Reaction in the UK To This Morning's Bob Diamond Testimony

After the hearing, Conservative MP David Ruffley, a member of the Treasury Committee, said he was not satisfied with Mr Diamond's evidence.

"Either he was complicit or, frankly, incompetent," Mr Ruffley told the BBC.

He said he was astonished that Mr Diamond said he only became aware of the rate-rigging at Barclays last month.

"It was quite shocking testimony, in the sense that there was serious wrongdoing and he didn't know about it," the MP said. "Heaven knows what else was going on inside the bank."

BBC


"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks."

John Dalberg Lord Acton

I found much of his testimony troubling when viewed within the context of what had actually happened, which is a long term criminal conspiracy involving many of the major Banks to 'fix' one of the public financial system's most important, foundational benchmarks.

One example of his dissembling is the finger pointing at the Bank of England,  which may have encouraged Barclays to jigger rates during the 2008 liquidity crisis. There should be little doubt that governments intervene in markets during crises. But they also turn a blind eye to much criminal activity in ordinary times as well, as a professional courtesy it appears.

This allegation of Barclays deliberately misstates and misdirects the history of LIBOR fixing.  For some three years at least prior to the crisis with evidence dating from 2005 the rigging of LIBOR proceeded. Felix Salmon of Reuters enlightens us on this little bit of prevarication. Defiant Barclays.

Is Mr. Diamond not only negligently incompetent but delusional as well, or merely a pathological liar?

The standard CEO defense is well known to the readers here, and to those who have closely followed the series of scandals from Enron to MF Global to JPM. The leaders of the companies are paid astronomical sums to run their firms and take credit for the results, but if anything should go wrong, they are never involved and know almost nothing, barely paying any attention at all to the business which they direct.

And they throw their employees, their shareholders, and the public under the bus.

There will be plenty of excuses made and defenses of a thoroughly rotten financial system offered. This is all a part of the credibility trap, and the corruptibility of even the best of us, and certainly of the worst.

Can you believe that there are those in the American Congress who are already calling for and engaged in the weakening and overturning even the little reforms that have been pushed through the formidable lobbying pressure of the Banks, as if the financial crisis and widespread bank fraud had not ever occurred but a few years ago.

Power not only corrupts, it also attracts into its service the weak, the morally ambivalent, the greedy, and the corruptible.

"There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern...The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.”

John Dalberg Lord Acton

Mr. President, Fix This Power Grid...

"The trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they're too damn greedy."

Herbert Hoover

Mr. President, fix this power grid, and bring it up to modern uniform standards of resiliency and excellence.

Put forward a coherent national energy policy that is robust enough to withstand natural disasters, the demands of changing sources, the requirements of clean air and water, and the manipulation of financial institutions who use their money power to prey on the natural resources and foodstuffs, taking the profits for themselves and charging their losses to the public through the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, turning every attempt at reform into a new con game for the one percent.

That would be a genuine renewal of the Declaration of Independence.

More than 1 million in U.S. still without power five days after storm

(Reuters) - More than 1 million homes and businesses in a swath from Indiana to Virginia remained without power early on Wednesday, five days after deadly storms tore through the region. The outage meant no July 4 holiday for thousands of utility workers who scrambled to restore power across the region. Much of the afflicted areas faced yet another day of scorching heat, with the National Weather Service forecasting temperatures from 90 Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) to more than 100 F (37.7 C) from the Midwest to the Atlantic Coast. .

The Defense of Fort McHenry

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
’Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: ’In God is our trust.’
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Francis Scott Key, 1814

Rhyme of History: The Banks, the City, and England

"From the time I took office as chancellor of the exchequer I began to learn that the state held in the face of the Bank and the City an essentially false position as to finance.

When those relations began, the state was justly in ill odour as a fraudulent bankrupt who was ready on occasion to add force to fraud. After the revolution it adopted better methods though often for unwise purposes, and in order to induce monied men to be lenders it came forward under the countenance of the Bank as its sponsor.

Hence a position of subserviency which, as the idea of public faith grew up and gradually attained to solidity, it became the interest of the Bank and the City to prolong.

This was done by amicable and accommodating measures towards the government, whose position was thus cushioned and made easy in order that it might be willing to give it a continued acquiescence. The hinge of the whole situation was this: the government itself was not to be a substantive power in matters of finance, but was to leave the money power supreme and unquestioned.

In the conditions of that situation I was reluctant to acquiesce, and I began to fight against it by financial self—assertion from the first, though it was only by the establishment of the Post Office Savings Banks and their great progressive development that the finance minister has been provided with an instrument sufficiently powerful to make him independent of the Bank and the City power when he has occasion for sums in seven figures.

I was tenaciously opposed by the governor and deputy—governor of the Bank, who had seats in parliament, and I had the City for an antagonist on almost every occasion."

William Ewart Gladstone