Slate - Under a deal announced by the Justice Department, five major banks will plead guilty to manipulating global
currency markets and interest rates, and will pay more than $5 billion
in combined penalties as a result. None of the traders involved in the
crimes, however, has been indicted.
Under the deal, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and
the Royal Bank of Scotland will all plead guilty to conspiring to
manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros. According to federal
authorities, traders at those banks used coded messages to share
customer orders via online chat rooms, while also misleading their
clients about the true price of currencies...
NY Times - “If you aint cheating, you aint trying,” one trader at Barclays wrote in an online chat room where prosecutors say the price-fixing scheme was hatched...
In the invitation-only chat room known as “the cartel,” the stakes were high. “Mess this up,” one newcomer was warned, “and sleep with one eye open.”
2 comments:
Only 4 major banks are named in the Slate excerpt, who is the 5th bank?
many states and municipalities, such as Detroit lost vast sums in interest rate swaps that were tied to these fixed trades. Should those contracts be valid? Particularly those held with the banks that rigged the rates?
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