{"id":20428,"date":"2012-07-23T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2012-07-23T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=20428"},"modified":"2012-07-22T19:24:04","modified_gmt":"2012-07-22T18:24:04","slug":"goodbye-old-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/07\/goodbye-old-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, Old Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uncompromising, provocative, brilliant. There are many things to say about Alexander Cockburn, who died Friday [20 Jul 2012], and his critics and friends will have their day. He could be infuriating in his lust for truth and social justice as well as for the unparalleled sharpness of his polemics. But no serious student of our time can deny Cockburn\u2019s importance as one of the most principled and insightful political journalists of the past half-century.<\/p>\n

Having been on the receiving end of more than a few of his darts, I can attest to the pointed power of his pen but also the accuracy of his criticism. He could get it wrong, but never intentionally so, he worked the issues as hard and thoughtfully as any I have known, and few modern journalists have so thoroughly discredited their critics by later being proved right.<\/p>\n

Cockburn always had the courage of his convictions and a well-honed contempt, informed by an elite Oxford education, for the arrogance of the powerful, as well as a deep-rooted compassion for their many victims. Reprinting his final column for The Nation magazine is the finest tribute I can offer. We\u2019ll miss you, Alex, and spare me the wry smile acknowledging that I am winging this on deadline.<\/p>\n

Alex Cockburn\u2019s last column for The Nation<\/a>, published July 11:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Hardly had the boyish visage of JPMorgan Chase\u2019s Jamie Dimon quit CNN screens than it was succeeded by that of Bob Diamond, former chief executive of Barclays, accused of masterminding the greatest financial scandal in the history of Britain. Columnists shook with rage at the \u201creeking cesspool\u201d being disclosed\u2014disclosed, mind you, four long years after the Wall Street Journal broke the story that the Libor was being fixed. Libor, which stands for \u201cLondon interbank offered rate,\u201d is supposed to be based on the average rate of interest banks charge to borrow from one another. The rate is set every morning by a panel of banks. Each bank \u201csubmits\u201d the rates at which it believes it can borrow from the collective money pool, from overnight to twelve months.<\/em><\/p>\n

Libor is the benchmark for investments all over the world\u2014the Financial Times estimates that $350 trillion worth of contracts have been pegged to it. It is also considered a barometer of a bank\u2019s health. Just as customers with bad credit records have to pay higher interest rates, banks deemed in financial distress have to pay more to borrow. In October 2008, a doomsday month for the world banking industry, it looked like Barclays was next in line for a rescue after taxpayers bailed out the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds\/HBOS on October 13. One big warning flare was that beleaguered Barclays could borrow from the common money pool only at a very high rate of interest. The answer was to fix the rate, with Barclays traders secretly winching it down. It was all completely illegal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Next thing we knew, there was Diamond being reprimanded by a select committee of the House of Commons for being nothing better than a common thief. But then into the hurly-burly suddenly intruded a new actor, actually one in the form of a savior: Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England. It turned out that Diamond and Tucker had had a conversation of considerable moment, one prudently recorded by Barclays, on October 29, 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n

Diamond said Tucker had relayed concerns from \u201csenior Whitehall figures\u201d that Barclays\u2019s Libor was consistently higher than that of other banks. Tucker is alleged to have conveyed the view from Westminster that the bank\u2019s rate did not \u201calways need to appear as high as it had recently.\u201d In other words, Westminster wanted Barclays to massage its rate to a lower level.<\/em><\/p>\n

But all with full deniability. According to Barclays, \u201cBob Diamond did not believe he received an instruction from Paul Tucker or that he gave an instruction to [former top Barclays deputy] Jerry del Missier. However, Jerry del Missier concluded that an instruction had been passed down from the Bank of England not to keep Libors so high and he therefore passed down a direction to that effect to the submitters.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Barclays said there was no allegation by the authorities that this instruction was intended to manipulate the Libor. And when he was questioned by Tory MP David Ruffley on July 9, Tucker testified that \u201ca bell did not go off in my head\u201d that banks were lowering their Libor submissions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Marvelous: the join between civil society and state was tactfully seamless, with deniability all round.<\/em><\/p>\n

So first there are the \u201csenior Whitehall figures\u201d (one turned out to be Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood)\u2014i.e., the permanent government running Britain. When a senior Whitehall figure urges the commission of a serious crime, he merely murmurs that the bank\u2019s Libor did not \u201calways need to appear as high as it had recently.\u201d There then follows a flurry of talk about misunderstandings but, Lord save us, certainly not an order to fix the Libor. Then, unmistakably, there is a huge plunge in Barclays\u2019s rate. The government\u2019s concern\u2014that Barclays might appear to be on the brink\u2014is averted.<\/em><\/p>\n

But we live in a capitalist world, duly furnished with its rewards and penalties. Barclays has agreed to a $450 million settlement, and Diamond and del Missier have resigned. On his way out the door, Diamond said he\u2019d been promised \u00a318 million ($28 million) as a golden handshake. The standing committee had a good jeer, but Diamond stuck to his guns, and there the matter rested until July 10, when Barclays announced that Diamond will forfeit up to \u00a320 million ($30 million) in bonuses and incentives but will retain one year\u2019s salary, pension and other benefits worth \u00a32 million ($3 million).<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, there have been furious calls for further punishment and reform. Labour leader Ed Miliband says \u201cwe should break the dominance of the big five banks\u2026and strike off those whose conduct lets this country down and prosecute those who break the law.\u201d He also wants to increase competition by forcing the big banks to sell off up to 1,000 of their branches. In the current culture of rabid criminality in the banking system, that would surely be unwise, unleashing 1,000 small-time banksters.<\/em><\/p>\n

People calling for banking reform on either side of the ?Atlantic are underestimating the problems of enforcement. A writer on the financial news blog Zero Hedge recently ?remarked that \u201cthe Libor scandal seems to be waking people up to manipulation and fraud by the big banks.\u201d Of course, there are tools at the ready: sanctions, tribunals, a ban for life for crooked traders. But Libor was meant to be the prime glittering advertisement for the free market. Now it turns out that the whole thing is a fix\u2014a grimy hand all too visible. It\u2019s like the spy in Conrad\u2019s Secret Agent vowing to destroy the first meridian.<\/em><\/p>\n

Is it possible to reform the banking system? There are the usual nostrums\u2014tighter regulations, savage penalties for misbehavior, a ban from financial markets for life. But I have to say I\u2019m dubious. I think the system will collapse, but not through our agency.<\/em><\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Scheer, editor in chief of Truthdig, has built a reputation for strong social and political writing over his 30 years as a journalist. His columns appear in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He conducted the famous Playboy magazine interview in which Jimmy Carter confessed to the lust in his heart and he went on to do many interviews for the Los Angeles Times with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and many other prominent political and cultural figures.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 truthdig.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Uncompromising, provocative, brilliant. There are many things to say about Alexander Cockburn, who died Friday [20 Jul 2012], and his critics and friends will have their day. He could be infuriating in his lust for truth and social justice as well as for the unparalleled sharpness of his polemics. But no serious student of our time can deny Cockburn\u2019s importance as one of the most principled and insightful political journalists of the past half-century. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}