Re: One law for the.... : Wed Jul 04, 2012 9:10 am  

Him wrote:

It's a desperate defence, he's trying to implicate politicians and hope that they'll back off.
Despite the hysterical and typically biased article in The Sun (the one posted in the NHS thread) and others, all that I can see is that someone from the BoE (which is independent) and someone from Whitehall asked Barclay's why they were at the top end of the LIBOR rates.
How there is a leap from that to telling or sanctioning Barclays to artificially fix the rate is beyond me.

The way LIBOR is set is also interesting.

16 banks are consulted and the top and bottom four are discounted before the middle eight are consolidated. To have any real effect, there would need to be collusion on a grand scale.

Re: One law for the.... : Wed Jul 04, 2012 9:17 am  

Him wrote:

..
How there is a leap from that to telling or sanctioning Barclays to artificially fix the rate is beyond me.

Yes, but not as far as why they would actually do the fraud, even if they believed the BoE had sanctioned the fraud, is beyond me.

Re: One law for the.... : Wed Jul 04, 2012 4:21 pm  

Re: One law for the.... : Wed Jul 04, 2012 7:54 pm  

For me, this calls into question the myth of the omnipotent CEO: the 'top talent' who therefore command the top salaries. Bob Diamond has just said he knew nothing of the LIBOR fiddle. Let's suppose that's true. If Barclays made huge profits because of this fiddle, he would reap the rewards in terms of salary and bonus. But he knew nothing about it. It was nothing to do with him. This accords with my own experience from the days when I was a wage slave: many of the things which led to reduced costs/increased income were due to the efforts of people throughout the company, not just the CEO. And yet it's the CEO who gets the big pay. Time for limits on executive pay, methinks.

Re: One law for the.... : Wed Jul 04, 2012 9:11 pm  

Someone's been busy making some stickers for Boris's Bikes:

Re: One law for the.... : Wed Jul 04, 2012 9:13 pm  

Red John wrote:

Time for limits on executive pay, methinks.

I've long maintained the same - 100 x the lowest paid seems about fair.

The when it comes to executive bonuses, that should apply across the board too. So if the CEO is paid £1m and receives a bonus of £5m then everyone in the company should receive a bonus of 5 x their annual salary.

[DaveO]

Re: One law for the.... : Wed Jul 04, 2012 10:04 pm  

Red John wrote:

For me, this calls into question the myth of the omnipotent CEO: the 'top talent' who therefore command the top salaries. Bob Diamond has just said he knew nothing of the LIBOR fiddle. Let's suppose that's true. If Barclays made huge profits because of this fiddle, he would reap the rewards in terms of salary and bonus. But he knew nothing about it. It was nothing to do with him. This accords with my own experience from the days when I was a wage slave: many of the things which led to reduced costs/increased income were due to the efforts of people throughout the company, not just the CEO. And yet it's the CEO who gets the big pay. Time for limits on executive pay, methinks.

When you add to this the shambles at Nat West last few weeks the CEO's seem to have very little control over the actual running of the bank. They seem powerless and in effect have delegated the running of the bank to lower down managers as they claim to be in the dark over most things. If that is so then I don't see how they deserve the vast salaries anyway. In Diamond's case he couldn't even engender a suitable culture at the bank that would have stopped his employees from even thinking about rigging the rate. That is definitely CEO territory.

I think you are spot on about the money earned by the bank being down to its employees rather than the CEO. The trouble is the bonus culture spreads a long way down with even ordinary employees having some element of their wages made up from bonuses. This is a very American way of doing it. If the employee doesn't meet targets the wage bill is less and if they do, then the bank makes more money. This ignores the old fashioned way of doing business where people didn't cut corners to make a bonus and some staff in the regulatory areas of the bank would have seen it as their duty to put the brakes on sharp practice even if that did mean less profit for the bank. You worked hard for your salary but you did the job right.

I also found it really interesting that the rate rigging was done via email exchanges. I am sure in the past before IT systems allowed this easy communication the paths of the people setting the Libor rate and the traders never crossed. A Chinese Wall would have existed between these two sets of people as they just never met. It seems to me no one thought that it might not be a good idea for these two groups to be in such easy communication and preventing that sort of thing should have been put in place by Diamond.

I have worked in banks as a software supplier for years and they were always extremely keen on a proper division of labour in that those involved in IT security and the like were distinctly different groups and staff were often swapped in and out regularly so as not to become too familiar with the systems to prevent any abuse. It seems that sort of culture has gone.

Re: One law for the.... : Thu Jul 05, 2012 7:46 am  

From some of the accounts it seems that yesterday was a missed opportunity by the Select Committee. Lack of a coordinated approach to the questioning, allowing Diamond Geezer to be far too chummy (and complaining about it on Twitter and not to his face FFS). The story seems to be about how he feels terrible about it all and not how, as CEO he was ultimately responsible.

If anything it adds strength to the call for a judge led inquiry rather than a parliamentary one. MPs had an open goal and did a Geoff Thomas.

