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You don't think that people on the other ends of trades that depended on Barclay's Libor rate were depending on it being objective or accurate? So those people

You don't think that people on the other ends of trades that depended on Barclay's Libor rate were depending on it being objective or accurate? So those people on the other end of the trades, literally were aware that Barclays were ripping them off by manipulating the rate and were fine with that?? If so, where can I find these traders who like losing money, so I can make some trades with them.

Lazare 10y ago
> You don't think that people on the other ends of trades that depended on Barclay's Libor rate were depending on it being objective or accurate? I certainly hope that people were not depending on Libor being an objective metric, because that would imply they hadn't the foggiest clue what Libor is or how it's calculated. (Also, "Barclays was ripping them off" implies Barclay's was on the other end of the trade, but that's not typically what happened. A more representative example might be "hedge fund buys a bunch of mortgage backed securities pegged to Libor + some number; Barclay's lies to try and avoid going under and pushes the Libor rate down a fraction of a hair, meaning a few million homeowners pay slightly less interest than they "should", and the hedge fund makes slightly less money that it "should". Which is, sure, horrible, and people have paid large fines and gone to jail for it. But it's hard to get too outraged over it; compare it to, eg, the banks who knowingly resold bad mortgages.)
- raesene6 10y ago
  well the lawsuits that Barclays and others are facing seem to indicate there was rather more harm than that. One example, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal "Early estimates are that the rate manipulation scandal cost US states, counties, and local governments at least $6 billion in fraudulent interest payments, above $4 billion that state and local governments have already had to spend to unwind their positions exposed to rate manipulation."

Lazare 10y ago

> You don't think that people on the other ends of trades that depended on Barclay's Libor rate were depending on it being objective or accurate? I certainly hope that people were not depending on Libor being an objective metric, because that would imply they hadn't the foggiest clue what Libor is or how it's calculated. (Also, "Barclays was ripping them off" implies Barclay's was on the other end of the trade, but that's not typically what happened. A more representative example might be "hedge fund buys a bunch of mortgage backed securities pegged to Libor + some number; Barclay's lies to try and avoid going under and pushes the Libor rate down a fraction of a hair, meaning a few million homeowners pay slightly less interest than they "should", and the hedge fund makes slightly less money that it "should". Which is, sure, horrible, and people have paid large fines and gone to jail for it. But it's hard to get too outraged over it; compare it to, eg, the banks who knowingly resold bad mortgages.)

raesene6 10y ago
well the lawsuits that Barclays and others are facing seem to indicate there was rather more harm than that. One example, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal "Early estimates are that the rate manipulation scandal cost US states, counties, and local governments at least $6 billion in fraudulent interest payments, above $4 billion that state and local governments have already had to spend to unwind their positions exposed to rate manipulation."