Before I left Westminster on Thursday, I submitted this written question to the Chancellor for answer on 2 July:
Steve Baker (Wycombe): To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an assessment of the need for a Competition Commission inquiry into the routine procedures for setting LIBOR.
via the Order Book Combined [2 July 2012 (the ‘Questions Book’)].
With Sir Mervyn King calling for the key market price of LIBOR to be set by a market, there is a tacit admission that LIBOR is ordinarily rigged. Friends in the City acknowledge that LIBOR is cartelised. So, let’s see…
Beyond that, the Governor also seems to have admitted that interest rates should be set by transactions in principle. Perhaps at last he will come to agree with me that interest rate planning is a disaster.
