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 [...]

We do not yet have a very good context for the costs of the Libor rate-rigging scandal. We know that derivatives traders gained when they called in favors and had banks set the Libor in ways favorable to their bets. And we know that banks benefited from artificially setting the Libor down during the financial [...]