I wouldn't bank on it

[Serial_Apologist]

And then where would we be, apart from Monte Carlo?

Always assuming that JS wasn't having a larf, innit

I was getting worried about John Skelton - wondering if he'd been mugged by someone calling himself Saul on a road to Notting Hill.

[ahinton]

Er, I don't thing that is what Lat is actually saying, ahinton. As I read him, he is arguing that young people with the potential of bringing radical new perspectives to solving the banking problem are prematurely being slotted into a loaded agenda by virtue of having to make decisions based on that agenda.

Yes, I know that he is, but my point was and indeed remains that the kind of greed that we all know has fuelled the activities of some of the young stallions in the derivatives and allied markets is such that there's at least as much likelihood that people of that age would commit similar misdemeanours to those that have been and are still being conducted by their elders and not-much-betters in the investment banking industry.

Also, why always do you have to draw a doom-laden picture of insurmountable problems? Nobody is arguing that banks would have to be regulated out of business. Where do you get that impression from? The banks?

No. If, however, the regulators and Courts merely stand by and let all or most of it continue to happen, the ultimate scenario for most if not all of us is hardly likely to be a positive one, whereas if, on the other hand, the kinds of accusations currently being made by some in US (such as that FSA in UK, while doing the right thing about it, is going nothing like as far as it should) are interpreated as suggesting that much tighter and vastly more wide-ranging regulation of every aspect of the investment banks' activities (together with effective enforcement of far harsher finincial punishments for their transgressions) would, if implemented, risk doing so much damage to the banks that, by curtailing those activities in which we do not want them to indulge, they'd no longer be able to do what we all want them to do either.

Just as Goebbels is credited with that statement about telling lies, it's a relatively small step from the recent history of "too big to fail" that we've all seen in the banking industry to a "too big to over-regulate" scenario; in other words, if you're going to screw things up for hundreds of millions of people in order to line your own pockets, it's important to do it so effectively that any serious atempt to stop it might risk falling flat on its face. These people may be profoundly immoral, but they're not so stupid as to be incapable of working that one out!

[ahinton]

I think so, yes - that's why I wrote that

So, to you, what IS it down to, then? - and what would you wish to see done about it?

[amateur51]

So, to you, what IS it down to, then? - and what would you wish to see done about it?

I was referring to the recreational drug culture within gambling of most sorts, from blackjack and chemin de fer and roulette to investment banking and stock market dealing, with champagne and cocaine being the drugs of choice

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241775/Every-British-bank-note-contaminated-cocaine-weeks-entering-circulation.html

[amateur51]

David Cameron's response to today's Barclay's Libor fixing scandal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18622264

Note that a) he puts the blame on the Brown government and seeks to distance his goverment from it; and that
b) the word 'police' does not pass his lips

[ahinton]

I was referring to the recreational drug culture within gambling of most sorts, from blackjack and chemin de fer and roulette to investment banking and stock market dealing, with champagne and cocaine being the drugs of choice

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...rculation.html

Ah, I see - yes (although it might be worth being careful what you refer to when citing the egregious Daily Wail as your evidential source!); I have to admit, however, that it's what these bankers get up to when they're stone cold sober and not subject to the effects of recreational substances that tends to bother me rather more than what they do when they're getting blotto on Roederer and high on coke between bouts of interest fixing.

To be serious, however, whatever the outcomes of the already ongoing and forthcoming investigations into investment banks' interest fixing activities, especially if they branch out (as I expect them eventually to do) into the matter of their likely currency value and exchange rate fixing (and I suspect that these will run and run to an extent that might even put the Leveson saga into the shade), it is difficult to see how those who have been adversely affected by those activities can possibly be compensated to the extent of being put back into the position in which they might have been had they not been victims of those activities; we've already seen how the sub-prime scam affected hundreds of thousands of Americans and how and to what extent its effects have spread to other parts of the world since it broke, but this, whilst not unconnected with it, is clearly on a far vaster scale, so how would it ever be possible to trace everyone affected by it, calculate and reach mutual agreement on the precise value of their losses and compensate them accordingly, with (hopefully uncontaminated) interest - and from what funding source/s?

[amateur51]

Ah, I see - yes (although it might be worth being careful what you refer to when citing the egregious Daily Wail as your evidential source!); I have to admit, however, that it's what these bankers get up to when they're stone cold sober and not subject to the effects of recreational substances that tends to bother me rather more than what they do when they're getting blotto on Roederer and high on coke between bouts of interest fixing.

What makes you think that they're not coincidental? Seriously.

Is this a more impressive source of comment re the banknote phenomenon, ahinton?

http://forensicscientist.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/cocaine-on-banknotes/

[ahinton]

David Cameron's response to today's Barclay's Libor fixing scandal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18622264

Note that a) he puts the blame on the Brown government and seeks to distance his goverment from it; and that
b) the word 'police' does not pass his lips

Three things here. Firstly, whilst Cameron does indeed point out that these things began to occur during a previous administration, he doesn't actually go quite so far as overtly to blame that administration for the fact that they did so. Secondly, it all seems to have begun during Blair's premiership rather than Brown's subsequent one and, in referring to its developing during a previous administration, Cameron is not actually wrong (and, for the record, I note that the journalist omits reference to that previous administration). Thirdly, on what specific grounds would or indeed should he have mentioned the police in this specific context? The police have nothing to do with this until and unless they are required to act, as it is FSA's responsibility to investigate in the first instance and, if referral needs subsequently to be made to SFO and the police are then required to assist in such investigations, so be it, so the notion of the police blasting into this at the outset with or without all guns blazing before FSA had had the opportunity to investigate would ostensibly make something of a mockery of both the police itself and FSA and, in so doing, no doubt interfere with the conduct of the required investigation.

