“I have spoken to the heads of various Wall Street equity derivatives trading desks and every single one of the senior managers I spoke with told me that Bernie Madoff was a fraud. Government has coddled, accepted, and ignored white collar crime for too long. It is time the nation woke up and realized that it's not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most economic harm, it's the white collar criminals living in the most expensive homes who have the most impressive resumes who harm us the most. They steal our pensions, bankrupt our companies, and destroy thousands of jobs, ruining countless lives.”
Harry Markopolos
"A kleptocracy is sucking the life out of working men and women by force and fraud. They pervert and corrupt so many, filling their hearts with their passionate lies, appealing to what is the very worst in them."
Jesse, September 2012
"The report [by author John Detrixhe] found that as of December 2020 the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) had a 19.9 percent share of stock market trading versus 13.4 for Citadel Securities and 9.4 percent for Virtu Financial. This gave Citadel Securities and Virtu a combined stock market trading share of 22.8 percent versus 19.9 for the NYSE.
The big problem with this picture is that neither Citadel Securities or Virtu Financial are registered as stock exchanges and neither are regulated by the SEC as stock exchanges. Citadel Securities is a broker-dealer that pays for order flow from at least nine online brokerage firms and has a dubious history of regulatory fines and abusive behavior. Virtu Financial is a market maker and high frequency trading firm that bragged in its IPO prospectus that it had only one losing day in 1,238 days of trading."
Wall Street On Parade, Unregistered 'Exchanges' Carry More Volume Than NYSE
"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else."
Neil Barofsky
"Price discovery is not a sexy function of markets, but it is critical to the efficient allocation of scarce capital and resources, and to the preservation of the long term wealth of investors and the economy as a whole. If price discovery is compromised by manipulation, then we will all be gradually impoverished and the economy will be imbalanced and unstable."
London Banker, Lies, Damned Lies, and LIBOR
Stocks were in rally mode today on a most likely false optimism about the progress of a truce in the Ukraine.
Rising rates, inflation, global pandemic, supply chain breaks - meh.
At least for today. The wash and rinse must flow.
Gold and silver were brazenly hit again this morning, in the familiar day after option expiry smackdown to dislodge all those new holders of April metals contracts.
They are no longer subtle, not bothering to even disguise their blatant manipulation of markets.
Stocks were on a tear, managing to take out another level of failed rallies from the past.
Bully needs to make a new high. Or all that has failed thus far is going to be just a warmup.
Bitcoin managed to go higher, which makes sense given its positive correlation with the equity bubble.
The Dollar fell.
It's sad to see how many have given themselves over to the madness, and blithely skip along towards the abyss.
And the beat goes on.
"It turns out that you can blow life off for as long as you want, but you still have to take the finals.”
Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
Have a pleasant evening.
