Four Questions for Barclays

If anyone could get Robert Diamond, the former chief executive officer of Barclays Plc, to explain the Libor-fixing scandal to a British parliamentary panel on Wednesday, it was Andrea Leadsom, a Conservative member and a former Barclays banker. Although their interchange generated some heat, it didn’t yield enough light.

Yes, Diamond was contrite, repeatedly condemning the conduct of the 14 traders involved. Yes, he lost his job. But not once did he let Leadsom and her fellow MPs delve into the bank’s internal operations, including its compliance process, risk-management procedures and managerial oversight to understand how Barclays staff could have falsified interest rates used to price $800 trillion in derivatives and corporate and consumer loans, with no one noticing.