Are Barclays keeping their place as one of the banks used to set LIBOR? If so then can anyone explain why?

If they do not allow for criminal prosecutions, they should be changed so that can happen.

You’re not telling me that in thirteen years of belching out statute after statute that they missed one?

“Here’s something I don’t like so change the law and put them in jail!!!”

Comes across as somewhat opportunistic……

Apparently the rules brought in under Labour do not allow for this…how amazing is that?!

Calling for criminal prosecutions when it is not altogether clear that any crime was committed is the worst kind of populism. Since the LIBOR rate is based on a voluntary framework of subjective submissions the criminality of giving a fix to the BBA that is too high or too low compared to reality is not obvious.

The BBA asks:

” At what rate could you borrow funds, were you to do so by asking for and then accepting inter-bank offers in a reasonable market size just prior to 11 am? ”

There is no obvious way of proving that the person submitting their rate to the BBA did not BELIEVE that was the rate that they could borrow unsecured funds. It is certainly a weak system that depends on accurate voluntary submissions to arrive at a trimmed average. However, actually rigging LIBOR and profiting from it would require daily collusion across hundreds of banks. The collusion in Barclays was between different desks in the same bank.

“Here’s something I don’t like so change the law and put them in jail!!!”

Where did Milliband say that we should change the law then apply it retroactively?

Where did Milliband say that we should change the law then apply it retroactively?

When he called for criminal prosecutions for actions that aren’t criminal?

Apparently the rules brought in under Labour do not allow for this…how amazing is that?!

What are you referring to?

Libor inquiry looks at criminal angle

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8ed4248-d962-11e0-b52f-00144feabdc0.html

“If they do not allow for criminal prosecutions, they should be changed so that can happen.”

Pagar is right on this. Retrospective legislation to punish previously legal behaviour, or to extend the punishment for previously illlegally behaviour, is one of the basic no-nos of any society aiming to be based on the rule of law. By all means pass new laws/change sentencing guidelines etc, but they can only apply to future cases. This is one reason why the killers of stephen lawrance got lower tarrifs than if they had committed the crime today (although this is a bad example as the tarriff system doesn’t preclude the actual time they spend inside from being the same).

Might be worth having a word with Ed Balls. Wasn’t the regulatory structure under which this happened set up by him and Gordon Brown?

Further, from what we know from the report, this trying to fix Libor only started after the change in regulatory structure, from BoE to FSA.

Interesting, eh?

Further, from what we know from the report, this trying to fix Libor only started after the change in regulatory structure, from BoE to FSA.

More support for the Governor’s eyebrows system of regulation!

Tim Worstall,

It might also be worth having a read of the issue before you start your mindless trolling. The first thing you may become aware of is that the scandal was not specific to the UK or to the Labour administration. It was global in scope, and not particularly known outside of suspicions in the financial service sectors and related publications. Unless you can show that the FSA or BoE have influence in New York or Hong Kong, for example, there is little of merit to what you say.

Oh goody, we can now watch the pro free market, pro law and order tory trolls come on here and make tools of themselves.

Steal a bottle of water go straight to to jail for 6 months. Steal millions through banking (sorry gambling in the rigged casino) from the low paid hard working families that our Prime Minister pretends to be so concerned about and be told “you need to explain yourself.” Well that will do the trick.

This would be the same Prime Minister and Chancellor who spent all their time in opposition calling for more deregulation of the banks.

Look forward to the usual libertarians lecture us on how markets police themselves. That’s always a good one.

From too big to fail to Too big to Jail.

Yeah that mad lady Sally has a point!

Also where do the defenders of the finance system actually get off? Hey guys don’t know if you have noticed yeah, but there is a recession going on right, just thought you might like to be informed about it…

…still, I heard a really horrible rumour going around that it was your mates that caused it. Though that’s strictly on the Q.T between me and about 50 million other people.

Can anyone explain why section 4 of the Fraud Act does not apply?

Surely no jury in the world would fail to convict.

Misbehavior leading to a fine of hundreds of millions, does seem at least as serious as, say, half-inching a bottle of water during a riot.

Party political point-scoring is inappropriate though. This comes on top of several misselling scandals (pensions, endowments, ppi), and many other acts of banking incompetence. Both main parties have failed to act over the years.

This is beyond political allegiance. Is it too much to ask that banks are run in a vaguely professional manner?

@ 6 Tim J

“When he called for criminal prosecutions for actions that aren’t criminal?”

