SCREW THE BONUSES - OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!

(h/t Atrios)

I had a post about this back in February and now some banksters have been fined...

Barclays fined £290m as bid to manipulate interest rates is exposed

Bob Diamond forfeits bonus over bank's 'serious, widespread' breaches of City rules
Jill Treanor, City editor
The Guardian, Wednesday 27 June 2012

The boss of Barclays, Bob Diamond, is under mounting pressure after the bank was hit with fines of £290m for its "serious, widespread" role in trying to manipulate the price of crucial interest rates that affect the cost of borrowing for millions of customers around the world.

There were calls for Diamond to step down after the Financial Services Authority slapped a £59.5m fine on the bank – the largest ever levied by the City regulator - forcing him and other top executives to forgo any bonuses for 2012.

The FSA – and authorities in the US which hit Barclays with penalties of £230m – described repeated breaches of rules dating back to 2005. They involved "a significant number of employees", including senior managers, and called into question the integrity of the markets.

That last phrase shows how out of touch the news media is with the vast corruption in Bankster World.

UPDATE:  McClatchy has some more information about this:

The bank avoided criminal proceedings by cooperating with authorities, and Barclay’s CEO, Bob Diamond, was contrite in a statement issued on the bank’s Website.


From about 2005 to 2009, according to the CFTC, Barclays’ submissions for determining the benchmark lending rate were based on recommendations from its traders in complex financial instruments called currency swaps. They’re insurance-like bets on the movement of one currency against another. The company’s swaps traders were trying to benefit their positions in the complex bets by effectively setting the table in their favor.