Drink vodka.
I'm just catching up on the Barclays news. My moral outrage is building.
(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:30, 1 reply, 13 years ago)

Now we are beginning to undersatnd why they were doing so well a couple of years ago
whilst other banks floundered
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:30, Reply)

Yep, I'm going to wait to see which other banks were involved and then change my account.

(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:32, Reply)

Nat West were good until last week
and their online service is easy to use, much better than Barclays, which is a nightmare
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:32, Reply)

There's a few emails and IM's released which are basically.
"yo dawg, can you lie in the figures today or I'll lose a bit of money"
"sure thing"
"whoop, opening champagne"

cunts.
(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:34, Reply)

It does appear more and more that the banking sedctor is rotton throughout
The problem is of course that like hire like and nurture those people within the current culture. To be the one upstanding voice would mean sacrificing your career, and so on and so forth.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:37, Reply)

It's also a fundemental problem with the LIBOR, in that it's sent in manually by all the bankers, and then calculated.
It should be automatically registered and published.
(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:41, Reply)

how is it rotten?
this form of banking exists singly and purely to make money. It has no more moral obligation to humanity than a rock falling from the sky has not to crush you.

I fucking despise it, but it's idiot to suggest that the whole sector is somehow rotten or bad. It's absolutely brilliant at what it does. Because even when it fails, it still succeeds.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:47, Reply)

It's rotton if they are systematically using illegal activities to maximise their return

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:54, Reply)

why?
law is a code of morality. Morality is not something you can apply to an investment bank, since it exists to make money, which is a purely amoral purpose.

a fine for breaking the law is merely another loss. Someone going to prison is collateral damage; replace them. If they make more money breaking the law than they are fined for doing it, it's a net win and they are still good at what they are doing : not rotten.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 11:19, Reply)

see also: BP, Gulf of Mexio, Union Carbide, Bhopal and any fucking oil company in Nigeria for more extreme examples
Everything has a value when your business is money.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 11:22, Reply)

Why wait

( Light In Chains maker of the ikea sofa, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:33, Reply)

Pay off my overdraft.

(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:39, Reply)

you're going to wait and see which other banks were involved
in something which you don't understand, is the mainstay of financial trading, and fundementally makes no difference at all to anything in your life, and then change banks?

You might as well moan about variance in shark's hunting habits.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:36, Reply)

I understand that reporting correct figures is important.
I understand that they didn't, systematically.
(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:38, Reply)

Does no one audit these people!

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:40, Reply)

Libor is made by the British Bankers Association, they like hands off style regulation.
FSA should take it up.
(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:42, Reply)

which would leave them different from every single major corporation
goverment department and economy in the world ... exactly how?

In any case, they didn't publish false financial figures. They colluded to set futures interest rates. I don't really think that's the same thing.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:43, Reply)

I'm pretty sure our figures are accurate
either way finance are always asking me for evidence of work etc for the suditors
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:47, Reply)

do you work for a multinational?

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:47, Reply)

Yeah

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:53, Reply)

I'm pretty sure they aren't, then.
Call me Captain Suspicious, but multinationals are well know for being honest and transparent in their financial reporting and paying every single penny of tax they owe.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:56, Reply)

You really don't wnat to know who owns my company then!
CQ would come back just to shout at me and flounce again.

EDIT: or who my client is for that matter
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:57, Reply)

arf, I don't really care
capitalism and corporate greed are merely manifestations of the natural behaviour of humanity. I don't really like it but it's absolutely mental to think that it could be different. You'd be pissing against a hurricane of human nature.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 11:05, Reply)

well, no
becuase every other bank was almost certainly* doing the same.

I really don't see the point of bothering to get morally outraged about something that no matter what you think, not one single one of us has even close to a decent understanding of.

*putting this in because I've no idea one way or the other but I'll eat my own shoes if isn't completely widespread.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:34, Reply)

So far I have only seen RBS and Citi implicated

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:35, Reply)

so far.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:36, Reply)

Are you pronouncing guilt before the evidence has been served?
Also I believe only Barclays has so far been prosecuted, all other guilt is via media trial so far.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:38, Reply)

It's the banking culture that's fundamentally flawed, imagining it stops at one bank is retarded

( Light In Chains maker of the ikea sofa, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:41, Reply)

I didn't say that at all
I'm saying it's easy to get swept up in media fuelled indignation and pronounce your own personal verdit based on reactionary media reporting.

