barclays knew that other banks had been doing so. (it has now been shown this denial that Barclays was involved was a lie) The official line from Barclays/Diamond seems to be that they did discuss with the Bof E measures to help in the crisis but that Barclays senior management did not understand such measures to include rate fixing. A third executive has now resigned without comment, but allegedly he was responsible for a 'mixup' instructing staff to fix rates to improve the apparent solvency position of the Bank.

It is clear that Barclays was fixing the rate for years for its own benefit. It seems it then proceeded to fix the rate to further the wishes of the Bof E. That would seem to be perfectly natural, given Barclays was quietly doing this already without apparently being found out. It is quite possible the staff at Barclays did not do one thing different, just changed their motivation for rate fixing and made it a bit more ideologically sound. Whether the Bof E already knew Barclays were lying and might have been nudging them to carry on I cant say, but Diamond has in effect denied this was the case.

The criminal prosecutions should therefore be against Blair, Brown and Balls.
For omission to act? Then how will you punish Thatcher, major, whoever was chancellor at the time of the big bang for actually staritng these events? Hanging?

i see only one solution... We have to close every bank witch is involved in the manipulation scandal.
Well that is 20 banks under british regulation. How many more worldwide. You want to close all of them?

This is the end of the city of london
That is why the Uk government will not be closing them. As I posted above, I dont think it will punish them in any way. I agree, the banking industry is in major decline.
 

Ldnn

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The Barclays contact from Diamond states he had communication from "senior government" via the BoE putting pressure on his bank to become more competitive. Obviously take that with a pinch of salt, but it is worrying if the government had someone pushing for these changes to libor, and the most significant reason why any enquiry will be limited as it is not in the interest of any political party to reveal the influence of the banking system over policy makers.

Additionally, it was stated that it was precisely due to other banks fixing their rates that this was done in the first place, to become competitive with the "fixed" group... It's certainly, as said in the above post, likely to be extremely common worldwide.
 
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Jason

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This story is going to get lots bigger. It may be the scandal that brings down not the government but the opposition.

I've looked at Dandelion's post. The point remains that Labour had many years to sort out banking regulation and overview. This story happened around 2008-9, so they had been in power for a decade. If the system created in the Thatcher-Major years wasn't appropriate it was up to Labour in this decade of power to change it.

The real key to the scandal is whether it is something bankers dreamt up or whether it comes from the previous government. If the latter the last government manipulated the rate which sets interest rates charging individuals and businesses more than they would otherwise have paid while falsifying the accounts of all banks involved, and as the UK was bailing out these banks falsifying the UK's national income accounting. If this really is the case then we are looking at criminal prosecutions. If Labour didn't know then we have issues of negligent oversight.

And all this is just for starters.
 

dandelion

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I wish you were all paying 10% for your damend mortgages.
why? That would certainly have put the Uk into the same downwards spiral now afflicting much of europe. When it comes down to it, the world economy is insolvent and has been relying on loans for years to pay the bills.

Theres an excerpt from the statements here http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/03/barclays-bank-of-england-email?newsfeed=true

It says barclays was asked why its submissions on rates it was paying during the 2008 crisis were so high. It replied they knew the rates they were paying were no higher than anyone else, possibly lower, so they disbelieved the returns others were making.

Barclays statement http://group.barclays.com/Satellite...goBlobs&blobwhere=1330686943752&ssbinary=true

All in all, it seems to say that when other banks were fixing their rates during the crisis, Barclays singularly was not. It only did so, not because it was asked to and not because senior management ordered it, when the crisis was already nearly over.

Concern was expressed about Barclays liquidity because it was reporting having to pay higher rates than other banks, whereas Barclays states it had no liquidity problem, and believed this concern was an illusion created by others false low returns. However, there was a risk this perception might damage the bank. This was put forward as an explanation why someone lower down in the management structure decided to lower Barclays own returns to be in line with others.

There then seems to have been an investigation into libor fixing during the crisis, which ironically Barclays did little of. However it was discovered that it had previously been doing so in an entirely unconnected way, mainly in 2005-2007

Barclays says they have spent 100million investigating this. (might include lawyers fees, of course). They say they are in the news now, not because they are the worst offender but because they have cooperated fully and thus their case has been dealt with more quickly. Diamond was not involved directly in carrying out the investigation, because he was one of the people questioned about the 2008 events.
 
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Perados

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by the way libor gets calculated nearly every bigger bank has to be part of this manipulation... Yes close them all or at least make them state owned without repayment to the share holders and hard punishment for all managers who were involved.

Cause i doubt the banks could repay the damage the have done, by minimum 4 trillion €
 

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i doubt the banks could repay the damage the have done, by minimum 4 trillion €
Im sure they cannot. Which is why this is no longer the issue. The issue is to fix things for the future.

Barclays explanation seems to say it was pretty much innocent of fixing during the 2008 crisis and indeed tried to blow the whistle on others doing it. However it then discovered it had been rate fixing in 2005-7. They gave quite a detailed explanation of the events of 2008 where they reckoned they were innocent, but little about what happened 2005-7. It is not clear whether this had stopped by itself or by some internal action, or it was halted by the bank crisis coming along and drawing attention to rate fixing generally.
 
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Perados

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right, cause they cant repay it, we have to make them state owned. This is also the solution, to prevent future problems...

We had the subprime mess. With this all around the world sues against banks for bad counselings.

The big bail out and still huge bonus, they promised to accept new treaties in 2009, now they do everything against new laws and they ever will.

Now we notice they even manipulate the intrests...

We have to make them state owned, only by this we can stop all this...

It wouldnt even care if a single bank makes win or lost. So we wouldnt have to care for short term effects on banks, if they were state owned, wile we reorganise the bank system. Also no banker would work against it, cause all the "bad bankers" would be fired or in jail.
And the positiv effect would be, should the banks make a win, they would finance our govs, as long as we own them:wink:
 
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Drifterwood

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why? That would certainly have put the Uk into the same downwards spiral now afflicting much of europe. When it comes down to it, the world economy is insolvent and has been relying on loans for years to pay the bills.

It's part and parcel of the same fraud. At one point, the banks and the government were skimming off extra profit because it was there, at the next moment they are colluding to make the economy seems stronger, now they are manipulating the market so that you can still afford the overpriced loans that they all colluded to get you to take out.

If you want to take the high ground here, you should accept that there ought to be a housing collapse a la Spain/Ireland, that most banks will go bust, that the UK economy will collapse, taking most of the Western World with it, and yes, to make you happy, a few bankers and politicians will go to jail, not that we will be able to afford jails.

Enough of Western economies are built on lies and corruption for the whole thing to get very messy.

Are you ready?