Libor Arrests (Finally) Coming

U.K. prosecutors are poised to arrest former traders and rate setters at UBS AG (UBSN), Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) and Barclays (BARC) Plc within a month for questioning over their role in the Libor scandal, a person with knowledge of the probe said. Note the word "traders" - not CEOs, not COOs, not General Counsels, not Managers, not Supervisors... Traders. Because remember: it was a scheming 28-year old Frenchman that was the mastermind behind Goldman's CDO fraud for years. Nobody else. Just him. That said, we are looking forward to the latest minimum prison reality TV show: "How Many Cigarettes* For A Bollinger?" Regulators in the U.S. and U.K. are looking into how derivatives traders and bankers who submitted interest-rate data colluded to rig benchmarks to benefit their own trades, and whether lenders low-balled submissions in 2008 to hide their true cost of borrowing. Criminal probes by the SFO and U.S. Department of Justice are running in parallel with civil investigations being conducted by the DOJ’s fraud division, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.K. Financial Services Authority.