So how about those funny people at Barclays, huh?
Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, described the outrage that has built up over the bank’s actions.
“The cynical greed of traders asking their colleagues to falsify their Libor submissions so that they could make bigger profits – has justifiably shocked and angered people, in particular when we are facing hard economic times provoked by the financial crisis,” he told the Financial Services Authority’s annual meeting.
Oh well, so they moved a decimal point now and then. Bankers will be bankers.
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.
Staff did this over a number of years, trying to raise them for profit and then, during the financial crisis, lowering them to hide the level to which Barclays was under financial stress.
Oh.