Prior to his appearance before the UK Treasury Select committee to talk about the Libor Scandal and mis-selling of derivative products to small businesses, will Bob Diamond have Barclays provide ultra transparency in a bid to regain the market's trust and show his firm has nothing to hide?
Absent a willingness to provide ultra transparency and show that Barclays understands good corporate citizenship and can stand on it own two feet, why should anyone believe what Mr. Diamond says about addressing the culture that gave rise to lying and mis-selling?
As your humble blogger has previously said, firing Mr. Diamond does nothing to address a culture built on profiting from and protecting opacity. In fact, firing a few traders and Mr. Diamond is nothing more than an opacity protection mechanism.
I realize that Mr. Diamond's appearance before the committee provides politicians with the opportunity to bash him. While that makes for good theatre, the public is not interested in theatre. Rather it wants real reform.
The first step on the way to real reform would be to focus on the opacity in the Libor rate setting process and how that made it easy to manipulate the rate.
The second step on the way to real reform is to point out how the changes that Barclays has made do not prevent the type of manipulation that occurred when Barclays was concerned about its own survival.
The third step on the way to real reform is to point out that it is only by disclosing all of the trades that Barclays uses to fund itself that it can prevent manipulation of Libor in the future. The question is why hasn't Barclays already agreed to do this?
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