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The New York Post reports:
Wall Street banks secretly shared client information in online chat rooms in order to rig auctions for the $14 trillion US Treasurys market, according to an explosive lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on [November 15].
The move wrongly fattened the banks' profits and picked profits from clients, the suit claims.
The new accusations, leveled by several pension funds and wealthy individual investors, are contained in an expanded class-action suit originally filed in July 2015 — and include an unusual twist: Some of the evidence came from confidential informants and one of the banks sued in the earlier action.
That bank is now cooperating with the plaintiffs in the massive civil action, and is providing an in-depth look into how Wall Street allegedly conspired to rig Treasury bond trades.
The revised lawsuit expands on details on how the banks conspired to set Treasury bond prices — like moves to manipulate the price of the bonds higher on days when there was a lot of demand, and vice versa, court papers claim.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday November 27 2017, @01:01PM (8 children)
Time and past time to jail some CxOs. Funny how the policy makers in these organizations only ever resign, only to move on to some other organization in the same industry. Or else they retire with golden parachutes, and then go sit on the boards of other companies. Any penalties are paid by the organization. Other people's money...
Also time and past time to define "too big to fail", and to break up any organization that meets the definition. This will certainly include lots of financial organizations, but frankly may also include quite a number of tech companies. As a starting point, how about any company with a valuation over $100 billion [dogsofthedow.com], but I'd be happy to go down to $10 billion.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @01:42PM (2 children)
Gee, with that definition, we could break up Jeff Bezos -- he just passed that level of net worth (based on recent Amazon stock price bump). I'm all in favor of this!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @01:44PM (1 child)
I call dibs on his nose.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Wednesday November 29 2017, @05:41PM
I would call dibs on his wallet but then they would need to break me up too.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday November 27 2017, @01:46PM
One aspect of all of this is that the Obama administration carefully waited until after the statute of limitations (how long you can go after someone for something) was up on key financial fraud statutes to start investigating banking shenanigans leading up to the financial crisis. Which meant that even if the DoJ found stuff, everyone involved would be immune from prosecution. I highly doubt that delay was accidental.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @02:59PM
I agree that to big to fail should mean, let's break it up NOW in a controlled way, however using the valuation as criteria sounds less good. Criteria using monopoly definitions, market share, competition, ... is a better idea.
Second, it's impossible to introduce this at the moment. Something that is still "mission impossible hard" but might have a chance, is to restrict any kind of acquisitions or merges by such big companies. There already is law and bureaucracy to regulate this, currently they just sit on their ass and wait for the proper pockets to get lined to rubber stamp approve it, but at least something is there.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 27 2017, @06:09PM
In an industry worth trillions, but divided amongst a couple thousand highly competitive players, your ten billion would be a ridiculously low number.
On the other hand, an industry that is only worth a few billions, nationwide, that same ten billion would be an awfully high number. One player could establish a near total monopoly, and still be "safe" from being worth to much.
And, that's the whole problem with our economy today. Far too few people control huge segments of a limited industry. I would set some percentage of the industry (20% sounds good to me, offhand) beyond which we start considering breaking a company up. Break it up, or give the competition some advantages against them. Or, just tax them for the excess control, or something.
If there are only three beverage suppliers in your state, collusion is far to easy. Joe, Tom, and Melissa get together at the country club, and decide how they are going to set prices, and milk the sheeple. When there are fifty suppliers, it's a lot harder to establish total control over the market. Five suppliers is a pretty sucky, small, number - but that would have to be the minimum. The more competitors, the better.
To hell with valuations.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @07:08PM (1 child)
God bradley, you're starting to sound like a Socialist! And here I thought you and a couple of others like kallow were stanch defenders of big capital's right to cheat, steal and scam in the pursuit of profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @11:58PM
They were until they all discovered they were fucked over by one of them scam artists during the 2016 election. Fool me once... etc.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 27 2017, @08:53PM (1 child)
Would this story get any play if it took place on a private conference call like it did in the past?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:33AM
Sure it would, just look back at Teddy Roosevelt and Trust Busting.
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/roosevel [osu.edu]
(includes good political cartoons from back in the day).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:31AM
Fat bankers turn out to be dirty crooks.
This time around, could we at least punish them as hard as we punish someone who steels $1000 form a corner shop? That is, pretend for a change that we don't have a nobility in the U.S.