Goldman, JPM, RBS, Barclays And HSBC Are Sorry They Took Your Money

2 Billion Dollars!

That sounds like a lot of money but this fine is nothing more than a slap on the wrist for the 8 (so far) banks that are settling lawsuits for BLATANTLY MANIPULATING (allegedly)the $5.3 TRILLION foreign-exchange market.

Sorry, that’s $5,300,000,000,000 PER DAY of trading in FOREX, which means that manipulation of just 0.05% in a single day would have made $2.65Bn for the Banksters in question.  Does that put the $2Bn fine into perspective?  Do you think that’s going to discourage them or perhaps encourage others to manipulate the markets, knowing that the fines – IF they get caught – barely amount to half a day’s work while they are getting away with it.  Not only that, but this lawsuit has been dragging on since 2013.

A class of investors sued, claiming banks rigged the foreign-exchange market by manipulating foreign-exchange benchmark rates, fixing prices by agreeing to widen bid-ask spreads on spot trades and exchanging confidential customer information to trigger stop-loss and limit orders.  You know – Wall Street Banking 101.  

Meanwhile, China is rigging the currency markets on a daily basis (oh, and you must see this video of yesterday’s port explosion!) and so is our own Fed and the Bank of Japan and the ECB and the Bank of England and every other Central Bank on the planet.  This is how the game is played people – no sense complaining about it – especially not when we can use it to our advantage!  

As you can see from this chart, China’s CSI Futures are now trading in greater volume than the S&P or Euro Stoxx, even though their market capitalization is just 1/3 of the Nikkei – that’s an active market!  No wonder our Bankters friends want to take their cuts when they can – just a nickel per transaction is over $1Bn, that’s good business.  Despite all the games being played to prop up the markets in China, sentiment is clearly turning lower still.