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Europe Fines 8 Banks €1.7 Billion For Rate Rigging In Largest Ever Cartel Penalty In History
Another day, another confirmation of not only manipulation by the largest TBTFs in the largest market in the world, this time focusing in Europe, but pervasive collusion. Moments ago EU regulators fined 8 banks €1.71 billion for colluding in an attempt to manipulate key benchmark rates, which is also the EU's largest ever penalty in a cartel case. The banks participating in the settlement include some of the world's biggest banks such as Deutsche Bank, Société Générale SA, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and J.P. Morgan Chase JPM. According to WSJ calculation, this latest action brings to roughly €6 billion the total penalties levied by regulators against financial institutions in connection with probes into manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and other widely used financial benchmarks.
Some obligatory soundbites from Joaquin Almunia, Europe's competition commissioner, who is shocked, shocked there was cartel collusion going on here:
The EU "is determined to purse all those who may have been involved in the cartel," Mr. Almunia said. He said that if the institutions are proven guilty, they will eventually receive "adequate sanctions." "What is shocking about the Libor and Euribor scandals is not only the manipulation of benchmarks, which is being tackled by financial regulators world-wide, but also the collusion between banks who are supposed to be competing with each other," Mr. Almunia said.
Actually, what is shocking is that even with everything else being manipulated, nobody seems to ever touch gold...
The summary of the fined banks, as well as the squealers, pardon, whistleblowers UBS and Barclays:
- Deutsche Bank gets biggest combined penalty of €725.4mln.
- SocGen fined €445.9mln for Euribor manipulation.
- RBS agrees to pay €391mln in cartels
- JPMorgan fined €79.9mln in JPY LIBOR case.
- R.P. Martin Holdings Ltd fined €247,000
- UBS and Barclays escape fines as EU whistle-blowers.
Finally, while we have shown this previously, below once again is a summary of how Wall Street manipulates, well, everything.
Foreign Exchanges
Regulators are looking into whether currency traders have conspired through instant messages to manipulate foreign exchange rates. The currency rates are used to calculate the value of stock and bond indexes.
Energy Trading
Banks have been accused of manipulating energy markets in California and other states.

Libor
Since early 2008 banks have been caught up in investigations and litigation over alleged manipulations of Libor.
Mortgages
Banks have been accused of improper foreclosure practices, selling bonds backed by shoddy mortgages, and misleading investors about the quality of the loans.
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What is even more shocking is not a single criminal has gone to jail in connection with the practices leading to these shocking penalties...or for that matter, the ponzi panoply of other criminal practices engaged in by these global financial racketeering enterprises.
You are more than welcome to complain about the effects of the system.....but don't you dare question the system itself.
/sarc
Number of bankers jailed in "biggest ever" scandal? Zero.
I see that they slapped R.P. Martin Holdings Ltd on the wrist, but what about JP Marlin?
This "record high" fine probably amounts to a decent 0.01% surcharge to be deducted from the profits they made earlier from manipulating libor. 1.7 tn might have been more appropriate.
Less than a day of QE.
re: the looting of detroit
1 the bankers and big 3 ship out all the jobs to the slave nations.
2 bankers devaluate the dollar by 50% through inflation.
3 bankers push liar loans, short them against their own clients.
4 the bankers raise int rates 6x and blow up the housing market.
5 bankers get tarp
6 bankers capture all the houses now underwater
7 bankers evict everyone, let houses go derelict
8 city gets stuck with the tax bill, messed up tax base and clean up.
9 bankers who are short detroit foreclose on debt, get deal.
10 bankers dump the burden of the disaster on the last ones left, the pensioners firemen and police in the most dangerous city in the world.
we had a money supply created by patriots insuring slow sustainable growth, that made america great. in 1915 this was replaced by another banking "system" the fed res.
a "system" designed by the creators, jews by the name of rothschild's, to enslave a free people to debt, and capture all asset through boom and bust cycles their "system" creates using debt created out of thin air. "it's" working perfectly.
one day this 100 year old system will be referred to what it is
HIGH TREASON.
+100
Actually, what is shocking is that even with everything else being manipulated, nobody seems to ever touch gold...