Here’s what he said:

“First, we need criminal prosecutions, we need the full force of the law brought against those who have done wrong, and if they are found guilty and if their offences warrant it, they should go to jail.”

The full force of the law would presumably do nothing to people who have not broken the law, so they would not be found guilty and would not go to jail.

It’s entirely possible that Milliband has wrongly assumed that the people involved in this have broken the law. But it’s a hell of a leap to go from that to claiming that Milliband supports retroactive illegality. You need more that conjecture on this one.

@ 9 Planeshift

“Pagar is right on this. Retrospective legislation to punish previously legal behaviour, or to extend the punishment for previously illlegally behaviour, is one of the basic no-nos of any society aiming to be based on the rule of law. ”

Agreed, but calling for a change of the law to criminalise something is not the same as calling for the change in the law *so you can prosecute the people who ‘broke’ the law before the law was passed*.

Does this include Minister who did not see this coming or ministers of ll parties who believed banking bosses were angels, or Ministers who removed the safe guards from the banking. Jails could be full before long.

@16 I am with you, let the Torys and Labour (and libdems) lot fight over who should procide over this mess, as long as they aint going to actually do something about then does it really matter who is in control.

I see the pro deregulated market, pro law and order trolls are still trying to hold the same ground.

Steal a bottle of water get 6 months in jail. Where is our beloved leader with his concern for poorly paid hard working families? You know, the one who wants to crack down on benefit scroungers, who are stealing from the hard working poor?

Start erecting guillotines in the square mile, and up Notting Hill. These bastards need to be punished.

And while we are on the subject of bankers it is looking as though the losses at JP Morgan could be nearer $9 billion rather than the original $2 billion as predicted by their master of the universe CEO Jamie Dimon.

“Essentially, JPMorgan has been operating a hedge fund with federal insured deposits within a bank,” said Mark Williams, a professor of finance at Boston University, who also served as a Federal Reserve bank examiner.

This is why Glass-Steagall, had to go. So the crooks could keep playing on the Casino knowing the tax payer would have to pick up the tab. What was that about welfare scroungers Dave?

@ Chaise

calling for a change of the law to criminalise something is not the same as calling for the change in the law *so you can prosecute the people who ‘broke’ the law before the law was passed*.

Actually you are correct.

You cannot definitively conclude from his words that he was calling for retroactive legislation but those not analysing closely would conclude he wanted the people involved prosecuted and imprisoned.

Hence the allegation of playing to the populist gallery- maybe even more to be despised if he were deliberately being disingenuous.

@ Sally

Start erecting guillotines in the square mile, and up Notting Hill. These bastards need to be punished.

Agreed.

I like markets and anyone caught rigging them deserves the red hot poker, in my opinion…..

@ 23 pagar

“You cannot definitively conclude from his words that he was calling for retroactive legislation but those not analysing closely would conclude he wanted the people involved prosecuted and imprisoned.

Hence the allegation of playing to the populist gallery- maybe even more to be despised if he were deliberately being disingenuous.”

Huh. OK, that’s a good point. Perhaps he’s not *actually* calling for anything reprehensible, but has framed his words to appeal to those who support reprehensibleness while maintaining plausible deniability.

I don’t wish to interrupt this doomfest but actually it is not yet known whether crimes have been committed. The Treasury and the FSA are still considering whether criminal charges should be brought against individuals, and if so, what charges and against whom. Miliband has jumped the gun, but so have those on this thread who argue either that crimes HAVE been committed or that crimes HAVEN’T. Patience, folks, patience.

We also don’t yet know exactly which banks are involved in what appears to be a worldwide system of rate-fixing – since USD Libor, Euribor and Tibor all appear to have been fixed as well as GBP Libor. It is difficult to see how Barclays could have acted alone, and I am certain there will be more revelations about other banks in the next few days and weeks, starting with UBS, which was known to be under investigation for this long before the Barclays story broke.

Tim W, I think you are out of order on this one. The FSA is not the only regulator involved, so it seems highly unlikely that the ultimate cause of this crisis was the change of UK regulator.

Anyway, tomorrow should be even more fun for Barclays. The FSA is set to release its findings on swaps mis-selling. Barclays is first in line for censure, apparently.

Agreed, but calling for a change of the law to criminalise something is not the same as calling for the change in the law *so you can prosecute the people who ‘broke’ the law before the law was passed*.

Indeed. But that distinction doesn’t always make it through the legislative process.

Ownership of an archive of The Sun would mean you had images of Sam Fox’s 16 year old bare nipples. This is a crime for whch you would be put on the sex offenders register.

