International Banking Fraud: Six top banks fined for forex, Libor abuses

US and British regulators have slapped massive fines on six major global banks for rigging the foreign exchange market and Libor interest rates. They called the banks' frauds 'brazen schemes' to harm clients.

In a settlement announced by the US Justice Department on Wednesday, the banks agreed to pay close to $6 billion (5.3 billion euros) in fines for their manipulations.

The deal included guilty pleas from UK-based Barclays Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland, as well as US banks JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. They admitted to conspiring to manipulate the massive currency market.

Switzerland's UBS also pleaded guilty - in its case for one count of wire fraud in connection with Libor interest rate manipulations. However, the Justice Department granted the Swiss bank conditional immunity for cooperating with the investigation.

Together, the five banks agreed to a record $2.5 billion in criminal penalties, the largest set of antitrust fines ever obtained by the Department of Justice.

In addition, these five banks, plus the Bank of America, will pay more than $1.8 billion in fines to the US Federal Reserve over "unsafe and unsound practices" in forex markets.

Note EU-Digest: If someone steals a bar of chocolate in a grocery store, he or she can go to prison for a week including paying a fine. These banker crooks just pay a fine out of the billions they already stole from you and me and continue their life.
 
Read more: Six top banks fined for forex, Libor abuses | Business | DW.DE | 20.05.2015

France - Economy: Hollande taps bank economist to steer economic policy - by Emmanuel Jarry

Francois Hollande has chosen a senior economist at a U.S. bank as his new top economic advisor, an official in the French president's office said on Tuesday, as France tries to sustain a sputtering economic recovery.

Emmanuel Macron is stepping down as Hollande's advisor and will be replaced by Bank of America Merrill Lynch's chief European economist, Laurence Boone, the official said.

Boone holds a doctorate from the London Business School and sits on the board of French luxury goods group Kering.

Before joining Merrill Lynch in London, she was an economist at Barclays in Paris and before that worked at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Boone was not immediately available for comment, but in an earlier interview with Reuters, she said Hollande had little choice but to push ahead with his current policies.

 "Early elections would make his parliament majority collapse, switching to a policy completely focused on demand is not possible now in Europe, deeper reforms would not fit with the government’s strategy to keep the left of the party on board," Boone told Reuters on May 27. "This leaves the option of continuing like before, by default."

Read more: Hollande taps bank economist to steer economic policy - Yahoo News