5 Major Banks To Plead Guilty To Criminal Rigging Charges, Pay $5.6 Billion For Manipulating Markets

AWWWW, those poor big banks will have to pay back a fraction of a per cent of their illegal profits – why that almost qualifies as a slap on the wrist!  Way to go, corrupt politicians!  Make it look like you’re fighting corruption (but not too much, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.)

Remember this next time you are investing money – all markets are rigged.  The odds favor those who run the casino.

Full article from Zerohedge HERE

“moments ago the DOJ announced five global banks including Citi, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, RBS would plead guilty to criminal charges to conspiring to manipulate FX Prices, and would pay some $5.6 billion in combined penalties to resolve a long running U.S. investigation into whether traders at the banks colluded to move foreign currency rates in directions to benefit their own positions.

More from the WSJ:

Four of the banks, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and Citigroup Inc., will plead guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros, authorities said.

The fifth bank, UBS AG , received immunity in the antitrust case, but will plead guilty to manipulating the Libor benchmark after prosecutors said the bank violated an earlier accord meant to resolve those allegations of misconduct. UBS will also pay an additional Libor-related fine.

Bank of America Corp. will also pay a $205 million penalty to the Fed to resolve the regulator’s foreign exchange probe. Bank of America didn’t face similar action from the Justice Department.

Authorities said euro dollar traders at the banks, who were self-described members of “The Cartel” communicated through coded language in an online chat room to coordinate attempts to move rates set at 1:15 and 4 p.m.

Turns out ratting our criminal peers out does pay after all:

One UBS trader also engaged in the same collusive behavior in the euro and dollar market, but the bank wasn’t charged over that conduct because it had obtained immunity by being the first bank to report the possible antitrust violations.

Don’t be surprised if despite the guilty criminal pleas, nobody goes to prison yet again.

In any event, we now know that aside from Libor, FX, gold, stocks and treasuries, nothing else is manipulation