My colleague Connan Snider documented the LIBOR issue two years before Barclay’s was caught. Â Perhaps economists
are useful? Â Here is some recent media coverage of his work.
10 thoughts on “LIBOR Economics”
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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Founded by Mark Kleiman (1951-2019)
My colleague Connan Snider documented the LIBOR issue two years before Barclay’s was caught. Â Perhaps economists
are useful? Â Here is some recent media coverage of his work.
Comments are closed.
Matt Yglesias tells us that the Libor manipulation didn’t do “a great deal of concrete harm to households.” I’d say he’s badly wrong. The ongoing Libor manipulation surely helped greatly to fill the minds of bankers and other finance players with the notion that they could do whatever the heck they wanted, laws be damned. And THAT attitude is the problem that has nearly ruined millions of American families. What the hell, Yglesias?
Ygles: “My latest column is on the Libor scandal, which I think didn’t do a great deal of concrete harm to households but deserves to destroy the credibility of the big banks once and for all, illustrates the need for a much more reflexively skeptical regulatory regime.”
The ongoing Libor manipulation surely helped greatly to fill the minds of bankers and other finance players with the notion that they could do whatever the heck they wanted, laws be damned.
All of the evidence suggests that you have cause and effect reversed.
“We got away with it. Let’s go for the big haul.”
Of course it did harm.
Lots of loans – easily trillions of dollars worth – are indexed to LIBOR. If LIBOR is dishonest then one side or the other is getting cheated.
Link to the Yglesias post excerpted above:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/10/lies_and_libor.html
Once again, banks not, you know, banking.
“Perhaps economists are useful?” Particularly when like Mr. Snider they remember Adam Smith’s dictum about the propensity of businessmen to collude against the public given half a chance.
“Perhaps economists are useful?”
Really?
So you are willing to bet that one consequence of this outcome will NOT be a flood of economists willing to explain how what the banks did was actually an example of the perfection of the market in practice, that there was common knowledge of how LIBOR was really calculated and the fact that everyone stuck with it shows that it was performing an important task well, that whatever else we have learned from this we should not forget that regulating banks will have worse outcomes than letting them continue down their current path?
Useful idiots maybe. Useful to the rich maybe. Useful in the way that word is usually used — rather more doubtful.
Useful in what way? I don’t see this study as being particularly useful because it didn’t lead to any concrete action and wouldn’t be useful even in law enforcement/regulators cared about this activity and wanted to see it stopped and the wrongdoers punished. But my question is genuine and I’m open to a fuller explaination. My only point being that the usefulness of economists was not immediately and obviously apparent to me.
The problem with LIBOR is that it is based on banks’ estimates of what they would have to pay to borrow. Present a rate too high, and you signal that your bank is dodgy. Present a rate too low, and you’re gaming the system in favor of borrowers. Wouldn’t it be better if LIBOR was based on the rates banks actually DID pay to borrow? That stuff is pretty knowable.