Barclays gambles away last remnants of trust

The Barclays bank scandal over attempts to fix the Libor global inter-bank interest rate demonstrates that the financial sector has learned nothing from the crisis, the liberal daily Público remonstrates: "The British government plans to investigate the whole affair right down to the last detail and push through new rules for the entire sector. However there are problems with this approach. Because on the one hand it's not exactly easy to find out what exactly banks get up to and on the other hand one must really ask why the rules still haven't been changed since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Four years later the separation of investment and commercial banks still hasn't been completed. ... The whole affair casts new doubts on the credibility of the banking sector and clearly shows that the banks still haven't changed their practices after being rescued with taxpayers' money."

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