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The world horsepower record for the E9X M3 S65 V8 currently stands at 773 wheel horsepower and belongs to Gintani as well as BimmerBoost.com, just do not expect it to stand for very long. At Bimmerfest 2013 Gintani had the BimmerBoost.com project E92 M3 on display. They worked tirelessly to get the car ready for the event and took it to the dyno the night before. On MS109 race gas and 18.5 pounds of boost the car was able to hit 773 wheel horsepower with the completely stock DCT transmission slipping at 7250 rpm. Looking at the dyno graph below it is easy to see where the clutches begin to slip. At about 4750 rpm the clutch slips a bit then grabs as the pull continues up to 7250 rpm where it slips again and is unable to hold the power as the car is run to its 8500 rpm redline. Regardless, 7250 rpm was enough for a new world record on the S65 V8 platform and overall on the E9X BMW platform. Gintani will be rebuilding the cars DCT transmission and once that is complete the car will be back on the dyno for a clean run to redline and another world record. Looking at the graph, the car should conservatively be capable of ~830 wheel horsepower at 18.5 psi with MS109. What will it do on FTW Purple and 24 psi? We will eventually find out. Enjoy the picture and graph below. There is a video included of the car at Bimmerfest 2013. A huge crowd was gathered around it. For some reason the announcer at Bimmerfest never notified the crowd that the world's most powerful E92 M3 was in the house and that a new world record had been achieved on the platform. I waited for hours for the announcement which was hand written and delivered to the announcer but to no avail. Additionally, the car did not win a single award despite being the E92 M3 on display that had the most work done to it. Perhaps it needed some tacky neon green trim and red roundels? Definitely odd and awkward considering the years of engineering that have gone into it and that Gintani was a sponsor of the event. Perhaps if a competitor was not the headline sponsor Gintani and this car would have received the acknowledgement that was deserved and earned? Congratulations to Gintani on raising the bar to where nobody else on the platform is able to tread. This car is just getting warmed up.

Hey guys, Just wanted to share my story about my DCT build and my WR Dyno. This is not intended to start a tuning war or to make anyone look stupid *cough*cough* 135 pages of garbage. For starters I drive a 2012 335is with a DCT transmission, I began the build like every other enthusiast out there would, with a tune (JB4 to be exact). It later became FBO + meth + Protune with an upgraded clutch pack. As I mentioned the car originally ran the JB4 G5 iso + BMS flash. I will never put down the BMS name as I believe that they deliver a sound product and top notch customer service, but it just wasn't what I needed. The trans started encountering clutch slippage late last year while using any meth additive over 45 or being on map 7. The car gets beaten regularly and hits the strip at least once a month during the summer. It started off with some slippage during WOT shifts and later into not even being able to hold any power in the RPM range and sending the trans into a limp mode. Since I'm located up in Canada and don't drive much during the winter months, I called up Kris@ssp to discuss a possible clutch disc replacement. I was skeptical at first since theres a huge thread on how it doesn't work, but I took the leap of faith anyways and pulled the trigger on the new SSP 16 plate clutch pack.Boy i'm I happy now for not listening to sticky. Kris hooked me up with a local DCT master technician who fly's all over the world to upgrade GTR and Lambo clutches steve@SJL. In other words I was in great hands and I cannot thank Kris and Steve enough for the countless hours spent making my baby run how it should. There was a short trial and error period but as of Saturday May 4th, my car was finally done. The technician advised me to go the flash route as the BMW TCU gets all its values directly from the ECU and tricking it with a piggy was affecting various systems/sensors (mostly load related) within the TCU. Earlier this month I got a hold a Dzenno, who is local to me and told him what I was trying to do. I then purchased the pro tune + the HFS4 and WOW what a difference it is to drive. The car just goes, its hands down exactly what I wanted from this project when I started. Dzenno is a tuning god, I did both a road tune and a dyno tune and I can honestly say if your looking to bring your car to the next level I believe PTF is the way to go. It feels incredibly smooth and when needed it pulls like a freight train. The car currently runs 3 maps; one is a DD that is customized for 94+meth with conservative boost and timing. The next map is more aggressive running 94 + 100% meth and last but not least a map made strictly for race gas + meth. Going back towards the DCT build, I would consider myself to be a complete noobie regarding the DCT trans. I know about line pressure and the discs itself but after that its like solving a rubix cube. So for more information on regarding the upgrade, I ask you to please email Kris@SSP. I believe anyone trying to push big power with a DCT should give SSP a call and order these clutches. I've put on 1600 hard miles on them and not a single blip yet, the shifts are a tad firmer but still very comfortable for DD. I'm planning on getting a turbo upgrade by mid summer and well defiantly keep all of you posted. I intend to push the trans has hard as possible!! The numbers below speak for themselves, consistent power pull after pull. We tried to hit 500tq but we didn't want to put to much stress on the turbos. Since I cannot dig up my baseline, I wanted to let you guys know that a FBO g5iso + bms flash on 75 additive went on after me and put down 425/485 nemo . I'll be hitting the track later this month with Dzenno , watch out buraQ. Just waiting for my AD08s to come in, I truly believe this car can go deep into the 11s with its setup now. Video's...time slips and 60-120 runs will be posted later this month, just incase some of you don't believe it works. Do yourself a favour and contact PTF to get a fully customized map, I promise you wont regret it. Much thanks Dzenno@PTF, Kris@SSP, Steve@SJL, Ivo@columbusautomotive and all the boys part of JBC!!! http://protuningfreaks.com Mod List COBB PROTUNE by DZENNO STOCK SNAILS AR Downpipes AMS FMIC AFE DCI BMS OCC Vibrant Resonators HFS4 FORGE DVs ER CP NGK 9552

