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The Economist.

From The Economist in London, this is Money Talks, a weekly conversation around news in business, finance, and economics.

I'm Stan Pignell, the banking editor, and this week I'm joined by Phil Kogan, our buttonwood

columnist and Simon Wright, our industry editor, to discuss bankers in jail, luxury armored cars, and the part

privatization of RBS.

Let's start with the news that Tom Hayes, a former trader at UBS and Citibank, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for

rigging Libor, a key interest rate used by banks.

Philip, my first reaction was 14 years?

Yes, this is very reminiscent of Admiral Bing, the British Admiral who was shot in the

18th century, as Voltaire said, to encourage the others. There have been a lot of

complaints that bankers have not gone to jail over the collapse of the financial

system in 2008, 2009. They finally found someone who admitted guilt in the conversations with a serious fraud office

though he then rescinded his guilty plea and so they decided to make an example of him.

Whether 14 years is the right figure? Is he going to do it again if he's allowed out into society in three or four years time is a moot point? But unfortunately for him, the conversations that he had by email and messaging was so obviously crooked that

he didn't really have much defense.

...