The Vig On Wall Street

vig (plural vigs)
Abbreviation of vigorish
(slang) A charge taken on bets, as by a bookie or gambling establishment.

What is the vig on Wall Street?
Specifically, what is the government's cut from this rigged casino?

Banks globally have paid $321 billion in fines since 2008 for an abundance of regulatory failings from money laundering to market manipulation and terrorist financing, according to data from Boston Consulting Group.
...
"As conduct-based regulations evolve, fines and penalties, along with related legal and litigation expenses, will remain a cost of doing business," analysts led by Gerold Grasshoff wrote. "Managing those costs will continue to be a major task for banks."

vig.png

"Cost of doing business." What a great way to describe 'the vig' on "money laundering, market manipulation and terrorist financing".

Now $321 Billion sounds like a lot, but then the price of staying out of jail after openly breaking the most serious of laws is expensive.
How can banks afford what sounds like an immense amount of money?
It's because a rigged market in which nearly everyone participates is extremely lucrative.

Take, for instance, JP Morgan Chase.

JPMorgan had a perfect year in trading in 2016...
According to the slide below, the US bank didn't have a single day of losses in the markets, and the markets business generated $80 million in revenues a day on average, up from $70 million in 2015. JPMorgan generated around $21 billion in fixed income and equity sales and trading revenues in 2016. Market volatility was broadly flat, meanwhile.

Not ONE. SINGLE. DAY. OF. LOSSES.
What are the chances of that in a non-rigged casino?
You would probably have to use calculus to work with odds that high.

And it gets worse.

not only did JPM not have a single losing day in all of 2016, but JPM's trading desk also had zero daily losses in 2014 and 2013. It did, however, lose money on two days in 2015. Prior to that one needs to go all the way to 2012 to find 7 days in which the largest US bank by market cap posted any losses.

Two days of trading losses in four years.
Oh yeah. That's perfectly normal. /snark

The kicker is that JPM isn't the worst example out there.
Consider High Frequency Trading titan Virtu.
VRTU Trading Days _0.jpg

That's four years of trading with one, just one day, of losses.

So why doesn't the DoJ prosecute those thieves on Wall Street? Because they are paying their cut.

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earthling1's picture

Stop borrowing from them. Borrow from a Credit Union, it will be a double tap. They lose the revenue and their only real competitor gains revenue.
Save, save, save. Any cash stuffed under the mattress is cash unavailable to them. Doesn't sound like much, but just a few million people participating will definitely be felt. As I stated in another, we must keep them back on their heels. Make them feel threatened ALL the time. Boycott all of Corporate America. Of course, we cannot completely ignore them.
As we sit around contemplating what to do next or who will do our bidding if elected, these measures will begin harming them immediately. By the time 2018 rolls around they will have to stop rigging elections and expend more ti.e, energy and money countering our boycott. Keep them on their heels. Make them feel threatened 100% of the time.
If successful, it will blossom into a serious movement that completely sidesteps the Billionaire rigged government.
And there is no way for them to stop us.
Thoughts?

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

BrutallyHonest's picture

@earthling1 Cooperatives is the way to sidestep Corporate America. Its a two for one punch. We make people more engaged in their day to day lives while removing the need and power that these giant corporations have.

We need to use the tech of the day to make giant corporations obsolete. Because they truly are and thats why they are fighting to stay in power. Lets create a real sharing economy where we truly share the goods/ wealth with each other all the while getting rid of the greedy sociopaths in our mist?

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earthling1's picture

@BrutallyHonest They use fear on us constantly. We must make them fear us.
Rolling boycotts ( start with Wells Cargo ), a TBTF bank getting caught doing evil at least once a month for the past decade. I am incredibly disappointed the American people haven't boycotted that cesspool of moneychangers strait into Hell.
Are we people.... or are we sheep?
Ps. Purposeful misspelling above.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

@earthling1 @earthling1 @earthling1

This would be one reason - apart from killing off smaller business and preventing the circulation of cash in the form of small gifts or loans between people or the giving of 'alms' to the desperate, (whether a co-worker running short and needing to pick up something on the way home, the day before pay-day, or someone on the street trying to accumulate enough for a meal) - taking currency away from the people is becoming a thing, as is being so disastrously implemented in India.

If the financial industry holds all of the money of all of the people of the world in the form of computer transactions only and can take/lose it any time, people cannot move their money into safe-keeping or away from their use of/taking of it.

And emptied bank accounts would freeze entire populations and render them helpless, whether via a power outage during an emergency or whether due simply to banks deciding that that they need to seize all depositor's funds because they're in danger of crashing again, as has apparently been made 'legal' by Obama in the US.

And there are many potential emergencies anticipated, in myriad areas, due to many causes, all of them related to profiteering and power-grabbing from The People by the Parasite Class. This smells rather like the set-up to them finally 'having it all', from the 99% at any rate. Thereafter, they'll have to predate upon each other.

Edit: yes, please, boycott all corporate evil, from banks to GMO foods - do it because our lives depend upon it, as they certainly do.

We do not need giant multi-national corporations buying up public policy and whole governments - but they have battened upon us as we suffer and shrink and they are now eager to kill off the host. Let them see what happens without our being their compliant victims, repeatedly offering our financial throats to the Parasite Class out of expediency and accustomed abusage.

First clean them out of our pockets and then out of the public purse, when they are weaker from the lack of our siphoned life-blood.

Re-edited because I cleverly managed to type an 'n' rather than an 'm'.

I hate mornings because mornings hate me, no matter what time of day they occur. Or how long they may last throughout any particular day(s).

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.