Despite it being legal to take, publish, print those pics back then, it’s illegal to own them now.

What has been going on in the banking system has been illegal for as many years as we’ve had laws. All this crap about “if” a crime has been committed. Yeah, maybe systemically and institutionally lying about mega-important banking rates to make yourselves billions while costing the general public an arm and a leg isn’t a crime. There’s more than one law covering what’s been going on – all ends up.

Pagar: “@ Sally
Start erecting guillotines in the square mile, and up Notting Hill. These bastards need to be punished.
Agreed.
I like markets and anyone caught rigging them deserves the red hot poker, in my opinion…..”

FFS! The whole system’s bent and has been since before 1912 and Woodrow Wilson’s terrified back-tracking – once in office of course – on the anti-trust issues:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Freedom

“Although Wilson and Roosevelt agreed that economic power was being abused by trusts, Wilson ideas split with Roosevelt on how the government should handle the restraint of private power as in dismantling corporations that had too much economic power in a large society …”

Etc etc etc … ad infi-bloody-nitum and here we are over a century later starting over again to reap the inevitable whirlwind.

@ 27 Tim

“Indeed. But that distinction doesn’t always make it through the legislative process.

Ownership of an archive of The Sun would mean you had images of Sam Fox’s 16 year old bare nipples. This is a crime for whch you would be put on the sex offenders register.”

To be fair, that doesn’t muddy the distinction. When the law changed, *possession* of said photos became illegal, so someone wanting to comply with the law would throw out the paper.

Yes, I agree it would be unfair for someone to be prosecuted simply for legally buying a paper and then forgetting they had it. It would perhaps be sensible to mandate an exception for pictures that had been published before the change in law. But it’s not actually retroactive criminality: for that you’d have to pass a law saying that anyone who had ever viewed the photos was a criminal.

@ White Trash

The whole system’s bent and has been since before 1912 and Woodrow Wilson’s terrified back-tracking – once in office of course – on the anti-trust issues

You are absolutely correct.

And that lot deserved the red hot poker too…………

If they do not allow for criminal prosecutions, they should be changed so that can happen.

That’s a rather ambiguous statement that be interpreted as either punishing people retrospectively, which Millipede knows can’t happen but which is what his supporters want to hear; or it means changing the law to prevent this happening in the future, an altogether fairer and more realistic proposition.

I suspect the vagueness is deliberate.

Ownership of an archive of The Sun would mean you had images of Sam Fox’s 16 year old bare nipples. This is a crime for whch you would be put on the sex offenders register.

Is that actually true? My understanding of banned material was it is ilegal to distribute it – for instance when Spycatcher was banned it was illegal to sell or import it – but not to possess it. And wasn’t that the case with The Anarchist Cookbook and video nasties?

I’ve got some Lord Horror comics which I think might still be banned but which were perfectly legal when I bought them.

@ Shatterface

“I’ve got some Lord Horror comics which I think might still be banned but which were perfectly legal when I bought them.”

Why are they banned, out of interest? I was under the impression that, when the Anarchist’s Cookbook was illegal, it was the only work that had been specifically banned (rather than being illegal for breaking a more general law).

Why are they banned, out of interest? I was under the impression that, when the Anarchist’s Cookbook was illegal, it was the only work that had been specifically banned (rather than being illegal for breaking a more general law).

The Manchester police were basically waging a war on Savoy Books during the Eighties. I think the picture of Arch-Godbotherer James Anderton’s severed head on the cover of one comic tipped them over the edge.

Actually, I think it might just be the novel which was banned. For some reason the sequel, Motherfuckers: The The Auschwitz of Oz, was considered more acceptable.

@ 34 Shatterface

I see! Imagine it’s legal now; pretty sure I heard that we unbanned everything awhile back, so the Anarchist’s Cookbook was unique when it came along.

As for the sequel… it was ever thus. Moral guardians always seem to target their ire at random. As a gamer, I’m always amused when killjoys mount strident campaigns against middle-of-the-road games (normally based on lies about their content), while ignoring much more gratuitous, graphic and/or controversial games further down the shelf.

A similar thing happens in music, where the media focus on something that is actually pretty tame and ignore the extreme lyrics contained in less well known releases.

I used to have The Anarchist Cookbook too but I lent it out and never got it back.

Bloody anarchists – no respect for people’s property.

@ 32.

