“If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying,”‘ says a Barclay Bank trader!

This last week a consortium of the six biggest national and international banks were fined $5.6 billion for manipulating global currency and interest rates, going back to 2007. The six banks were Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS. All but UBS admitted to criminal guilt, as well.

The guilty verdicts were the result of a long investigation into the actions of about twenty employees, who refer to themselves as “the cartel” or “the Mafia.” Using coded communication in an online chat room, they rigged the exchange rate between the dollar and the euro, violating the rules on market manipulation and collusion.

Typically, one trader would build a huge position in a particular currency, unload it at just the critical moment hoping to move prices. Traders at the various other banks…