A massive bank-rigging scandal that sent shockwaves around the world is making for a little change in business n the Monterey Bay. Santa Cruz County Treasurer Fred Keeley announced today that he is severing the county government’s financial ties to Barclays, the British Bank that last week was featured front and center in a scathing report by Britain’s Treasury Select Committee regarding the massive interest rate fiasco.
A massive bank-rigging scandal that sent shockwaves around the world is making for a little change in business on the Monterey Bay.
Santa Cruz County Treasurer Fred Keeley announced today that he is severing the county government’s financial ties to Barclays, the British Bank that last week was featured front and center in a scathing report by Britain’s Treasury Select Committee regarding the massive interest rate fiasco.
“I’m cutting them off. They won’t notice because Barclays is a multibillion-dollar bank all over the world,” Keeley says. “I have to do business with people who have honesty, integrity. I’m not going to do business with someone who rigged the world’s biggest financial markets.”
Barclays played a central role in manipulating the LIBOR, which stands for London Interbank Offered Rate. The international rate sets a benchmark for overnight bank business that affects consumer credit cards, student loans, home mortgages and much more. And according to BBC News, the LIBOR is used to set financial terms on $800 trillion in transactions. That’s 12 times the global gross domestic product.
Keeley has decided to remove Barclays from the county’s “Authorized Dealer List.” That means the county treasury will no longer use Barclays as a middleman to coordinate the buying and selling of the the county’s investments.
In June, American and British authorities responded to the Barclays rigging scandal by fining the bank a combined $457 million—about $200 million less than the average daily investment balance of Santa Cruz County.
This isn’t the first time Keeley has adjusted the treasury’s dealer list. Keeley removed JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America from the same list for separate bid-rigging scandals last November.
The county still has about two dozen companies left on its dealer list. Keeley says the county paid Barclays far less than $25,000 annually in fees and “did not lose one penny” to the multinational banking giant. The real issue, he notes, is the immeasurable effect Barclays had on the world financial markets.
“The mother ship became a pirate ship,” Keeley says. “I’m not upset with what they did with us as a broker. I’m upset with what they did to the residents of Santa Cruz County on their credit card bills, on their home mortgages or for the people making payments on a car. And you don’t have to be a customer of Barclays to be screwed by them.”