It seems very likely others are involved, but for now you are speculating, now that is retarded.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:43, Reply)

They've already implicated traders in other banks who are currently being investigated. It's a long drawn out process bearing in mind these events relate to 2007
If they're stilling investigating it means that they're building their case, they aint playing tiddlewinks JERKWAD
( Light In Chains maker of the ikea sofa, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:47, Reply)

Sure, but until that case is built, the evidence is produced and a judgement is made by legal proffesionals
not internet reactionaries then the scale of the abuse will remain speculative, NINNYHAMMER!
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:49, Reply)

I've got nothing more to add to this except CUNTPUFFIN.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:57, Reply)

HIPPOFLANGE!

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:58, Reply)

man, that would be some epic flange.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 11:02, Reply)

it's the fact that you can futures trade
on hundreds of times more money or commodities than could actually ever exist in the world that I find mind-boggling.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:50, Reply)

it's a trap set out by the coalition of world wide jewry and the lizard people

( Light In Chains maker of the ikea sofa, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:53, Reply)

there's no chance this isn't endemic.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:43, Reply)

At the heart of it, they manually published false figures to the world to make themselves look better/make more money.

(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:36, Reply)

er, no.
They colluded to artifically fix certain interest rates associated with trading to make more money. That isn't really the same thing.

it's probably closest to bookmakers fixing odds, except the whole thing is a giant betting syndicate gambling on many hundreds times more money than actually exists, either in the form of actual wealth or commodities or even potential commodities, so in the grand scheme of things, fixing a few odds is pretty fucking meaninless.

I only understand about 10% of what the fuck is going on but I'd suggest it's probably akin to fixing odds on a horse that doesn't actually exist and isn't really running in a race that no-one can see the winner of anyway.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:41, Reply)

it's more like playing monopoly blindfolded with a deaf mute
where you say there's a hotel on mayfair but it's not really, it's on old kent road and it's not a hotel it's a house only you don't own the house, old kent road or a blindfold.
and you're not playing monopoly, it's hungry hungry hippos.
( mark morrisons prison shoes I love Willie, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:45, Reply)

Put this man on the Today programme NOW

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:48, Reply)

mumpers. Once again, the voice of reason.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:48, Reply)

well, I do work for a large bank.

( mark morrisons prison shoes I love Willie, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:49, Reply)

You're doing arguing on the internet wrong
You're supposed to be taking some half-understood data and, with no context based on actual experience, make a sweeping judgment, compare some people to Hitler and then accuse anybody that disagrees with you of having no life.

I hope this helps.
( Kroney, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:56, Reply)

I don't even own a Hitler, though.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:58, Reply)

I like to think all french people act like on allo allo
does this help, GOERING!!!!
( mark morrisons prison shoes I love Willie, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:59, Reply)

you are Robert Peston AICMFP.
best explanation I've heard so far, anyways.
(localboy purveyor of pisspoor puns, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:49, Reply)

I never had hungry hungry hippos.

(Bazongaloid, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:50, Reply)

neither have barclays, hence the problem.

( mark morrisons prison shoes I love Willie, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:55, Reply)

The libor is calculated daily from an estimate of every banks borrowing from every other.
So at barclays, overnight they borrow £1mill from RBS at 3%, £1mill from HSBC at 5% then it should be reported as they paid an average of 4% to the BBA. The traders hassled/offered favours to the analysts who had to report the lending rates to the BBA to put it lower than it actually was. There's quotes from IM's at the bottom of this article. www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18622264
(PsychoChomp, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:48, Reply)

ITS ALL THE FAULT OF TONY B-LIAR GORDON CLOWN AND THE REST OF NU LIBOR!!

(Bazongaloid, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:51, Reply)

euuugh, those IM's are replusive

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:52, Reply)

yes
but neither you or I really know what that actually means in terms of impact on anything. Because they aren't actually borrowing real money. They are moving around things that don't exist for the purpose of betting on things that haven't happened yet.

Also, none of us know whether this even matters. After all, the stock market and traders existed perfectly happily up until the late 80s doing exactly what they are being fined for now, which is setting their own transaction rates.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:55, Reply)

well, that kind of trading ain't as much as you think.
as far as how a bank operates as a whole.
libor borrowing is used for servicing lending books or covering where items are falling due mostly.
I like to think of it as a big gay daisy chain where they all cum one at a time and pass it on.
( mark morrisons prison shoes I love Willie, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 10:58, Reply)

yeah, like I said, I probably understand about 10%-20% of it.
I'm not claiming otherwise. I just think it's a bit daft getting mad about something about 0.001% of the population understand.

I'm also yet to be convinced that it actually makes a difference to anything? especially if all banks are doing it. And I'd be awful suprised if Barclays have some kind of cunt monopoly on investment bankers.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Thu 28 Jun 2012, 11:01, Reply)