. . . no human would! No wonder she did such a piss poor job on Enron (she lead the DOJ's legal team), when all those offshore debt vehicles they used to hide the debt (similar to how Fastow did it at Continental of Illinois, which was the largest bank failure prior to Enron) should have been easily and legally damning enough, for chrissakes!
Although HFT is front running, even worse to the retail investor is the business of
internalization, whereby the major brokerages sell 100% of their retail stock trades, on an almost daily basis, to the top banks and hedge funds (and the largest hedge funds are normally owned by the largest banks) --- where the banks and hedge fund match up those trades internally on their computer systems (know as
dark pools) which gives them almost complete command and control in insider information on a swarm basis, and manipulating things to their own profit by how and when they do those matches (matching buyer stocks to seller stocks, etc.).
Of course, with the existing potential to purchase an unlimited number of commodity futures per category or item, gives the traders and houses extraordinary ability to manipulate things.
Then there's that LIBOR rate rigging: (Madam Brown explains it far better than moi!):
http://www.counterpunch.org/20...
Of course, being able to purchase an unlimited amount of naked swaps (or uncovered credit default swaps) is what precipitated the global economic meltdown (and NO, the subprime market was but a drop in the bucket where securitizations of debt were concerned, and even then 5/6ths of the subprimes were corporate or wealthy individuals).
Of course, then there's the FOREX market rigging, precious metals markets rigging, virtual naked stock short selling thanks to the DTCC's Stock Borrow Program, and . . . .
