Lawsuit accuses 22 banks of manipulating U.S. Treasury auctions

[think]

Lawsuit accuses 22 banks of manipulating U.S. Treasury auctions

NEW YORK, JULY 23 | BY JONATHAN STEMPEL

Twenty-two financial companies that have served as primary dealers of U.S. Treasury securities were sued in federal court on Thursday, in what was described as the first nationwide class action alleging a conspiracy to manipulate Treasury auctions that harmed both investors and borrowers.

The State-Boston Retirement System, the pension fund for Boston public employees, accused Bank of America Corp's Merrill Lynch unit, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG , Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Group Inc , HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, UBS Group AG and 14 other defendants of illegally trying to profit on the sale of Treasury bills, notes and bonds at investors' expense.

According to the pension fund's complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, the banks used chat rooms, instant messages and other means to swap confidential customer information and coordinate trading strategies in the roughly $12.5 trillion Treasury market.

This enabled the banks to inflate prices on Treasuries they sold to investors in the pre-auction "when issued" market, and deflate prices when they bought Treasuries to cover their pre-auction sales, violating antitrust laws, according to the complaint....

Full article:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/24/banks-lawsuit-treasury-auctions-idUSL1N1033WI20150724

[fasttense]

1. Now how did the Treasury NOT know this was going on?

Are they that stupid? I honestly belive people in Treasury were colluding.

[Sam_Fields]

3. The doorway between big banks and the US treasury is a revolving door

Look the other way as a govt employee then you can get a big signing bonus when you are hired into a wall street firm.

[L0oniX]

2. YAwn ...it's just bankster folks ...doing what banksters do.

[kentuck]

4. Another reason to break them up.

Too big to fail - too big to jail.

[PeoViejo]

5. You can shear the sheep a hundred times, but you can only skin them once.

This is going to continue until people start going to Prison.


Those greedy fucking Banksters will keep doing this until you hurt them. Nobody is too big to fail.

[closeupready]

9. "going to continue" - of course. Easy money, no work;

get in, steal X, pay a fine of 1/2*X, profit! Rinse, repeat.

[abelenkpe]

13. Exactly nt

[PeoViejo]

15. I doubt if they even pay 10 cents on the Dollar.

It's an incestuous relationship with the regulators.

[Dustlawyer]

14. This is going to continue until we stop their ability to buy our politicians!

We must have Publicly Funded Elections, lock the Revolving Door, and bust up the Big Banks and media oligarchies. Bernie wants to do this, but as he himself states, he cannot do it without millions of us demanding it! An activism like this country hasn't seen since this country broke off from England!

[turbinetree]

6. And this should about explain everything you wanted to ....................

know on how a criminal operation is run in the world of greed and no shame --------------


http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/07/libor-scandal-explained/





Honk -------------for a political revolution Bernie 2016

[Lucky Luciano]

7. Element capital is a hedge fund that makes a shit ton of money on this strategy.

They sell short the when issued bonds into the auction and hedge it with interest rate swaps or nearby expires for treasuries - eg if selling short they 10Y bonds, hedge with buying the 7y and 30y in appropriate sizes. Then they cover their shorts on the auction print. Averaged a profit of a couple (million) bucks per trade...and happened all year...played the European auctions too quite profitably.

[Octafish]

8. Some familiar names, there...

...Repeat offenders, too.

Thank you, think! This hasn't made it into Detroit's newspapers, yet.

Of course, I'm still waiting for them to cover all the LIBOR stories in a way that people might remember.

[Duval]

10. It will be interesting to

see how far this goes. My hope is that they'll nail the bastards.

[abelenkpe]

11. Violating Anti-trust laws?

Are we going to start enforcing anti-trust laws? That'd be refreshing.

[KansDem]

12. Oh-hum, I'm going to take a nap, now...

You can fine me in the morning... [font size="1"]<--Bankster[font size="2"]

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. Thank you for posting this!

Now we gotta watch like a hawk to see what becomes of the case.