Grant Williams has an excellent piece out this week on gold market manipulation, collusion between central banksters, and the Rise and Fall of the London Gold Pool. Very instructive for those who think we are in the terminal stages of another - more clandestine - market rigging operation by the same cabal of sociopaths ...
http://www.mauldineconomics.com/ttmygh/pdf/twisted-by-the-pool
shocking? hsbc and wells fargo trafficed many times this amount in drugs alone, and no-one went to jail for that either.
bankers are above the law.
Even at this late date, are you truly shocked that no one has gone to jail? Or is it really that you are shocked that the general public is so acclimated to corruption and graft that they don't care enough to demand their pound of flesh?
Long DuPont.
Must have been Lehman who saved um by being the whistle blowers.
You have to steal really, really big to stay out of jail.
Those silly little laws we all talk about are not designed to protect 'us'.
Nope....the dirty (big) secret is that those silly little laws are designed to protect the elite from 'us'.
+100 CD
That will teach them. No WAY they made more than a combined 1.7 fixing LIBOR.
Hahahaha and the show goes on.
Bankster to BFF: OMG! Best. Investment. Ever.
Just remind me again what these banks do not rig or manipulate.
they DEFINITELY don't manipulate the gold market. that's just conspiracy theory.
It was ALL "conspiracy theory" six years ago !
These kinds of findings, judgements and and fines would and should both send someone(s) to jail and result in financial hardship for the criminals and their organization .... but not in THIS corrupt society. I am sure that the banks just adjust their balance sheet to make electronic fiat payments to the government agencies and they go on with no apparent effect.
Odd, no?
yet again, they break the law, and no-one goes to jail. and no bonuses are clawed back.
not to forget that RBS are 80% taxpayer owned. gee i wonder who in the end will pay their fine.
Public ownership of RBS is the only good reason not to bother with these fines.
I know someone in RBS who was complaining that they will miss out on their bonus due to their recent IT debacle....
It just seems that the employees within the banks dont see themselves as part of this mess. Its always a few bad apples ( traders) or some outsourced IT guys....or someone else...to blame
.
I suspect your contact was not in line for a serious bonus anyway: I can assure you all those were signed off some time ago - as were extremely generous share allocations for senior staff - including those in GRG !!
"It's just the cost of doing bidness." - Tony Soprano
<And a very small cost at that.>
Isnt there some investigation on Gold price fixing too?
i thought they abandoned that, as there was "a lack of evidence".
Ya can't find what ya ain't looking for.
Let's see if we can find it, said the blind man to the deaf.
European Banks to the Government :
We are so sorry that we got caught manipulating the benchmark rates. You cannot prosecute us because we fund your election campaigns and shower you with millions of dollars and neither can you stop us from manipulating all the other stock, commodity, bond and currency markets where we are the operators.
So accept this token amount of Euro 1.7 billion as penalty for breaking the law in which we made hundreds of billions of euros of profits over the years so that the rest of the population continues to believe that we are controlled by you instead of the reality which is the other way round.
Government : Woof Woof
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40231.html
That ought to be worth about a 10 billion bail-in from the people to the banks.
mr william, j corzine and mazzillo the brillo, piss on your head. jail is for shop lifters and like of us here on zh. is there a crime if the doj does nothing? ans; obviously not.
Give the sheeple a "big" number to focus on and they'll say
"oohhh, 1.7 billion, thats a lot of money. That'll teach those nasty bankers to behave themselves."
And the show will go on. I'm sure JPMs share of that fine can be found in the tip jar in the mens shithouse.
And there's no manipulation in Gold. No sir.
This is just the beginning and its peanuts in comparison to the size of Interest rate derivatives OTC market (400 T), on which the Banking collusion has made its gravy; all the MORE SO since 2008.
Its gotten much worse over the last five years as these banks get greedier in their desperation.
And this is just ONE aspect of banking scamming; now wait for the next one in the pipeline; FOREX scamming :
Regulators contact more banks over currency market manipulation | Business | The Guardian
What is amusing in the fine print of investigation about this second scam is that JPM/CIty/Barclays have ALL pre-admitted to having colluded, in the hope of getting their fines reduced. The guilty guys, when they cooperate, just get their fingers rapped on knuckle and walk away! Jesus!
What does the NSA "Five Eyes" cabal have to do with the Bankster " Five Lies" cabal?
Ask yourself why the Oligarchy has its Five Fingers in Every pie worth stealing...
FIVE FINGERS - Full Movie 1952
signed Simple Simon.
