Barclays' Diamond Is Not Forever

July 3rd 2012, and Robert "Bob" Diamond, CEO of Barclays Bank resigned from his post following the further revelations of inappropriate business practices at the bank, relating to the setting of the London Inter-Bank Interest Rate or LIBOR. This follows the now infamous sounding out of the tax avoidance, or could it have been actually evasion schemes that the wealth management arm of the bank had been found out on and subjected to investiagations by the UK's HMRC.

July 4th and he is required to attend the Treasury sub-committee of the British Parliament. Credit should be given that he did actually attend, unlike the CEO of Kraft Foods, but his performance in trying to show innocence as a whistleblower does not stack up. This is a part of a pattern where the whole banking sector is trying to play against each other in more and more desparate ways in order to substantiate profitability and justification for extremely high basic and overall salary packages. Shareholders are being mislead as this South Sea Bubble like public campaign has turned sour, almost like a ponzi scheme but possibly not with the extremes of gains or more likely losses.

So besides Basel III or whatever, there is now no way that the disease is going to be cleared without tough direct and comprehensive regulation. There is clearly no independent yet self regulating mechanism available that would prevent these things happening again and therefore we have to move back before we can move forward. The culture has to become ingrained of one of financial prudency and risk adverse decision making, until such time as more esoterical schemes can be used in a logical and totally open fashion such as CFDs. To paraphase Shirley Bassey, "Diamonds Aren't Forever", and also a reminder of Jim Diamond's chart topping song from 1984, "I Should Have Known Better".

This blog is a personal opinion, and does not represent the opinion of any organisation or company to which I may be employed by or attached to in any way.

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