LIBOR

Posted on June 29, 2012 by jnc4p

New thread for the LIBOR investigation:

Here are some links:

Matt Taibbi:

A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation

Another Domino Falls in the LIBOR Banking Scam: Royal Bank of Scotland

Reuters:

Barclays’ gift to private antitrust plaintiffs in Libor case

Bloomberg:

Barclays Big-Boy Breaches Mean Libor Fixes Not Enough

Daily Mail:

“Earlier, Tan Chi Min, a former head of delta trading for RBS’s global banking and markets division in Singapore, alleged that managers at RBS condoned collusion between its staff to set the Libor rate artificially high or low to maximise profits.

He named five staff members he claims made requests for the Libor rate to be altered and three senior managers who he said knew what was going on.

 He also says the practice ‘was known to other members of [RBS]’s senior management’.

Mr Tan, who was eventually sacked for gross misconduct, worked for RBS from August 2006 to November 2011and alleges that senior members of staff knew about Libor fixing, and that the behaviour started while Fred Goodwin was chief executive”


British bankers now face criminal inquiry after 20 more banks are found to have rigged interest rates

My overarching question would be at what point do repeated patterns of criminal misconduct from the same organizations cease to be isolated incidents of specific bad actors and instead become a systemic problem with the organization itself?

Filed under: Big Banks, Europe | 10 Comments »

The Political Supremes

Posted on June 29, 2012 by ScottC

The WSJ today notes something odd that I noticed and thought was peculiar yesterday in reading through the dissent:

One telling note is that the dissent refers repeatedly to “Justice Ginsburg’s dissent” and “the dissent” on the mandate, but of course they should be referring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurrence. This wording and other sources suggest that there was originally a 5-4 majority striking down at least part of ObamaCare, but then the Chief Justice changed his mind.
The Justices may never confirm this informed speculation. But if it is true, this is far more damaging to the Court’s institutional integrity that the Chief Justice is known to revere than any ruling against ObamaCare. The political class and legal left conducted an extraordinary campaign to define such a decision as partisan and illegitimate. If the Chief Justice capitulated to this pressure, it shows the Court can be intimidated and swayed from its constitutional duties. If this was a play to compete with John Marshall’s legacy, the result is closer to William Brennan’s.

Charles Krauthammer proposes a similarly political explanation for Roberts’ decision.

Why did he do it? Because he carries two identities. Jurisprudentially, he is a constitutional conservative. Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the Court’s legitimacy, reputation, and stature…
How to reconcile the two imperatives — one philosophical and the other institutional? Assign yourself the task of writing the majority opinion. Find the ultimate finesse that manages to uphold the law, but only on the most narrow of grounds — interpreting the individual mandate as merely a tax, something generally within the power of Congress.

Whether or not this is true, Roberts’ decision will not, and should not, restore any lost legitimacy of the court. The legitimacy of the court (to the extent that it even matters) had not been brought into question because one or two contentious decisions have been perceived as politically motivated. The legitimacy of the court is in question because the court has become a political institution. In our post-Roosevelt and, in particular, post-Roe world, justices are appointed and confirmed to the court by politicians in a blatantly transparent effort to effect political ends via the judiciary. And once on the court, those justices do what they were nominated to do. From a layman’s perspective, it has become obvious that, on many politically contentious issues that make it to the court, justices have a preferred result in mind and use whatever lawyerly semantics, sophistry and tortured reasoning they can to justify reaching that preferred outcome.

Far from dispelling this impression of the court, Roberts’ opinion merely strengthens it. The fact that he is a conservative joining a bloc of liberals does nothing to blunt the undeniable conclusion that this decision was politically motivated. It doesn’t matter much whether it is because he likes the direction in which Obamacare is taking the nation, or because he is trying to – ironically – alter perceptions of the court. It is clear that he has engaged in the same semantics, sophistry and disingenuous parsing that has made so many of us non-lawyers so cynical about the court’s proceedings.

If Krauthammer is correct and Roberts’ decision was driven by a desire to burnish the courts flagging reputation as an impartial, non-political interpreter of the law, he could not possibly have taken a more counter intuitive approach, nor have failed more abysmally.

Filed under: Supreme Court | 141 Comments »