LIBOR

It should come as no surprise to anyone that major commercial banks manipulate Libor submissions for their own benefit. As Jefferies David Zervos writes this weekend, money-center commercial banks did not want the “truth” of market prices to determine their loan rates. Rather, they wanted an oligopolistically controlled subjective survey rate to be the basis for their lending businesses. When there are only 16 players – a “gentlemen’s agreement” is relatively easy to formulate. That is the way business has been transacted in the broader OTC lending markets for nearly 30 years. The most bizarre thing to come out of the Barclays scandal, Zervos goes on to say, is the attack on the Bank of England and Paul Tucker. Is it really a scandal that central bank officials tried to affect interest rates? Absolutely NOT! That’s what they do for a living. Central bankers try to influence rates directly and indirectly EVERY day. That is their job. Congresses and Parliaments have given central banks monopoly power in the printing of money and the management of interest rate policy. These same law makers did not endow 16 commercial banks with oligopoly power to collude on the rate setting process in their privately created, over the counter, publicly backstopped marketplaces.

We especially enjoy reading things that we disagree with, and that challenge my own beliefs. Strong ideas are made stronger, and weak ideas dissolve in the spotlight of scrutiny. People who are unhappy to read criticisms of their own ideas are opening the floodgates to ignorance and dogmatism. Yet sometimes our own open-minded contrarianism leads us to something unbelievably shitty.

The financial system is being regulated by clueless schmucks — many of whom would also castigate Zero Hedge as a “big fat hoax”, while ignoring grift and degeneracy within the financial establishment and the TBTF banks. In the face of such grotesque incompetence who can blame market participants for wanting a hedge against zero?

When on Friday news broke that German regulator BAFIN (which is just like the SEC except that it also regulates, investigates and actually prosecutes, instead of just watching porn all day) was launching a probe of the biggest bank in Europe, and actually, make that the world, Germany's Deutsche Bank, the shares took a quick, brisk hit, sliding 5% with everyone anxiously expecting to find out just which bank will follow Barclays into the scapegoat abattoir (because nobody had any clue Liebor manipulation was going on until a week ago). Yet while external inquiry into banks is to be expected (everywhere but in the US of course, because in the US no banks manipulated anything. Ever) as a proactive act on behalf of regulators to cover their back, things get a little more tricky when the bank itself admits there was an obvious supervision problem. From Reuters: "Two Deutsche Bank employees have been suspended after it used external auditors to examine whether staff were involved in manipulating interbank lending rates, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, citing no sources." Now what can possibly go wrong if the biggest bank in the world, with just shy of $3 trillion in "assets", which just happens to have a 1.68% Core Tier 1 ratio, is suddenly thrust smack in the middle of the scandal that the Economist just aptly named the finance industry's "tobacco moment"?

Big Banks Are Rotten to the Core

All 3 Libor Arguments Fail

Hundreds of billions of dollars of additional potential legal liability, much of which likely borne by US banks, yet very few are paying attention. Here's how I see it...

Regulators Say Libor Manipulation Started in 2005 ... But Industry Veteran Closely Involved in the Libor Process Says that the Rate Has Been Manipulated for 15 Years

And the hits just keep on coming. Just as we said when it first broke, the Lieborgate scandal has considerably more play here and the latest and greatest is, via Bloomberg:

Germany’s Bafin Holding Libor Inquiry on Deutsche Bank: Reuters

The Deutsche Bank ADR has plunged by around 5% so far. Following 'news' this morning that RBC didn't 'collude' but no denial of the actual submission 'efforts' it would not surprise us to see the entire spectrum of LIBOR submitters 'probed'.

And in the meantime, not a peep about any bank in the US, which is ironic considering JPM, Citi and BofA are BBA member banks, and had among the lowest fixing rates during the period in question, and as Bob Diamond himself said, "everyone did it." One may almost get the impression that US regulators and politicians, gasp, have a motive to not investigate banks for not only criminal but civil malfeasance. And why should they: after all there is unlimited taxpayer money. And if that ends, the US can just print some more.

• Beggars can't be choosers after all: Greece Drops Demand to Ease Bailout Terms (FT)
• It took journalists 4 years to get that under ZIRP all banks have to be hedge funds: US Banks Taking Risks in Search of Yield (FT)
• Made-In-London Scandals Risk City Reputation As Money Center (Bloomberg)
• Merkel Approval Rises to Highest Since 2009 After EU Summit (Bloomberg)
• Judge orders JPMorgan to explain withholding emails (Reuters)
• U.S. hiring seen stuck in low gear in June (Reuters)
• Germans Urged to Block Merkel on Integration (WSJ)
• Crony Capitalism Rules: Countrywide used VIP program to sway Congress (Reuters)
• Barclays’ US Deal Rewrites Libor Process (FT)
• Cyprus Juggles EU and Russian Support (FT)
• Delay Seen (Again) For New Rules on Accounting (WSJ)
• Lagarde Says IMF to Cut Growth Outlook as Global Economy Weakens (Bloomberg)

Financial magazine Euromoney, which in addition to being a subscription-based publication appears to also rely on bank advertising, has just held its 2012 Awards for Excellence dinner event. And in the "you can't make this up" category we have Barclays winning the Best Global Debt House, Best Investment Bank, And Best Global Flow House Of The Year Awards. Specifically we learn that "the bank’s commitment to the US is exemplified by the addition of another global senior manager to the country – Tom Kalaris is now going to be splitting his time between New York and London as executive chairman of the Americas as well as overseeing wealth management. Jerry del Missier, who has overseen the corporate and investment bank through its Lehman integration and was recently appointed COO of the Barclays group, says the bank is well positioned. "We came out of the crisis in a stronger strategic position and that has allowed us to continue to win market share and build our franchise. Keep in mind that the US is the largest investment banking, wealth management, credit card and investment management market in the world, and in terms of fee share will remain the most dynamic economy in the world for many years. As a strong global, universal bank operating in a competitive environment that is undergoing significant retrenchment, we like our position." That said, with the Chairman, CEO and COO all now fired, just who was it who accepted the various award: the firm's LIBOR setting team? And if so, were they drinking Bollinger at the dinner?

By now the world and their cat knows that Barclays' Lie-bor submissions were 'too high' for the powers that be in Whitehall and we suspect that given any chance or an 'out' to massage the numbers in order to appear stronger) just as they headed into a financing, the Barclays execs figured 'why not?'. For some context on just how much this mattered - quite a significant amount as it turns out - and upon which the basis of many bullish theses were based at the time (despite the fact that CDS markets were gapping wider and screaming reality), Bloomberg's Chart of the Day shows the huge variations from the BBA's LIBOR relative to the UK bank submissions (most notably Barclays) around the time of Paul Tucker's intervention.

But please don’t tell me that you are surprised that Barclays was “manipulating” LIBOR.

Why Is the Libor Scandal So Important to You?

• Finland (which with Holland account for 50% of the Eurozone's AAA rated countries), just says "Ei" to stripping ESM subordination (Bloomberg)
• Libor Rate Scandal Set to Spread (WSJ)
• #ByeBarclays flashmob descends on bank (FinExtra)
• What is financial reform in China? (Pettis)
• Cities Consider Seizing Mortgages (WSJ)
• China Beige Book Shows Pickup Unseen in Official Data (BBG)
• China’s New Rules May Curb Credit Growth, CBRC Official Says (BBG)
• India Said to Pay in Euros for Iranian Oil Due to Rupee Hurdles (BBG)
• Wealthy Hit Hardest as France Raises Taxes (FT)
• Euro Bank Supervisor Faces Hurdles (WSJ)