Dear All
The trouble in being a higher flyer is that sometimes when you go down the crash can be spectacular.
Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has resigned with immediate effect.
The reason is quite simple; the bank was fined for trying to manipulate inter-bank lending rates.
But fining Barclay’s and holding a government inquiry isn’t enough, what happened with the Libor rate was done by accident rather than by design, and for that reason, there must be a criminal investigation.
Bob Diamond said he was stepping down because the external pressure on the bank risked "damaging the franchise".
Given the way that Barclays treat their customers by withholding information and lying, their franchise is already damaged.
In trying to “manage” public anger, Chancellor George Osborne said he hoped Diamonds departure was the "first step towards a new culture of responsibility" in banking.
Osborne added:
"It is the right decision for the country."
Osborne also said something quite interesting when he said the UK needed a strong Barclays concentrating on lending and contributing to economic recovery.
How can anyone have faith in a government inquiry when it is clear that people like Osborne view this as a purely a domestic matter rather than what it is, a criminal matter which should be investigated properly.
Labour leader Ed Miliband chipped in his ten bob’s worth by saying it was "necessary and right" that Bob Diamond stepped down.
Adding:
"But this is about much more than one individual, it's about the culture and practices of the banking industry."
Rather than saying this as an after thought, it should very much be forethought in his thinking.
BBC Business editor Robert Preston said:
“It is a soap opera like no other I can remember in my 30 years of reporting on the City.”
What he means is the scale of this problem is so huge, deep and corrosive that is verges on farce, but its very much reality and very much in need of Police investigation.
People will assume that this cannot be the only illegal practice that has been going on in the banking system.
Last week, regulators in the US and UK fined Barclays £290m ($450m) for attempting to rig Libor and Euribor, the interest rates at which banks lend to each other, which underpin trillions of pounds worth of financial transactions.
The entire financial system is seen by many to be underpinned by fraud in the derivatives market, The Max Keiser show on RT has been highlighting that it is now time for a return to the Gold standard which was effectively abandoned in the 1970’s.
FIAT money is backed by nothing and Quantitative Easing or QE dilutes further its value.
In other words, it’s a racket to create artificial bubbles in different areas of the economy to siphon off the wealth of the people to the top 1%. We have seen this in the housing market and various credit bubbles.
So, what’s the Barclays defence?
It is said that Bob Diamond spoke to the deputy governor of the Bank of England Paul Tucker about Barclays' Libor submissions at the height of the credit crunch in 2008.
From that Barclays' managers came to believe, after the conversation between Mr Diamond and Mr Tucker that the Bank of England had sanctioned them to lie about what they were paying to borrow when providing data to the committees that set the Libor rate.
It is time for a criminal investigation, across the pond, the US Department of Justice has undertaken criminal investigations; Britain therefore is compelled to do likewise.
Bob Diamond maintains that he didn't know what was going on, apparently n one in the organisation never knew what was going on; does that sound credible?
Not a jury it won’t.
Yours Sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
No comments:
Post a Comment