Should the allegations published by the BBC (on Panorama programme) last week be confirmed, this news brings very serious concerns for the credibility of the Bank of England (BoE) and also the trust of the general public in the banking sector. Ours is a fractional reserve monetary system with no ‘metallic anchor’, but purely based on trust and the record and effectiveness of the BoE and the rest of the banking sector. The alleged pressure of the government and the Bank of England to keep LIBOR (London Interbank Overnight Rate) artificially low back in the Autumn of 2008 (in an effort to send the message that banks and money markets were not that disrupted) erodes the sound functioning or markets and the formation of interest rates, which are key signals for households and companies in planning their decisions.
But why messing with LIBOR?! Central banks have plenty of monetary weaponry to tackle a liquidity crisis
Instead of interfering in the functioning of the interbank market (as alleged), should the Bank of England had wanted to prevent the contagion of a panic in the banking sector after the fall of Lehman Brothers in the Autumn of 2008, it could have done it much more promptly and effectively by being a more active (last resort) lender of the banking sector: i. e. by extending the maturity of the loans and increasing the amount of the loans given to the banks. Following Walter Bagehot´s seminal narrative of the way the Bank of England should step in if a liquidity crisis occurs, it should do so by (1) lending promptly as much as money as needed, (2) against collateral and (3) at a penalty rate (usually at a higher rate than the main policy rate). Before 2007, the Bank of England had been acting as the lender of last resort of the British banks very successfully for more than two hundred years, and there had not been major bank collapses in the UK; at least when compared with the record of other central banks. The application of this more active and timely lending of last resort policy at the time would have been a much more efficient, effective and indeed transparent way to prevent the banking crisis from escalating further; and also a more effective way to send the message to the public the Bank of England was actively responding to the crisis.
I was quoted in an article published by S&P Global Market Intelligence (Sohia Furber) about the allegations of the rigging of the LIBOR in 2008 (see more at http://www.mv-pt.org/latest-news).
Juan Castañeda
PS. You can read the piece published by S&P on the 12th of April at: http://www.snl.com/web/client?auth=inherit#news/article?id=40298030&cdid=A-40298030-11831
the old lady of threadneedle street 