If you finally want reinforced concrete evidence that speed-of-light trading undertaken by Geek-Quants has rendered the entirety of global stock markets a complete fix for the normal investor, then you could do a lot worse than watch this gripping video about a whistle-blowing quant who has finally revealed the bare-assed sociopathy of mendacious Wall Street mendacity.
The Slog first posted about this three years ago, and before that fingered the dark liquidity pools they use as glorified cess pits.
But until now, the reality that we can’t trust any of bankers central or otherwise seems to have passed the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York by. Only last Thursday did he come out and claim that some of America’s largest financial institutions appear to lack respect for the law.
William Dudley, a top US banking regulator whose NYFRB helps oversee Wall Street banks including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, made the comment during a speech focused on the problems posed by banks perceived to be “too big to fail,” and possible solutions to correct them.Dudley suggested that regulators may be stymied by “cultural” issues that have negatively affected the nation’s biggest banks. I am shocked – shocked to hear this.
What, we wonder, are chaps as naive as Mr Dudley to do about cetral banks then – do they need regulating too?
Hahahahahaha, sorry – silly question. Just how silly is made obvious by a piece at Spiegel online, which reports that the European Central Bank (ECB) has double standards when it comes to the valuation of government bonds on deposit as collateral for loans. Currently, 116 Italian government bonds without coupon interest rate, known as stripped bonds or “strips”, are valued by the ECB and the Italian national central bank with a grade of “A” – although rating agencies actually do not assign that grade. Or indeed, anything near it: large raters like S & P, Moody’s and Fitch already quote a “B” status downgrade for the Boot financial system.