Gary Gensler, the head of the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC), has made a pretty depressing admission to the BBC. During an interview on one of the greater financial scandals in modern times, the rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), Chairman Gensler submitted that the global benchmark for interest rates is still “not [...]

After a global financial crisis, an epic price fixing scandal, and embarrassing criminal conduct British regulators are considering ending Too Big To Fail Banking. British Finance Minister George Osborne has proposed legislation that if banks do not shield their riskier investment activities from day to day banking they will face restructuring. Britain is shaking up [...]

Swiss bank UBS will pay $1.5 billionfor their role in the Libor rate-rigging scandal. The sum is over three times the fine imposed on Barclays Bank for the same violations. UBS also admitted to one count of wire fraud in its Japanese unit, according to the Justice Department. Much of the rate rigging in the [...]

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which under the direction of Thomas Curry has been moderately more tough-minded against the banks, released a report that essentially admits that the big banks are poorly managed and have inadequate risk management controls. As Yves Smith points out, this means that the executives need to go [...]

Everyone expects UBS, the Royal Bank of Scotland and several others to face some sort of sanction. But we’ve been hearing about imminent charges for months now, with nothing to show for it.

It has taken many years, but we might see one Wall Street trader investigated for malfeasance. Glenn Hadden, a former partner at Goldman Sachs now on the trading desks at Morgan Stanley, faces an inquiry into his practices at Goldman. Specifically, regulators at the CME Group, which runs commodity and futures exchanges, are investigating whether [...]

The Special Inspector General for TARP, Christy Romero, has recommended that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department stop using LIBOR, the benchmark interest rate derived in such a slipshod way that it was rigged for years. But the Fed and Treasury aren’t taking Romero up on the request. The Treasury and the Fed should [...]

The Financial Services Authority, the top regulator of the banking industry in Britain, announced its changes to how the Libor, the benchmark interest rate which undergirds hundreds of trillions of dollars in financial products, will be derived. As expected, the British government will take responsibility for setting the Libor away from the British Bankers’ Association. [...]

The British Bankers’ Association, the group that currently sets the Libor, the benchmark interest rate that was manipulated over a long period by bank traders, could lose their control over the rate-setting as early as Friday, according to anonymous sources. The move is likely to be announced on Friday, when Martin Wheatley, managing director of [...]

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has led the investigation into the Libor rate-rigging scandal. They have pursued civil charges, and worked with the Justice Department on criminal ones. But when the CFTC first learned about how banks could easily implement rate-rigging, they ignored it – when the agency was under the executive branch of President [...]

Libor has sort of faded into the background as an issue because of the salience of the political campaign, but investors burned by the rate-rigging scandal still see it as a fertile opportunity to collect. That’s probably the extent of the damage that the banks will feel for rigging the benchmark interest rate, but some [...]