The Market Has Spoken – And It Is Rigged

"In the aftermath of the Barclays rate-fixing scandal, the most surprising reaction has been from people in the financial sector who fully understand the awfulness of what has happened. Rather than seeing this as an issue of law and order, some well-informed people have been drawn toward arguments that excuse or justify the behavior of the Barclays employees.
This is a big mistake, in terms of both the economics at stake and the likely political impact.
The behavior at Barclays has all the hallmarks of fraud, pure and simple – intentional deception for personal gain, causing significant damage to others.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission nailed the detailed mechanics of this deception in plain English in its “Order Instituting Proceedings” (which is also a settlement and series of admissions by Barclays). Most of the compelling quotes from traders involved this scandal come from the Order, but too few commentators seem to have read the full document. Please look at it now, if you have not done so already.
Barclays has acknowledged that its staff took part in a wide-ranging conspiracy (or perhaps a set of conspiracies) to rig markets – including, but not limited to, any securities for which the price is linked to a particular set of short-term interest rates. The collective term for these rates is the London InterBank Offered Rate, known as Libor, but the use of this nomenclature sometimes hides the fact that there is currently a separate Libor daily for each of 10 currencies at 15 maturities, from overnight to 12 months, according to the British Bankers Association. The notional size of the derivatives involved is on the order of $360 trillion.
Barclays could not have manipulated those rates by themselves – and that is not what the C.F.T.C. found or the basis of the Barclays settlement. Rather, some Barclays employees colluded with people at other banks in a way that, over a period of years, moved Libor rates up and down – depending on what would favor the trading positions of the people and organizations involved.
Each Libor “panel” of banks involves 7 to 18 banks. Participating banks submit the rate at which they can supposedly borrow at a particular maturity and in a specified currency, and an average is calculated (taking out high and low values). No one bank is likely to be able to move the calculated Libor rates by itself.
Once the global financial crisis began to bite, there appears to have been a more systematic manipulation of Libor reporting by Barclays management in a particular direction – downward, to make it seem that the bank was healthier and therefore able to borrow from other banks at a cheaper rate..."

at http://baselinescenario.com/2012/07/12/the-market-has-spoken-and-it-is-rigged/