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 »

Morning Report

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1266 28.6 2.31%
Eurostoxx Index 2464.6 129.540 5.55%
Oil (WTI) 92.98 2.780 3.08%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 75.502 -0.715 -0.94%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 2.28% 0.08%

Stock markets are rallying on news that the Europeans have come to an agreement to deal with Greece, with bondholders taking a 50% haircut and boosting the rescue fund to 1 trillion euros. Is this the silver bullet that will solve this problem once and for all? The initial take seems to be no. The bigger question will be whether this quarantines the Greece problem or does the contagion spread to the rest of the PIIGS. For the moment, the markets are breathing a big sigh of relief.

3Q GDP came in with an annualized increase of 2.5%, more or less in line with the economists survey. Consumption came in higher than expected (2.4% vs 1.9% expected), which tells us there is a growing discrepancy between what consumers feel (as shown in the consumer confidence numbers) and what they actually do (as evidenced by spending numbers). As I have discussed before, this is how recessions end – consumers don’t start spending because they want to, they do it because they have to. Eventually the 10 year old car becomes too expensive to fix, Dad’s 5 year old dress shirts become ratty, and need to be replaced. The other headwinds in the economy will undoubtedly overpower any consumer strength for the moment, but those headwinds are becoming milder as time goes on. I am not buying the double-dip recession thesis. Just not buying it.

In other data, the labor market is still stuck, with initial jobless claims above 400k again and continuing claims at 3.65 million. The labor market is always the last to improve.

Chart: Initial Jobless Claims:

Filed under: Europe, Greece, Initial Jobless Claims | Tagged: | 14 Comments »