‘The last Social Democrat chancellor talks about how he cut taxes and reformed labor markets – and how it cost him his job.

WSJ inverview.

Shouldn’t that be ‘would’ be a disaster?

David Smith at economicsuk.com

Right that’s it.

Do I think libor-gate will have a discernible effect on forex trading? The answer is a definitive Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!

I personally promise to not post again on this subject….

C’mon Dave, let’s hold a referendum and get the hell out of this pile of merde. Enough is enough!!

I get the impression no one (outside Greece) really gives a monkeys about Greece anymore. Just sayin.

EU got bigger fish to fry………or save

Zerohedge

‘The world has simply gotten itself into too much debt. There are creditors that expect to be paid, and debtors that are having an increasingly difficult time making their coupon payments. No amount of political or policy intervention is going to change that reality.’

Best ya get a move on pumpkin

The best thing would be if everyone pretended like Libor manipulation never happened. Banks and regulators could build a new system that’s impossible to abuse and we would all move on.

Instead, it looks like regulators and politicians are going to open a pandora’s box in an effort to score political points.

There is no question that every bank the participated in Libor manipulated their rate during the crisis. Everybody knew about it.

Libor was probably manipulated  for the past 20 years. Yet suddenly regulators and politicians who were either asleep or complicit during that time have sprung into action.

Now at least 5 countries plus the EU have ongoing probes into each of the 16 banks who were submitting rates. It will be madness.

Instead of banding together, like a law-breaking cartel should, banks are rolling over on each other:

Regulators in some countries are being helped by cooperation from Barclays and UBS. The Swiss bank has reached immunity deals in the U.S., Switzerland and Canada, giving it protection against enforcement action related to certain transactions and submissions, according to regulatory filings.

UBS has provided the Canadian Competition Bureau with emails, transcripts of instant-message chats and trading records, according to court documents.

The banks have also throwing the low-level traders under the bus, firing them and now setting them up for criminal charges:

 The Justice Department is plowing ahead with its criminal investigation into traders at Barclays and other banks, according to people close to the agency’s investigation.

They better pray that none of those traders have emails showing the orders to manipulate Libor came right from the top — which they surely did.

‘You have a Finnish problem. You have a Dutch problem. You have a German problem too,” said one euro zone diplomat.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose…..

Story looks like it’s gonna run and run

‘The British weather is now beyond a joke – the downpours are endangering retail, tourism and the nation’s sanity’

Whistleblower: bosses ‘would have known’ what the traders were doing