[bitcartel]

You worked for CME right? Quite ironic given we're discussing LIBOR rigging which has its roots in a decision made by the CME, subsequently exploited by traders.

"In late 1996, Marcy Engel, then a lawyer for Wall Street heavyweight Salomon Brothers Inc, fired off a warning letter to U.S. regulators: If they approved a Chicago Mercantile Exchange plan to change how a popular futures contract was priced, they would put at risk the integrity of a key interest rate in the global financial system."

"The problem with the CME's plan, as Engel saw it: The banks that set the rates in London daily were also able to take positions in the CME's Eurodollar contract. In her letter to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, she said tethering the futures contract to Libor "might provide an opportunity for manipulation" of the interest rate. A "bank might be tempted to adjust its bids and offers ... to benefit its own positions."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/20/us-libor-fixing-or...

[tptacek]

Don't write this way here. Don't take disagreements with people and escalate them to innuendo about the character of the people who disagree with you. Don't try to track down where people work, and then fling a narrative at them about how they're somehow corrupted by their employer.

I'd like to think that if I did that myself --- it's possible I have, I'm a pretty undisciplined guy --- I'd apologize for it as soon as it was pointed out.

[zero_intp]

I think the Parent's comment could be taken either as a underhanded slander as you represent, or viewed that people can have naive perspectives while undermining their own interests.

[cynicalkane]

It's always baffled me that people think I'm sinister because I once worked for the CME.

* Exchanges don't do "evil finance things". Exchanges are middlemen; not only are conflicts of interest legally prohibited, but also an easy way to lose business. LIBOR rigging was not good news for the CME.

* I have about as much loyalty to my former employer as any other hacker would have to a big corporation--that is, I think it's a valuable business, but I'm not going to go on the Internet and shill for them because of some sense of loyalty.

But finance discussion causes people to enter "good vs evil" mode. Go figure.

[bitcartel]

> the CME is almost completely irrelevant

To call CME irrelevant is strange - it's the world’s largest futures exchange! The CME decision many years ago to link futures contracts to LIBOR may have inadvertently kick-started the entire scandal, because banks responsible for fixing LIBOR would also have trading positions, and thus might be tempted to rig things (which is what happened).

> Exchanges don't do "evil finance things".

Ask farmers: "...rampant dairy price rigging that occurs at the CME and hurts farmers and consumers across the U.S. and around the world. In 2008 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) found Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) guilty of price rigging at the CME and levied an unprecedented $12 million fine. Yet, these illegal trading practices continue at the CME." http://familyfarmers.org/?p=731

Or bullion traders: "As the operator of U.S. commodity futures markets; the CME Group has a quasi-regulatory capacity to ensure the markets are operated in a legitimate manner. A primary facet of this responsibility is to set “margin requirements” for trading positions in a manner which enhances market stability. However, for the second time in 24 months we have this market operator engaging in precisely the opposite manner: maliciously rigging margin position requirements in order to increase the current “instability” in precious metals markets – i.e. the downward pressure in prices." http://wallstreetsectorselector.com/2013/04/cme-group-destab...

> finance discussion causes people to enter "good vs evil" mode. Go figure.

Maybe farmers and bullion traders are just bad losers. Maybe brokers don't front-run their customers. Maybe banks who settle lawsuits are innocent. Or maybe Matt Taibbi is right and people have simply had enough of rampant financial fraud that goes unpunished.

[tptacek]

So because two blog posts suggest that the upper management of one of the most important market operators in the world --- one without which those farmers would probably be screwed, by the way --- anybody who in the past worked at CME must be suspicious? Because that's what you're asserting.

The weird thing about this comment is that you appear to have researched it. You researched an attempt to defame another commenter on HN.

[bitcartel]

What on earth are you talking about?!

Someone else[1] first mentioned that the original poster once worked for CME. Anyone who has been following the LIBOR rigging story can see the irony.

You've now accused several people of defaming the original poster. Did you somehow forget that the topic of discussion is fraud in the financial markets?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5616839

[logjam]

Gosh gee.

You mean "finance discussions" from people who owed their income to the finance industry...and yet who want us to believe they are unbiased on the topic of the finance industry...this despite their well-thought out "discussion" in this thread of a criticism of the financial industry consisting not of any factual arguments, but only of completely unsupported horseshit like...wait for it... "Taibbi routinely lies..."?

I mean how could anyone even consider the idea "shill", is that what you're saying?

"Good vs evil"?

Go figure. Yeah, go fucking figure.

[tptacek]

Again, a comment that says because 'cynicalkane said in his profile that he worked for the CME, he must be a shill.

[tptacek]

In neither of those cases would the comment be welcome, as both would be targeted at a participant in the discussion and not the ideas in their comment.

[logjam]

Ok self-appointed HN comment cop, maybe you could make a ruling for us on top-voted HN comments which consists of nothing more than a mindless, unsupported assertion that the Rolling Stone article author "routinely lies", followed by a comment from someone else whose deep contribution is that the author "writes from a script?"

I mean, with the quality and depth of those kinds of comments, why would anyone ever even think to speculate about motivation and/or character here?

[tptacek]

The funny thing about this comment and the rest of your comments on this thread is that they're in militant support of demonizing other commenters because of where they've worked in the past.

But maybe you, alone among all the other (I suppose) Taibbi advocates on this thread, would like to engage directly with my argument about his financial reporting?

[WayneDB]

That didn't seem to work. Have you tried throwing a temper tantrum?