Deutsche Bank Was Emphatic About Manipulating Libor

If you want proof that journalism is doomed, consider the Deutsche Bank Libor settlement. There was a time when I could make a good living just reading through Libor settlement documents, picking out funny ungrammatical quotes from e-mails and instant messages, block-quoting them, boldfacing the particularly ridiculous lines, and saying "come on!" or words to that effect after each quote. But now the Commodity Futures Trading Commission cuts out the middleman: It pulls out the funny quotes and puts them in a separate easy-to-use document, even bolding the silliest bits. The CFTC doesn't add "come on!" but it's implied.1429802406163 What is left for me to do?

So I mean just go read that then. Compared with other Libor manipulators, Deutsche Bank is paying much the largest settlement, a total of about $2.5 billion to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, the New York Department of Financial Services and the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority. The fines are so big in part because the New York DFS is newly involved, and I must say that DFS already looks like an old pro at Libor settlements; its announcement does an even better job of collecting and artfully boldfacing funny quotes than the CFTC's does. It also doesn't help that Deutsche Bank stonewalled investigators: The FCA fined Deutsche Bank almost as much for failing "to deal with the Authority in an open and cooperative way" as it did for actually manipulating Libor.1429801715564