Having said that, however, it is important to note from the article the sentgence that runs
"Currently fines paid by banks help to bring down the levy other financial firms pay to run the regulator".
This is indeed true; FSA is not taxpayer funded - it is a quango funded solely by the financial services industry and operating under the terms of Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA2000, as amended); it has no fuinds of its own and, whilst it retains extensive fining powers, it is obliged by law to distribute any fines that it receives to reduce the annual fees that it charges to those individuals and organisations whom it regulates, including the banks, so, broadly speaking, the more that they fine the banks, the less those banks have subsequently to pay FSA in regulatory fees. If ever there was a contemporary equivalent of the Chaucerian physic and apothecary arrangement, this must surely be it.

In addition, however, as I mentioned previously, many of FSA's senior officers have come from the banking industry, so the idea that FSA knew nothing about these goings-on until relatively recently when it commenced its investigations into them seems not so much dubious as risible; whilst FSA is indeed charged with a duty to investigate, it should also be held accountable for its own actions and inactions where this and other banking woes are concerned, but that, I fear, has to date proved to be a far harder nut to crack, especially as FSMA2000 grants to FSA statutory immunity from prosecution, a privilege unique among UK industry regulators and certainly not one enjoyed by the banks and other financial institutions.

[ahinton]

What makes you think that they're not coincidental? Seriously.

Is this a more impressive source of comment re the banknote phenomenon, ahinton?

http://forensicscientist.wordpress.c...-on-banknotes/

But Am, I'm not doubting you, or indeed the sources that you cite on this (even the Daily Wail, about whom my off-the-cuff remark was intentionally frivolous); this, however, is not my point, which was instead that what these guys get up to when they're "at their exercise" (see Peter Grimes) and not wallowing in fizz and coke is what we really need to be worrying about - wouldn't you agree?

[amateur51]

But Am, I'm not doubting you, or indeed the sources that you cite on this (even the Daily Wail, about whom my off-the-cuff remark was intentionally frivolous); this, however, is not my point, which was instead that what these guys get up to when they're "at their exercise" (see Peter Grimes) and not wallowing in fizz and coke is what we really need to be worrying about - wouldn't you agree?

And my point is that they're often off their tits (not Grimes but Boys in The Band) at work - I have only anecdotal evidence

[Serial_Apologist]

http://forensicscientist.wordpress.c...-on-banknotes/

Then no wonder everybody's lately been rushing around, having strange paranoid thoughts that the establishment is corrupt, through and through.

[ahinton]

And my point is that they're often off their tits (not Grimes but Boys in The Band) at work - I have only anecdotal evidence

OK - and thanks for admitting that your evidence is no more than merely anecdotal - but, on the basis of that evidence, do you deduce that these grave misdemeanours are carried out BECAUSE those who do so are off their tits whilst ostensibly being on duty?

[amateur51]

OK - and thanks for admitting that your evidence is no more than merely anecdotal - but, on the basis of that evidence, do you deduce that these grave misdemeanours are carried out BECAUSE those who do so are off their tits whilst ostensibly being on duty?

Because of, in spite of, who knows?!

EDIT: I have read City Boy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile by Geraint Andrerson, the prologue of which starts:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cityboy-Beer-Loathing-Square-Mile/dp/0755346181/ref=pd_sim_b_1#reader_0755346181

to give you a flavour

[ahinton]

Because of, in spite of, who knows?!

Well, whilst we do not and perhaps cannot necessarily "know" in terms of being able to prove or disprove it either way, it seems less than unreasonable to conclude that, in order to invent and implement these kinds of elaborate shady dealings and keep them under wraps for as long as seems to have been the case in this instance, those doing so will have needed to keep their wits well and truly about them at all times when engaged in such activities; the notion that any particular instance of interest fixing occurred while - let alone because - those arranging it were blotto on Bolly or high as kites on coke seems at best somewhat implausible, wouldn't you say?

Nevertheless, your doubt hasn't quite failed to pique my curiousity, so I'll call my personal banker at Coutts & Co and ask her, as a professional banker, for her considered thoughts on this (provided that she's not tiddly on Taittinger when I phone)...

[amateur51]

Well, whilst we do not and perhaps cannot necessarily "know" in terms of being able to prove or disprove it either way, it seems less than unreasonable to conclude that, in order to invent and implement these kinds of elaborate shady dealings and keep them under wraps for as long as seems to have been the case in this instance, those doing so will have needed to keep their wits well and truly about them at all times when engaged in such activities; the notion that any particular instance of interest fixing occurred while - let alone because - those arranging it were blotto on Bolly or high as kites on coke seems at best somewhat implausible, wouldn't you say?

Nevertheless, your doubt hasn't quite failed to pique my curiousity, so I'll call my personal banker at Coutts & Co and ask her, as a professional banker, for her considered thoughts on this (provided that she's not tiddly on Taittinger when I phone)...

See EDIT in my earlier message - there's a link to a published memoir