More than 3 weeks after the Barclays (BCS) Libor scandal hit the headlines it's still hard to find any organic outrage. Very few people have any reason to know what Libor is and those who do are mostly financial professionals too jaded to be shocked by anything done by a bank to make money. Libor is theoretically the basis for rates impacting trillions of dollars in loans, but in actual practice it's not so clear cut. The facts remain murky and the collective response something akin to an international shrug.
"This is a media story and a populist story that's been set in stone," says Zachary Karabell, president of RiverTwice Research in the attached video. The narrative is basically that banks are wicked entities in the business of creating human misery then profiting from it. Banking execs might as well walk around dressed like Snidely Whiplash for all the sympathy they engender. In part they earned the stereotype but, as Karabell points out, the firms haven't done anything to effectively rebut the image.

More at link with video: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/....

If a big bank took video of all their employes raping all the children in a pre-school, at first there would be outrage.

But then if it came to light that shutting them down would casue their investments, or the value of their house to go down, 1/2 of the county would give them a pass and want nothing to be done.

You know it, I know it