Yes, they are banned. The Sexual Offences Act (Section 160) prohibits the “making, possession and distribution”. There are a couple of exceptions – for example, if you are married to a person aged 16 or 17 then you can have indecent photos of your spouse, and you can also be in the indecent photos yourself, but no third parties can appear in the photos – if you want to film threesomes, then you all have to be 18 or over.

@ 32.

Oh yeah, your Lord Horror comics won’t be affected though – that’s a whole different area of the law. Even if they are still considered material likely to corrupt and deprave – which I very much doubt – possession is fine, only distribution is a problem. Even then, it has to be demonstrated that the presons to whom they are distributed could be corrupted. If you were going to show them to Sunny, or Chaise for example, a reasonable defence would be that these people are already thoroughly depraved and that your comics can’t make then any worse.

Copies of the Anarchist Cookbook however – well,along with that crappy 1st of May Group guide to ambushing police vehicles that they used to sell in lefty bookshops in the 1980′s, that’s probably covered by the various terrorism acts now as “material likely to be useful to someone preparing an act of terrorism”… its now been ruled that even academics don’t have a right to study such material.

“Academics have no “right” to research terrorist materials and they risk being prosecuted for doing so, the vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham has told his staff.

In a statement issued to the university last week, Sir Colin Campbell says: “There is no ‘right’ to access and research terrorist materials. Those who do so run the risk of being investigated and prosecuted on terrorism charges. Equally, there is no ‘prohibition’ on accessing terrorist materials for the purpose of research. Those who do so are likely to be able to offer a defence to charges (although they may be held in custody for some time while the matter is investigated). This is the law and applies to all universities.”

and

Oliver Blunt QC, of the Anti-Terrorism team at Furnival Chambers in London, said that academics do have a “right” to “access” terrorist materials, whether for research or otherwise, as long as they do not “possess” them.

He said: “Once the researcher knowingly downloads or saves the materials that he is accessing, then he is in ‘possession’ of terrorist materials.

“There is no ‘right’ to ‘possess’ terrorist materials and, while a genuine researcher would be able to establish a defence, the evidential burden is on the researcher to do so.”

TLS 17th July 2008

Presumably this means that the Sun itself has purged its archive of the appropriate bits? And the original photographs?

Yes, they are banned. The Sexual Offences Act (Section 160) prohibits the “making, possession and distribution”. There are a couple of exceptions – for example, if you are married to a person aged 16 or 17 then you can have indecent photos of your spouse, and you can also be in the indecent photos yourself, but no third parties can appear in the photos – if you want to film threesomes, then you all have to be 18 or over.

What if you marry at 16 and – as is likely – divorce?

@ 40

What if you marry at 16 and – as is likely – divorce?

Ahhh… now there’s a question that could make some of m’learned friends damned good money.

By the way, your Lord Horror comics won’t be affected though – that’s a whole different area of the law. Even if they are still considered material likely to corrupt and deprave – which I very much doubt – possession is fine, only distribution is a problem. Even then, it has to be demonstrated that the presons to whom they are distributed could be corrupted. If you were going to show them to Sunny, or Chaise for example, a reasonable defence would be that these people are already thoroughly depraved and that your comics can’t make then any worse.

Copies of the Anarchist Cookbook however – well,along with that crappy 1st of May Group guide to ambushing police vehicles that they used to sell in lefty bookshops in the 1980′s, that’s probably covered by the various terrorism acts now as “material likely to be useful to someone preparing an act of terrorism”… its now been ruled that even academics don’t have a right to study such material.

“Academics have no “right” to research terrorist materials and they risk being prosecuted for doing so, the vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham has told his staff.

In a statement issued to the university last week, Sir Colin Campbell says: “There is no ‘right’ to access and research terrorist materials. Those who do so run the risk of being investigated and prosecuted on terrorism charges. Equally, there is no ‘prohibition’ on accessing terrorist materials for the purpose of research. Those who do so are likely to be able to offer a defence to charges (although they may be held in custody for some time while the matter is investigated). This is the law and applies to all universities.”

and

Oliver Blunt QC, of the Anti-Terrorism team at Furnival Chambers in London, said that academics do have a “right” to “access” terrorist materials, whether for research or otherwise, as long as they do not “possess” them.

He said: “Once the researcher knowingly downloads or saves the materials that he is accessing, then he is in ‘possession’ of terrorist materials.

“There is no ‘right’ to ‘possess’ terrorist materials and, while a genuine researcher would be able to establish a defence, the evidential burden is on the researcher to do so.”

TLS 17th July 2008