Four months ago, when looking at the latest S&P/Bankcard data, we first reported that credit card defaults had surged the most since June 2013, a troubling development which ran fully counter to the narrative that the economy was recovering and the US consumer's balance sheet was improving.
Just over a decade ago, as the S&P was hitting all time highs and there was a line around the block of 30-some year old hedge fund managers, desperate to put other people's money in various ultra risky investments just so they could pick a few excess bps of yield over Treasurys - a situation painfully familiar to what is going on now - Goldman had an epiphany: create new synthetic products that have huge convexity, i.e., provide little upside (such as a few basis points pick up in yield) versus unlimited downside, link them to the shittiest assets possible and sell them to gullible, yie
According to prosecutor Carol Sipperly, former HSBC currency trader Mark Johnson used just four words to trigger a massive, international front-running operation that netted his firm some $8 million in illicit profits: "my watch is off."
The bank’s former global head of foreign exchange alerted the traders around the globe via a phone call in December 2011 that was recorded, a prosecutor said Thursday. The gambit was designed to take advantage of a $3.5 billion client order to buy sterling, the U.S. says.
The bar for Wall Street hypocrisy has just been raised.