Can American Traders Be Trusted?

My colleague, Steven Anfield, wrote an article yesterday asking if the European traders can be trusted. Clearly, there have been a few notable cases, in which a rogue trader has managed to blow a huge hole in certain banks' balance sheets, but those are minor incidents compared to what the American traders and bankers have done within the past years.We do not need to go further than 2007 when the housing market in the U.S. was at its peak. Thousands (yes thousands) of rogue traders were buying and selling mortgage backed securities while disregarding the toxicity of the underlying assets. This derivative trading frenzy led to the biggest worldwide financial crisis since the 1930s. Let's not forget about the most notable Ponzi scheme of this century. Acclaimed money manager, Bernie Madoff, was caught running a $50-60 billion fraud that raised red flags as early as 2001, but the regulators failed to take actions until 2008 when a number of investors had lost their life savings.It is one thing when ordinary employees engage in dishonest activity, but the real betrayal of trust occurs when a director of the most notable investment bank in the world assist insider trading. This also seems to be possible in America. Rajat K. Gupta, an ex-director at Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) leaked non-public information to Raj Rajatman, who in 2011, was found guilty on 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud.After all, my message to Steven Anfield is: the European traders seem to be capable of causing serious damage to their employers' balance sheets, but the rogue American traders almost destroyed the entire financial system. When you add the toxic insider trading cases and Ponzi schemes it becomes clear that the American traders are far less trustworthy than their European counterparts.