Saturday, November 15, 2014

Oranges and lemons — the FX scandal in perspective — Bull Market — Medium

The WM benchmark fix.  Oranges and lemons — the FX scandal in perspective — Bull Market — Medium:



"The FX settlement was announced this week, prompting a lot of editorialising about how the banks Don’t Get It, and Are Systematically Corrupt and so on. To an extent this is the default position post LIBOR, post CDO and rightly so. But I think there’s a danger in viewing everything through the prism of previous scandals. Although there was some behaviour that was clearly on the other side of the line, the regulators also made clear that lots of the practices involved were not intrinsically criminal; this was an investigation into a grey area, not a straightforward case of lying. Of course, the industry has less than zero claim to the benefit of anyone’s doubt, and people will be instantly suspicious of claims that “it’s more complicated than that”, so maybe I can explain what went on in the FX market through the medium of a series of examples, all based on someone going down to market to buy oranges."


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