There probably are ‘good and honest’ managers in the mob and Mexican drug cartels, but it doesn’t change the fact they are criminal organizations. I don’t know how you can look at the TBTF banks and think they are anything other than criminal organizations.

And it’s not just a couple losers on the LIBOR desk, it goes to the Board and CEO.

Where is the Southern District (or Gerry Corrigan) when one needs them?

It’s not a steamroller, it’s a bicycle icecream cart.

Anyone who thinks the banks and their executives think of ANYTHING except getting more money–their profits, their commissions, their bonuses–is officially, certifiably naive.

…even if it may lead to jail for some(although that remains a remote possibility for the vast majority of them).

As a multi-decades veteran of fixed-income and investment banking units of a number of bulge bracket firms, I have had the opportunity to observe first-hand the decline of accountability and the institutionalization of plausible deniability among the ranks of the purported “management” of places like UBS, Barclays, BofA, etc., and am delighted that Felix Salmon continues to do his homework and from time to time calls them out for their perfidy.

It’s sort of pitiful that, even now with the mountains of evidence and admissions of guilt in these cases, there still remain some credulous cheerleaders of these bumbling financial oligopolies who still think the “HSBC fine and now this group of Libor settlements is nothing more than a revenue grab.”

That sort of prompts my inner bond daddy wish I had some derivatives (levered on some obscure and illiquid index) to sell to those vocal naifs so very concerned about what they perceive as unjustified abuse of their beloved and blameless SIFI’s.

And to you, FS – troll, ho, shill with your fake outrage and HSBC-handouts – go down on some HSBC-….

The massive HSBC fine and now this group of Libor settlements is nothing more than a revenue grab. Banks aren’t paying as much in taxes because #1 they simply aren’t as profitable and #2 still have loss carryforwards from 08 and 09.

Speaking of 08 and 09 international bank regulators were pressuring banks to artificially lower Libor. The banks were happy to comply since they were desperate for the cheaper funding and would do ANYTHING to earn the love of central bankers and Treasury Secretaries who they knew would eventually pick who would live and who would die.

Any time you can bet upwards of a trillion dollars on a thin index or much worse in the case of Libor a privately set rate by a legal cartel this is what you get. Every player involved knew exactly what was going on.