Libor’s Trillion-Dollar Question

The global investigation into the manipulation of Libor has so far done a good job of exposing how bankers corrupted one of the world’s most important financial indicators. Now authorities need to take a giant step further: Make banks release the data needed to determine how much damage was done and who should bear the most responsibility.

For those still not familiar with the London interbank offered rate, it’s an array of benchmarks designed to provide an objective assessment of banks’ borrowing costs -- information that is used to set the payments on hundreds of trillions of dollars in loans, securities and derivatives worldwide. The rates are calculated by asking banks, every workday morning in London, how much they would pay to borrow money in 10 currencies and at 15 time periods, from overnight to a year.