Darth Libor

As you can probably already tell, I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist. The phrase "they're all in league!" springs from my lips more oft than I would like to confess. I love a good conspiracy, it's almost as good as a whodunit, and almost always as formulaic. 

Just like a good episode of Bones, a good conspiracy follows a fixed pattern; An event happens or a fact is discovered (even if fact or event is fictional). Hype and excitement is generated, as more and more people hear about said fact/event and share it with their friends. Then, and this is my favourite part, the compulsive dot-connectors start doing their thing. A massive web of possibilities are spun around the original fact/event, then it gets a spin, then a story, and before you can turn around twice a legend has been born, something that Hollywood will no doubt ruin at a later point. Then, once everyone gets bored after a few weeks, the iron-solid wall of belief falls away from the central fact/event and you realise it for the obvious piece of incompetence that it actually was. Turns out Obama isn't a Kenyan Communist, some people are just a bit racist. The George Bush Administration didn't cause 9/11, they were just too arrogant to stop it. The terrorist plot to blow up a bus? Just a guy trying to give up smoking.

This is how a conspiracy is supposed to end, with it being proved untrue, that actually it was just panic and botched accounting. I've said it once, and no doubt I will say it again many times, God I love the Leveson Inquiry! The web of corruption! There are charts of it! Actual official published charts that look like they should be in the background of a spy movie! And the twisted thing is its all real. Real bent cops selling the real locations of the royal family to real corrupt journalist. This isn't how it's supposed to be. Conspiracy theories are fun because their grandiose megalomaniac ideas are wrong. It's all just a political geek's version of Narnia. Because the thought of a vast web of the rich and powerful making sure that you, the common person, will always be kept down and made to pay for their opulent lifestyle, if it were true, would be a terrifying thing. Being worried that someone was tapping your phone was supposed to be a sign of paranoia. It's not as much fun when it's real, because the consequences are also real. Real people really suffer.

So I'm not really sure to think about this whole LIBOR scandal. The size of it is just too big, it makes me want to shout "CONSPIRACY!!" and have a giggle about whether Nazi Zombies are involved. After all, this is Lex Luthor territory. A guy called Bob Diamond (his actual name), the CEO of Barclays conspired with virtually all the big banks, plus a few chunks of the Government, to rig the value of money itself. As a really smart guy called Chris Hayes said on his show, it's like a group of merchants conspiring to agree that a foot is three inches smaller than it actually is, so they all have more and are therefore richer. And it looks like a few of our dear lords and masters were in on the deal. 

It's one thing to rant about your lot in life, and to blame the man for trying to keep you down. It's quite another to see the published emails of the man flirting with his banker friends, offering to crack open a bottle of Bollinger after selling your future.

Makes you wonder how many more scandals can these people take? It's all come out now, your greed and your arrogance are well known, and we do not like the slimy, self serving little games that you have been playing with everything that we hold precious. If you try to take a person's food, then you should really lock your pantry. If you try to take a person's house, then you better have a bloody high wall around yours. If you try to take a person's future, then they just might try to make yours very difficult.