UBS and LIBOR: Horribly rotten, comically stupid

Though it’s left the headlines, the LIBOR scandal keeps growing and growing. More and more banks are found to have been diddling the system.

The interchanges published by the FSA also reveal a comical stupidity among people who, if judged by their above-average pay, ought to have been expected to display above-average insight and intelligence. Sadly, they showed neither.

I find the apparent abject stupidity of many of those involved to be breath-taking.

Oh, and the scandal seems to have spread further into the system:

Apart from the salacious glimpse that these settlements give into the foul-mouthed and matey culture (as well as atrocious grammar) of investment banking trading desks, they also reveal worrying suggestions that this conspiracy was bigger than previously suspected. Information released by the FSA shows it involved not just banks, as was previously known from a settlement earlier this year by Barclays, but that it also involves the collusion of employees at inter-broker dealers, the firms that stand between banks and help them to trade with one another.

Dear me. At this point, we are getting into proper “-gate” suffix territory.