So if they weren't on the verge of collapsing, then they were just being corrupt. Thieves. Swindlers. Vampires sucking the life out of economies.
BREAKING: Barclays Revealed Libor Scandal Four Years Ago
How's this for prescient?
Check out the first couple of paragraphs of a Bloomberg News article from May 29, 2008, underthe headline, "Libor Banks Misstated Rates, Bond at Barclays Says." (Yes, the article ran more than four years before Barclays's $453 million settlement last month with U.S. and U.K. authorities for manipulating Libor.) The story begins:
Banks routinely misstated borrowing costs to the British Bankers' Association to avoid the perception they faced difficulty raising funds as credit markets seized up, said Tim Bond, a strategist at Barclays Capital."The rates the banks were posting to the BBA became a little bit divorced from reality," Bond, head of asset-allocation research in London, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "We had one week in September where our treasurer, who takes his responsibilities pretty seriously, said: 'right, I've had enough of this, I'm going to quote the right rates.' All we got for our pains was a series of media articles saying that we were having difficulty financing."