Date: 2025-08-20 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00002664
Banking, Society and Economy
The LIBOR Scandal
For a very long time, banks and powerful organizations have operated as if the law does not matter
COMMENTARY
The banking industry and the whole of the modern capitalist market system has a culture that puits crpfot ahead of everything else. This is a very bad idea, and the outcome is bound to be bad.
Wile the capitalist market system does most everything better than a totalitarian communist system, that does not, of itself, prove that the money profit capitalist market system is very good.
I have never had a 'position of power' and been in a position to influence very much, but I do know that when the metrics are wrong, the outcomes are likely to be wrong. This leads me to the conclusion that the biggest small thing that we can do to change the outcomes in our modern global economy is to start improving the systems of metrics that we use.
Simply put, I want to see a system of value accounting in place that will complement the ubiquitous money profit accounting that drives almost every decision there is about allocation of resources and the prioriities for economic activity. Something needs to be done urgently so that resources are not only deployed to do things that create investor profit, but are also deployed to do things that will imrpove quality of life.
The way big banks operate is only about profit, yet they are critical to a successful society. Banks need to clean up their act, and rethink what their purpose is in the global structure of society as well as the economy.
Peter Burgess
THE LIBOR SCANDAL
Diamond resigns from scandal-hit Barclays
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/07/20127364531126594.html
Counting the Cost: The impact of the rate-rigging scandal
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/countingthecost/2012/07/20127712473140351.html
Inside Story: is there more to come?
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/07/2012745483253266.html
Timeline: The rate-fixing scandal
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/07/2012717114448228725.html