In Latest Market Rigging Scandal, Wall Street Now Sued For Treasury Market Manipulation
- In Latest Market Rigging Scandal, Wall Street Now Sued For Treasury Market Manipulation
by Tyler Durden, www.zerohedge.com
“Defendants used electronic chatrooms, instant messaging, and other electronic and telephonic methods to exchange confidential customer information, coordinate trading strategies.”
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“Traders at some of these primary dealers talked with counterparts at other banks via online chatrooms and swapped gossip.”
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Sound familiar?
Those quotes are from a 61-page complaint filed in the Southern District of New York wherein Boston’s public sector pension fund accuses all US primary dealers (the cabal of usual suspect dealer banks that transact directly with Treasury and “have a special obligation to ensure the efficient function” of what was formerly the deepest, most liquid market on the planet) of colluding to manipulate the $12.5 trillion US Treasury market.
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The alleged scheme (tipped here last month) was remarkably simple and involved precisely the same sort of conspiratorial, chatroom shenanigans employed by the very same banks who, at various times, have colluded to rig FX, gold, various -BORs, ISDAfix, and pretty much everything else.
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In short, the banks simply conspired to keep the spread between the when issued price and the price at auction as wide as possible, thus inflating their profits at the expense of everyone else where “everyone else” includes institutional investors and hedge funds all the way down to retirees and Main Street in general. From the complaint:
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read more.
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