Diving rod not workin so good today huh?
high fives!
A classic case of too little too late!
People should go to jail over this and all the big banks should be broken up. In fact any company making more than 10 billion or so yearly should be immediately broken up.
Amen! These corporations can't do a damn thing and can't break any rules or laws, without a real live human being committing the crime.
How about:
If you take public money and commit a crime, you go up against the wall.
These kinds of slap-on-the wrist "penalties" are bullshit. These corporations can even use the taxpayer's money to pay their fines. It's just a cost of doing business, when the crime pays for the punishment.
Time to up the penalties. Some people should die for this. It's not just the money they stole, it's the destruction of our civilization through grift, graft, skim and scam. This kind of civic corruption is a cancer. We must eliminate it.
Paying a fine that is the equivilant to (1X10^-15)% of profits will deter future collusion and manipulation.
Poor Jaime. White House cufflinks apparently don't impress the EU.
How the hell does this help anything when they are all backstopped by taxpayers?
Perhaps one of them will file for bankruptcy protection instead of paying the fine.
RP Martin £247,000. WTF?
That will come out of their Christmas party expenses
Shouldn't Terry Farr be in jail?
You would think the boards of these banks....would clean house.....but I guess this is business as usual.....the boards will probably give out bonuses as the fine was "only" 1.7 billion....and they think that is good.....they were kept out of jail...
Its apparent that the government mafia sees more benefit in fining them and skimming part of the booty than jailing anyone. Jailing bankers means that pesky thing called justice, and since when has justice been profitable?
That's the system, one big fucking cash cow engineered to be abused.
Funny how capitalism beat its chest after its arch-rival socialism collapsed. Socialism never truly collapsed. I think real capitalism is what collapsed under our noses.
84% UK tax payer owned RBS is on a mission in the past week:
Seriouly the banking system is a joke and yet very few get just why Bitcoin keeps pushing new highs!
So they got a slap on the hand. Are they STILL rate rigging? Obviously no PM rigging here. /sarc
Sad irony is that the people who end up paying these "fines", the bank's customers, are the ones hurt the most by the bid-rigging that the banks were "fined " for. Unbelievable.
So how high is the final ROI of the committed fraud? The fine is probably still only a fraction of the gain...
Maybe the largest fine in history but you still have to put the number in contrast: it only is a little higher than half a regular POMO, so how cares?
listen feckless slaves and woeful serfs who futilely peck away expecting some recourse and justification. there will be none! by night and by day the invisible hand silently steals into your homes, families, keeps and accounts, vitiating your substance, purloining, and pillaging. weep, moan, and cry to the empty heavens much. you will be heard not! for of your substance you have given and your children into bondage you have delivered for now gone moments of passing things. oh pale faces staring into the blank screen of your disappearing future. for these were great men, you assail. far far greater than you.
when Greatness is measured in the trappings of office...
One phrase summarises it all, written in an immortal book about the birth of first legal eagle in France, in the middle Ages, as portrayed in the saga of french kingly decadence called "the cursed kings" :
...Never had we seen a man carry himself so tall in front of the feeble, over whom he ruled as Judge dispensing the King's Law, as so lowly he crawled in front of his regal Lord and Master...
Could have been written for those Politicians who work for their Banksta Oligarchs.
Bollie all round. A job well done guys.
Then back to even bigger scamming. Life is good.
Government Interventions In Gold Market: "The Double Face of Gold"
We have the second part of the interview with Dmitri Speck revealing the ongoing Government interventions in the Gold market. This view from Europe on the Gold Cartel and Government Interventions in Gold market is particularly important now with the announced investigations in the Gold Market manipulation by German and UK financial regulators.
http://sufiy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/government-interventions-in-gold-mar...
Political mafia declares economic emergency.
Political mafia takes 14 trillion from coffers.
Political mafia distributes 12 trillion to cronies, of which cronies claim reciept 700bb and the rest "losses".
Political mafia investigates "losses" and taxes cronies 7bb.
And Its Gone!
Where is the prison time for all this criminal activity?
Good thing Goldman has direct access to the information for trading and doesn't have to bother with rigging the rates they already set.
Anything that can be manipulated will be.
Please list jail or prison sentences to complete the article.
Penalty for rigging interest rates?... Its afine a if you a wanna rigga the rates, just remember to pay the Godfather.