Well, there's one thing of which we can be certain

Traders' Messages Provide Grist for Investigators

Regulators probing the manipulation of key interest rates are zeroing in on a pile of potentially incriminating messages from traders at banks under investigation, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Damning emails and instant messages helped regulators squeeze last week's interest-rate manipulation settlement from Barclays PLC. The sprawling probe of at least 16 other banks and financial institutions includes three criminal and about 10 civil investigations in North America, Europe and Asia, according to regulatory filings and government officials.

Regulators now are sifting through internal communications as they near decisions on whether to file charges against banks for allegedly tampering with several interest rates set by panels of bank representatives.

Some regulators said privately that the $453 million deal by Barclays shows how much leverage investigators have over the banks because of the footprints left by traders. Traders could—and did—profit by influencing interest-rate submissions, the regulators said.

At least 15 traders at different firms are under scrutiny, according to people close to the investigation. Most of the traders have been suspended or fired, the people said.

In the wake of the Barclays mess, some former supervisors at the bank are scrambling to hire criminal-defense lawyers, according to another person close to the matter.

The U.K. Serious Fraud Office has said it will decide this month whether it can bring criminal charges. The Justice Department is plowing ahead with its criminal investigation into traders at Barclays and other banks, according to people close to the agency's investigation.

Not a single top bank officer will be criminally prosecuted in the U.S., and there will be no meaningful regulatory changes here.

(The article is behind a paywall but you can access it by searching the title at Google News, which, hey! is a new trick I have learned.)

Well, I'm sure he created a lot of jobs in those 12 hours

Behind Duke's CEO-for-a-Day

Duke Energy Corp. signed a contract June 27 with Bill Johnson that would make him its next chief executive. Five days later, hours after Mr. Johnson took his job, the company's board decided it just wasn't working out.

Mr. Johnson had been announced as Duke's next CEO 18 months ago, when Duke unveiled a $26 billion merger with his old company, Progress Energy Inc. In fact, it was written into the merger agreement that he would take the CEO job, which Mr. Johnson had held at Progress.

According to securities filings, Mr. Johnson signed his employment contract on June 27, just ahead of the merger's July 2 close. He resigned his post at 12:01 a.m. on July 3. People familiar with the matter said the board decided he wasn't right for the job and instead gave it to Jim Rogers, who ran Duke before the deal.

Despite his short-lived tenure, Mr. Johnson will receive exit payments worth as much as $44.4 million, according to Duke. That includes $7.4 million in severance, a nearly $1.4 million cash bonus, a special lump-sum payment worth up to $1.5 million and accelerated vesting of his stock awards, according to a Duke regulatory filing Tuesday night. Mr. Johnson gets the lump-sum payment as long as he cooperates with Duke and doesn't disparage his former employer, the filing said.

Under his exit package, Mr. Johnson also will receive approximately $30,000 to reimburse him for relocation expenses.

One immediate consequence of the way the change was handled is Mr. Johnson's exit will cost Duke up to $1.5 million more than he would have received under the contract he had as Progress CEO.

[I]t had become clear to some over the months leading to the deal's close that the original arrangement wouldn't work, a person familiar with the matter said. "Different personalities, different cultures," the person said.

Obviously, it is critically important that we not raise Mr. Johnson's taxes, lest we punish him for his success and remove his incentives to work productively.

(I will admit to looking forward to what will surely be the hilarious shareholder litigation that's about to take place, and which Duke surely knows, but obviously factored in to the cost of this decision anyway.)

So what you're saying is...

Republicans could win in November because their positions are so evil that no one believes they're for real?

Okay, that's about as plausible as anything else.

The NYT clarifies

Remember how I said the NYT didn't give the appropriate background for this story?

Now they have.