Currency Market Fix fines banks £3.6billion

D

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When does a criminal charge not translate to a real world punishment for a human being? When the banking sector are involved.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32817114
I was thinking the same thing. These guys are getting literally millions in bonuses by comittuing fraud and cheating innocent hard-working people. AFAIK, not a single one has had to give their bonus back, nor has any of them gone to jail.
 
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trex

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May 15, 2011
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how can manipulating tiny changes in LIBOR hurt innocent hard working people?
 
D

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The traders got millions in bonuses. Where do you think the money came from?
 
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selrahc1992

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Dec 10, 2014
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I assume that the fine goes to the US government; a nice little earner for them.
bizarrly - if one for a moment turns a blind eye to the significant fact that these bankers have destroyed much of the civilised world's social infrastructure - there is teh money: for barclays alone 1.5 million times a million - that's enough to buy all teh property on a carribean island liek martnique, or something like on third of greater london.
 

the_killjoy

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Sorry but you are showing your age, everyone now uses the American billion ; 1000 x 1millon :)
 
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flecc

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The money the bankers make from LIBOR fixing, illicitly or otherwise, is from global financial trading, so should be seen in that context of the 7 billions world population.

It's a few pence each and far less than the amounts we all manage to regularly lose ourselves with less than wise decisions.
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trex

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The traders got millions in bonuses. Where do you think the money came from?
the money comes mainly from overnight interbank lending and currency and interest swaps. They make money on fourth decimal place (0.01 basis point) of overnight interest rate, basically 7th decimal point on the sums they lend to each other. What they push up in today will have to come down tomorrow or a day or two after, but in a casino where everyone is a crook, some crooks win, some crooks lose. I don't go there so it does not matter to me a tiny bit.
 

selrahc1992

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Dec 10, 2014
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The money the bankers make from LIBOR fixing, illicitly or otherwise, is from global financial trading, so should be seen in that context of the 7 billions world population.

It's a few pence each and far less than the amounts we all manage to regularly lose ourselves with less than wise decisions.
.
i guess none of you are taxpayers either, or use the NHS? hmm, not that easy to get out o the casino after all huh? i work in a specialist service in the nhs, the waiting period for treatment has doubled over the past 24 months, a direct result of cost cutting. There's been a few deaths - arguably avoidable ones. But i'm quite sure none of you will ever have any health problems, so you neednt worry yoruselves about this, as you say it only affects others.
 

flecc

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i guess none of you are taxpayers either, or use the NHS? hmm, not that easy to get out o the casino after all huh? i work in a specialist service in the nhs, the waiting period for treatment has doubled over the past 24 months, a direct result of cost cutting. There's been a few deaths - arguably avoidable ones. But i'm quite sure none of you will ever have any health problems, so you neednt worry yoruselves about this, as you say it only affects others.
There is no connection between the two though, as both Trex and I have pointed out. The LIBOR rate is a creation to give a basis for global currency speculation, that in turn needed to fix each country's currency value. Nobody likes it, but it's a necessary evil to enable global trade.

As I posted, at most a few pence per person worldwide each year is affected, not necessarily downwards either.

The cut backs that are affecting the NHS and many other facilities in our society are deemed necessary to prevent us living on ever increasing credit, a route that can only eventually lead to disaster. We will have to learn to live within our means and that has nothing to do with banking but everything to do with our own borrowing, both government and individual.

The only alternative to our cutting back on expenditure is to rapidly increase what we earn through exporting, but in that we have signally failed so far.

We are all interested in having an effective NHS, but if we want more money spent on it, we also have to say where the money is to come from. We can't just magic it out of nowhere or just increase borrowing.
.
 

selrahc1992

Esteemed Pedelecer
Dec 10, 2014
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There is no connection between the two though, as both Trex and I have pointed out. The LIBOR rate is a creation to give a basis for global currency speculation, that in turn needed to fix each country's currency value. Nobody likes it, but it's a necessary evil to enable global trade.

As I posted, at most a few pence per person worldwide each year is affected, not necessarily downwards either.

The cut backs that are affecting the NHS and many other facilities in our society are deemed necessary to prevent us living on ever increasing credit, a route that can only eventually lead to disaster. We will have to learn to live within our means and that has nothing to do with banking but everything to do with our own borrowing, both government and individual.