Re: One law for the.... : Thu Jul 05, 2012 9:06 am  

This is the best and worst example of the sort of cover-up and blatant whitewash that the top toffs now KNOW they can cobble together and get away with. It stinks, but get away with it they have, and will. The fuss will die away and all will carry on as before. Why did nobody at the Committee have the ability and wit to ask and press the key, and fookin obvious, questions? Even the chair, Tyrie, is whingeing afterwards that Diamond didn't really say anything, well, why didn't you ask him anything? Tucker at the BoE apparently told Diamond that "it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently". Come again? Why did Diamond not say: "Eh? WTF you on about, Paul? Barclays historical rates do not have "needs". They are just rates. What they are is a fact, and to say they don't always need to appear high is thus directly implying artificial misrepresentation of those rates. If anyone else can advance an explanation of what Tucker could have been hinting at which makes sense, please do. Del Messier, to whom it was passed on, understood the clear implication. But it wasn't Bob's fault because he did not understand it the same way! So it's just a simple 'mistake' then! And not Bob's fault at all! Having received and acted upon implementing this almost direct incitement to falsify rates, the submitters (who state the rates) "vigorously resist". The submitter raises this with the compliance office and is told by compliance to stick to the rules. Compliance say they will raise it with senior management but they never do so. So there is the second watershed. The first is the BoE never said or implied that the rate should be fixed, and Diamond didn't at all think they did, but the person he passed the meassage to did, and so the whole thing came about as a result of a simple misunderstanding. Nobody asked why Barclays would commit fraud so lightly, just because of a hint in a summary of a conversation. The second watershed is that the submitters did refuse and seek specific guidance, were told to stay legal, and compliance would raise the issue of the submitters being instructed to commit major world-class financial fraud with senior management, "but they never do so". WTfookinF? So what happened? Did compiance forget? But of course, as conveniently nobody in compliance brought the "anomaly" to the attention of "senior management" then very conveniently, you can't blame senior management for it. Nobody explains why the submitters did not press the matter when they heard nothing from compliance. Nobody explains why, if indeed they were told to "stick to the rules", the submitters who were so aghast at the instruction to fake rates, seemingly nevertheless went ahead and faked them, despite not hearing any further. And all that is before we have Tucker who will no doubt come along and draw the final veil of smoke and mirrors over the affair, so we can all accept that it was just one of those things. Paul Mason on the BBC website sets out some of the most stinking and disgusting anomalies and exposes many of the warts in this evidence, and fundamental shortcomings in the "investigations" and "inquiries", but this is no more effective than me posting this on here. A few people with the wit to get their heads around it will nod and spit, but there is nothing anyone can do about it, there will be no arrests, no prosecutions, and so the whole interlude is just a monumental waste of time and money. * * I don't exclude the usual possibilty of some junior patsy being sacrificed, but certainly all the big players are immune to anything.

This is the best and worst example of the sort of cover-up and blatant whitewash that the top toffs now KNOW they can cobble together and get away with. It stinks, but get away with it they have, and will. The fuss will die away and all will carry on as before. Why did nobody at the Committee have the ability and wit to ask and press the key, and fookin obvious, questions? Even the chair, Tyrie, is whingeing afterwards that Diamond didn't really say anything, well, why didn't you ask him anything? Tucker at the BoE apparently told Diamond that "it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently". Come again? Why did Diamond not say: "Eh? WTF you on about, Paul? Barclays historical rates do not have "needs". They are just rates. What they are is a fact, and to say they don't always need to appear high is thus directly implying artificial misrepresentation of those rates. If anyone else can advance an explanation of what Tucker could have been hinting at which makes sense, please do. Del Messier, to whom it was passed on, understood the clear implication. But it wasn't Bob's fault because he did not understand it the same way! So it's just a simple 'mistake' then! And not Bob's fault at all! Having received and acted upon implementing this almost direct incitement to falsify rates, the submitters (who state the rates) "vigorously resist". The submitter raises this with the compliance office and is told by compliance to stick to the rules. Compliance say they will raise it with senior management but they never do so. So there is the second watershed. The first is the BoE never said or implied that the rate should be fixed, and Diamond didn't at all think they did, but the person he passed the meassage to did, and so the whole thing came about as a result of a simple misunderstanding. Nobody asked why Barclays would commit fraud so lightly, just because of a hint in a summary of a conversation. The second watershed is that the submitters did refuse and seek specific guidance, were told to stay legal, and compliance would raise the issue of the submitters being instructed to commit major world-class financial fraud with senior management, "but they never do so". WTfookinF? So what happened? Did compiance forget? But of course, as conveniently nobody in compliance brought the "anomaly" to the attention of "senior management" then very conveniently, you can't blame senior management for it. Nobody explains why the submitters did not press the matter when they heard nothing from compliance. Nobody explains why, if indeed they were told to "stick to the rules", the submitters who were so aghast at the instruction to fake rates, seemingly nevertheless went ahead and faked them, despite not hearing any further. And all that is before we have Tucker who will no doubt come along and draw the final veil of smoke and mirrors over the affair, so we can all accept that it was just one of those things. Paul Mason on the BBC website sets out some of the most stinking and disgusting anomalies and exposes many of the warts in this evidence, and fundamental shortcomings in the "investigations" and "inquiries", but this is no more effective than me posting this on here. A few people with the wit to get their heads around it will nod and spit, but there is nothing anyone can do about it, there will be no arrests, no prosecutions, and so the whole interlude is just a monumental waste of time and money. * * I don't exclude the usual possibilty of some junior patsy being sacrificed, but certainly all the big players are immune to anything.

Re: One law for the.... : Thu Jul 05, 2012 10:42 am  

If the US government was not complicit (and I have no reason to think they were) then I think there will be trials.