That line of reasoning is why we have so many problems. The banks profited immensely from the manipulation, at the expense of other companies around the world

That line of reasoning is why we have so many problems. The banks profited immensely from the manipulation, at the expense of other companies around the world (and their shareholders, employees, stakeholders). If the directors knew about it, then they should be punished, as should the employees directly involved, but so should the bank itself. If shareholders thought that companies they owned were immune from punishment, it would create an incentive for them to try pressure directors or employees of the company into doing morally or legally dubious things. Sadly, this type of corruption looks to me to be far to deep for simple fines to fix. There is a rotten culture in London that needs to be removed. It reminds me of the Enron recordings [0] ... > "This is going to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing, We want you guys to get a little creative and come up with a reason to go down." > "O.K., so we're just coming down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type of thing? And that's cool?" > "Hopefully," Mr. Williams says, before both men laugh. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/national/04energy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/national/04energy.html