That's Oscar Wilde's famous description of foxhunting, but it seems increasingly applicable to the frenzied attempts of politicians and the media to chase down and punish those deemed responsible for the LIBOR fixing "scandal".
Yesterday Barclays' ex-CEO Bob Diamond testified before a rabid gathering of politicians, and emerged unscathed and unabashed. Today those politicians are bemoaning the fact that they "let him get away with it", an outcome that may have had something to do with the fact that none of them had the least idea of what Diamond or his bank had supposedly done wrong, or what harm it might have caused.
Last night there was an expert on the news channels talking about how the UK's "tripartite system" of financial market regulation had failed. He seemed to think that one of the three bodies among whom financial regulation had fatefully been shared under that system was the BBA, the British Bankers Association. This is in fact, as its name might suggest, the bankers' trade association, which might be considered to exclude it from a role in regulating the industry.*
It's hard to recall any other issue of public interest in recent years where it has been so painfully obvious that hardly anyone offering their opinion actually knows what they're talking about. I must, however, make an honourable exception for Stephanie Flanders at the BBC. This description of LIBOR and its inherent flaws is first-rate. Too bad none of the politicians who grilled Bob Diamond seems to have had time to read it.
* Then again, it could hardly have done a worse job than the Bank of England, Treasury and FSA seem to have done.
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