The Man Who Invented Libor (2016)

bloomberg.com

14 points·astdb··5 comments

David Enrich wrote The Spider Network about the manipulation of Libor in the 2007-ish era that resulted in a long prison sentence for the trader Tom Hayes (who may have Aspergers').

Libor like 'gentleman's agreements' depend on a shared understanding of the barriers. Tough if you don't see barriers...

Why does it matter that he have asperges?

It was an obnoxious piece of the trial. Not relevant imo.

Maybe relevant for who he is as a person I suppose, but not according to the trial evidence and the case as it was brought before the court.

The reason I mentioned it is that the condition may have been the reason that Hayes did not 'see' the boundary between a bank taking into account its advantage when arriving at its own Libor submission on the one hand, and the wholesale cooperation between several banks and brokerages on the other. That boundary was largely social and not documented/codified.

I was thinking in terms of mitigation.

I would think anyone even remotely familiar with economics would realize how significant even small groups of agents and how they can have rippling effects across an economy.

Maybe there was a lapse in judgment somewhere, but that doesn't excuse him from doing what he did, and that lapse can't justify his actions, which caused HUNDREDS of billions of dollars of misleading money to move around.

However, I think he was too harshly sentenced, and I think these "make an example out of him" cowboy judges only exasperate the situation even more. If I were committing global-scale fraud right about now, I'd spend even more time and take even more caution to make sure that I can't be caught or unmasked. Hayes will serve as an inspiration to future fraudsters, you can count on that.

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