Foreign exchange fixing “as bad” as Libor

Written By: - Date published: 1:24 pm, February 10th, 2014 - 7 comments
Categories: economy - Tags:

Something that doesn’t seem to have hit the newspapers here, but may turn out to have been significantly affecting little ol’ NZ is a growing forex scandal, mainly in the UK (as the centre of forex trading).

The boss of the UK’s financial regulator has said the the allegations of rate-fixing are “every bit as bad” as the Libor scandal, that caused $US6bn in fines to be handed to banks – which probably still didn’t measure up to their cheating (2 US govt banks estimated they lost $3bn between them as a side-effect).

New Zealand has the 9th most traded currency in the world, despite our small size.  Why?  We’re a very open stable economy, with strict rules, few surprises, and we’re small and very manipulatable.

It’s known that very large banks can and have caused big shifts in our currency with very large trades – to their benefit.  So we’d seem a likely target for the collusion of forex traders that is being discovered here.

RBS and Barclays – 2 of the UK’s biggest banks – have already suspended a number of forex traders, so this will be another financial scandal worth following, as we find out who’s been making us all a little bit poorer…

7 comments on “Foreign exchange fixing “as bad” as Libor ”

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  1. Poission 1
    10 February 2014 at 2:19 pm

    Why? We’re a very open stable economy, with strict rules

    Most trades are done offshore and have very little regulation.The scandal is greater then a couple of banks it is endemic in the industry.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-19/how-secret-currency-traders-club-devised-biggest-market-s-rates.html

  2. Colonial Viper 2
    10 February 2014 at 2:28 pm

    But…free markets!!! Free to be defrauded, that is.

  3. tricledrown 3
    10 February 2014 at 2:40 pm

    While all the major trading blocks print and have peinted that’s why our dollars has been overvalued.
    John Key says its stupid but while he was at Merrill Lynch they were printing $38 dollars to every dollars on deposit pushing up currencies like the NZ dollar so that’s where Key made his money deliberately manipulating currencies
    On behalf of Merrill Lynch.

  5. tricledrown 5
    11 February 2014 at 12:40 am

    Dave time to post on power price fixing prof
    fessor Bertram from Waikato Univetsity.
    Said on RNZ that we are being ripped off by power companies.
    Falsly inflating their Asset values.

  6. Paul Campbell 6
    11 February 2014 at 10:55 am

    Oh, if only we had someone in charge of NZ who understands the foreign exchange market … then we could do something about the harm the exchange rate changes do to our economy

    • Poission 6.1
      11 February 2014 at 12:22 pm

      Yes that is troublesome,as the forex market also requires prediction,and as a monkey with a dartboard (a random walk) would exceed the level of skill from said practitioner,where would we find this simian?

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