A New York Times article entitled, "Libor Brought Scandal, Cost Billions -- and May Be Going Away" tells us, "The benchmark is one of the most important in the world. It underpins trillions of dollars in financial products. It was the center of a huge scandal when banks were accused of rigging it. Now Libor is going away. British regulators said on Thursday that they wanted to phase out the scandal-​plagued interest rate by 2021, replacing it with new measures that are more closely tied to the lending markets. The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, dates back to the 1980s, when banks in Britain decided to use a uniform benchmark across their increasing range of financial products, rather than referring to various currencies and interest rates. Today, Libor is the underlying rate for a vast array of financial products, from home loans and credit cards to small business loans. To set Libor, banks submit the rates at which they would be prepared to lend money to one another, on an unsecured basis, in various currencies and at varying maturities. But that process has been undermined in recent years." It adds, "Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority in Britain, said the market that Libor sought to measure -- unsecured wholesale term lending to banks -- was '​no longer sufficiently active' for it to continue as a benchmark. "We do not think we will complete the journey to transaction-​based benchmarks if markets continue to rely on Libor in its current form," Mr. Bailey said in a speech on Thursday at Bloomberg L.​P.'​s offices in London. "And while we have given our full support to encouraging panel banks to continue to contribute and maintaining Libor over recent years, we do not think markets can rely on Libor continuing to be available indefinitely.""

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