The only alternative to our cutting back on expenditure is to rapidly increase what we earn through exporting, but in that we have signally failed so far.

We are all interested in having an effective NHS, but if we want more money spent on it, we also have to say where the money is to come from. We can't just magic it out of nowhere or just increase borrowing.
.
afraid i dont see it this way - i think the financial crisis of 2008 and astronomic amounts governments spent on bailing out banks (and are now recouping by cutting back on services to ordinary citizens) do have something to do with it. But i think we will have to agree to differ, either way i dont really think anything will ever change, i'm clinging on - for dear life - to that expression higher up in this post that chasing pennies make a rich man but a poor fellow as part of trying to convince myself i dont need more money.
 

trex

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I think you are unfair to blame the banks for our budget deficit. Before the crisis, bank profits under the previous Labour government contributed 20% to the budget. Since the crash, banks are not paying much in corporation tax. Just imagine the effect on your family if your household's income has been cut by 20% for the last 6 years.
Banking is one of the few profitable industries we have left.
 
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flecc

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i think the financial crisis of 2008 and astronomic amounts governments spent on bailing out banks (and are now recouping by cutting back on services to ordinary citizens) do have something to do with it.
It's negligible, For every £1 invested in the two Scottish banks, there is over £30,000 in National Debt.

That whole amount invested in those two banks was just over one year's interest on the national debt.

But that bank money was investment, only lost if those two banks went broke with nothing left, most or possibly all will be recovered one day. All the other money granted to the two banks was repayable loans, a large part of it repaid since.

I sympathise with NHS needs, but also recognise that modern medicine has made it a bottomless pit that grows bigger every year. We cannot finance everything possible so governmental choices have to be made. Those choices of what to omit may not be right currently, but that is a different issue.

Nearly 8 millions of us choose to help by paying for treatment where possible, and that includes me. I've paid national insurance through all my working life and am entitled to NHS treatment for everything and have had four not-too-serious operations in my older years. But because I could afford it I chose to pay for two of those privately, leaving two minor ones for the NHS to carry out. I've also paid for medical drugs privately on some occasions.

So the NHS position could be far worse, imagine if that 8 millions of us chose not to pay for anything privately as we are entitled to do?
.
 
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D8ve

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If we all owe millions. Who do we owe it too?
Is there 68 people with half the worlds money in there pockets to lend?
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
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If we all owe millions. Who do we owe it too?
Is there 68 people with half the worlds money in there pockets to lend?
It doesn't actually exist, no money or gold is transferred. Instead a number is established as the amount one lends to another so that the other can use that book figure to buy from others.

At the same time as borrowing, countries also lend money, the one taken from the other being the net debt. For example we know that Germany is rich enough on paper to lend billions to others, but they too borrow money.

It looks mad, just as currency trading looks mad, but these are the only ways that a country's currency can have a value relative to others. The money trading, borowing and lending establish a generally accepted consensus of what each is worth, enabling global trading and individual levels of interest that can be charged on loans.
..
 
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trex

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May 15, 2011
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If we all owe millions. Who do we owe it too?
Is there 68 people with half the worlds money in there pockets to lend?
No, there are a lot of billionaires but they own about £5 trillions and the rest of us 7 billions own about £200 trillions.
when your bank agrees to lend you an amount of money, it creates the credit and the money out of nothing, it creates a computer record to say that you owe your bank the amount plus interest (bank asset), and it owes you the amount as it holds the amount in your account (bank liability). It litterally makes a lot of money (the interest you agree to pay) out of nothing, no wonder it's dead keen to lend you money. When you use that loan money to buy your house, you could say that it owes the all of us (who have assets in sterling) the amount. In practice, your bank is obliged to keep serveral legal reserves to stop it lending irresponsibly. The ratio between 'real money' (notes issued by the bank of England) and total money supply is about 2%.
 
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john h

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Nov 22, 2012
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Yes Trex, and when you have paid back the money on the agreement they keep it( that piece of paper is worth the amount written on it) just like a bank note, and put it in there pool and sell it again and again :mad: THATS THEFT
 

anotherkiwi

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Jan 26, 2015
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Banking is one of the few profitable industries we have left.
Banking is not an industry it is a service. Industries actually make stuff; for example the printing industry makes bank notes.

I am really concerned that the English language has gone to the dogs losing much of it's sense. We all know who we have to thank for that...
 

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