Why The LIBOR Scandal Matters For American Consumers

Most worrying, as economist Simon Johnson pointed out, is the implication that rate-fixing wasn’t just a hobby at Barclay’s. It was a pandemic across the industry. That’s not one doctor lying about his patient’s blood pressure to make his treatment look better. That’s an entire hospital administration colluding to lie about all their patients’ conditions in order to make more money and avoid scrutiny.

Daniel Pereira, Think Progress

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Revelations of corruption, rate-fixing, regulatory collusion and outright fraud continue to spread across the global banking industry.

But still, the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal hasn’t grabbed the same amount of attention as the robo-signing debacle that effectively locked down foreclosures actions in the U.S. or the JPMorgan Chase “London Whale” losses, which could reach $9 billion or more.

Yet the LIBOR case, for all the complexity and financial subtlety behind it, affects a breadth of products and sums of money that dwarf those previous episodes.

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