, Columnist
Dancing on Libor's Grave
Don't be surprised if the veracity of benchmarks is questioned again.
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The London Interbank Offered Rates will be phased out by the U.K. regulator by the end of 2021. It's an ignominious end to a suite of interest rates that came to represent all that was wrong with self-regulation in the world of banking and finance.
The benchmarks were supposed to represent the cost of borrowing in the money markets; the values of a staggering $350 trillion of securities were tied to them. The rates, though, depended on the honesty of the traders submitting the data used to calculate the rates, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and manipulation.