Credit Traders accused of manipulating valuations

During the court case in which former senior credit traders of Credit Suisse are accused of manipulating the valuations of their trading books the revealing statement by one of them caught my eye: When a data-entry employee asked one of the accused “What sort of P&L do you need today?”  the trader responded that all books should end the day ‘up’ by $35 million” and the prosecution claimed that later one of the traders “artificially increased the prices of several ABN1 positions” to meet the trader's profit target. (Bloomberg BusinessWeek). This confirms our suspicion that the controls in many investment firms are woefully inadequate.