10 Biggest Wall St. Banks Now Facing Legal Action for Price Fixing $320 Trillion Derivative MarketBy Jay Syrmopoulos The lawsuit claims the banks have been able to extract billions of dollars in monopoly rents, year after year, from the class members in this case. According to a report by Reuters: The class action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, accuses Goldman Sachs Group (GS.N), Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N), JPMorgan Chase(JPM.N), Citigroup(C.N), Credit Suisse Group (CSGN.VX), Barclays Plc (BARC.L), BNP Paribas SA (BNPP.PA), UBS (UBSG.VX), Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE), and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) of colluding to prevent the trading of interest rate swaps on electronic exchanges, like the ones on which stocks are traded. As a result, the lawsuit alleges, banks have successfully prevented new competition from non-banks in the lucrative market for dealing interest rate swaps, the worlds most commonly traded derivative. The Public School Teachers Pension and Retirement Fund of Chicago brought the suit against the elite global financial powerhouses, after purchasing interest rate swaps from numerous banks as a means of assisting the fund in hedging against interest rate risk on debt. Those purchases led to the Chicago Teachers Pension and Retirement Fund vastly overpaying for those swaps, according to the suit. The suit alleged that the banks have jointly threatened, boycotted, coerced, and otherwise eliminated any entity or practice that had the potential to bring exchange trading to buyside investors, since at least 2007. Defendants did this for one simple reason: to preserve an extraordinary profit center, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit goes on to claim that the banks masked their collusion by using code-names for joint projects such as Lily, Fusion, and Valkyrie. Out of the ten banks named in the lawsuit, nine of the banks own equity stakes in Tradeweb and hold positions on the companys board and governance committees. The banking consortium used those positions to effectively control Tradeweb and collectively blocked the development of more investor-friendly swaps exchanges by firms such as the CME Group, TrueEX, Javelin Capital Markets, and TeraExchange, according to the suit. According to the lawsuit: During the time period relevant here, Tradeweb board and governance committees were organized specifically for the purpose of protecting the dealer community from the growth of exchange trading. Similar allegations of bank collusion in the market for another type of derivative, known as credit default swaps, have been the subject of investigations by the United States Department of Justice and the European Commission, as well as a separate class-action lawsuit brought by investors, according to Reuters. In September, twelve banks and two industry groups settled that lawsuit by agreeing to pay $1.87 billion, making it one of the largest antitrust class action lawsuits in U.S. history, according to the Wall Street Journal. The scale of alleged theft is almost unimaginable. If you want to understand who/what controls governments, you have found the industry that stands above all others in its ability to bend the will of states and from which all other industries bow at the alter of; the true Masters of the Universe. Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jays work has been published on Ben Swanns Truth in Media, Truth-Out, AlterNet, InfoWars, MintPress News, as well as many other sites. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu. When the markets crash it will be the end of the west as a political power. It will be the end of an epoch. The third world awaits, and already weve reached the banana republic stage on our way through. Theyve done nothing to prevent another crash like 2008. The next one will be worse. 1929 will be a picnic compared to whats coming. Theatre designed to give vent to the Peoples rage. Watch where this goes.ultimately, a fine will be imposedthe biggest in historybalance is restored.go back to sleep. banks are another tool of the scum that have robbed humanity for centuries. I have recently coughed up around $40K to the beast for its never ending death machine. so unions are betting on the riskiest of investments to guarantee their members pension payments? hahahahahahahaha!!!!!!! Now, well see how far This Goes ! . . . but Im NOT HOLDING MY BREATH !. And not a single one will wear an orange jump suit or lose his Lamborghini for fear they will rat off all our tax masters in DC. Kudos to Iceland bankers every where should be slapped in jail and the entire system needs to crumble. If theyre doing gods work send the bill to him. Revelation 12: Isaiah 19: Matthew 7: 