re: financial market scandals, especially Libor and Goldman
Quotes from an interview between Eliot Spitzer and William Cohan:
“In a pre-email world, these cases would not be made,” Spitzer observes. “In the world when everything was done by phone conversations, a wink and a nod, the analyst cases, the Libor cases — most of the major scandals that have erupted over the past couple of years simply couldn’t have been made. The reality is, emails tell the history and leave a paper trail that simply can’t be refuted.”
"My favorite moment in those Goldman hearings was when he was asked, 'Can you tell us you always do what is in the best interest of the client?' and he couldn't answer the question!"
"But the emails lay everything out, clearly and simply."
"Any place in the financial markets that lacked transparency we have found fraud."
"The fact that Bob Diamond could sit there and wonder why he lost his job is amazing..."
“You know better than I that there’s been no prosecution on either side of the Atlantic,” Cohan tells Spitzer of both the Libor scandal and previous banking debacles. Barclays, which has admitted to manipulating Libor, was fined $451 million, but no criminal charges have been filed. “Nobody is going to stop their bad behavior until there is serious prosecution. Throw away the keys on these guys,” Cohan concludes.
Two parts to the interview:
current.com
current.com |