You need more right? You don't want to run methanol? Not a problem. 14 months ago I took on the BMW fuel pump, injectors and in tank module in hopes to get a higher flowing system for you guys. After months of wrecking several fuel pumps and $1000's of dollars in cut apart injectors we finally have something that flows more fuel. We didn't put much effort into the in-tank upgrade because one was already done from a different vendor. The injectors: OMG!!! What was BMW thinking? You cannot pull them apart without damaging the dampener inside them (yes they have what appears to be a small fluid dampening unit inside the injectors). Not only this but they are reverse pintle design (seals on the cone side). We are still working on a way to open the injector and machine them but applying power to a spinning injector is turning out to be more difficult than we though. We are still working on a solution for bigger injectors, but more on this later. The HPFP: Wow, what a wonderful piece of artwork BMW gave us to work with. I am really surprised on the operating parameters of this pump and the pressures it can build based on the design. The first things we noticed are the restrictions in the pump cavity's. Some of them are so small its amazing it moves any volume at all. Next, the pump is RPM limited due to the light spring pressures for the piston and pressure chamber. Pump testing on the pump dyno proved to be more difficult than planned but after building an oil pre-pressure and fill chamber we finally had a working test stand to dyno fuel pumps with. Now that you have some of the details of the parts I can share with you how we make them better. The injectors can be machined but need to be opened in order to do the machine process. We are working on this and hope to have a solution before the end of summer. The fuel pump we have a 18-20% higher flowing unit right now and have a 35-40% higher flowing unit planned end of summer. We tear down the fuel pump to its base items (custom tools were made to tear the pumps down). Every part is kept in a clean room so no dust, dirt or debris can get on or inside the pump. We start off with reworking the springs, not going to tell you which one's or how much additional we add but it will provide a more stable fuel pressure and extends the RPM band to 8,000 RPM. Then we start massaging the passages inside the fuel pump. We have found its possible to get 60% more flow out of the pump with to much port opening, problem being... idle quality and pressure control turn to crap. It took several fuel pumps to find how much .002 of a difference really made, LOL. Then we run the pumps on the pump dyno with the oil controlled pressure chamber (freaking really BMW?) pressurizing the pumping head on the HPFP. When we are all done with testing and machining a Stage 1 fuel pump... we have a pump that moves enough fuel to feed 600 WHP without methanol and a proper tune. Stage 2 fuel pumps, well... that is a different beast! We machine new pump pistons (all 3) and new pressure build chambers. Perform all the Stage 1 pump upgrades and you have a fuel pump that should supply 700 + WHP worth of fuel without methanol and a proper tune. Now, before you guys start asking for pictures... understand we have a lot of R&D wrapped up into these fuel pumps. I don't want to leak any of the visual details of what we are doing to the competition, so keep that in mind. We are also keeping pricing in check, we don't see a need to gouge you guys for additional fuel or create competition from over pricing. All our fuel systems come with a modified fuel rail. This modification helps with the lean condition for 4-6 cylinders. Every fuel pump we modify will be brand new. We do not want to risk getting a revision 3 or 4 fuel pump just to have it fail after we modify it. We start off with the latest revision from BMW and apply our upgrade's to that fuel pump. This way everyone knows they are getting the best product from BMW and from us. We will have two customers cars running our fuel pumps in the coming weeks, both of them will be able to push the full potential of our Stage 1 and 2 fuel pumps. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me. Thanks, John

Keep it work safe or use when necessary. Can't believe we never had one of these threads. Let's be real, babes and cars go hand in hand. The hotter the car often the hotter the babe:

I don't know if i really believe this but apparently over on e46 fanatics there is a 3 page long thread about this. Here are some of the posts in the thread... Sad day for the BMW tuner world.... :( :( :angry-banghead::violence-plasma::violence-pistoldou::angry-screaming:

This is a video taken from an event in Sweden at Björkvik airstrip. Rolling start on 2nd gear 50-270 km/h BMW 335ia 6at steptronic e92: intercooler+downpipes+intake+Vishnu v5 autotune (no meth) BMW M3 e92 6mt manual: Intake+exhaust+Evolve tune 50-270km/h same 335 vs stock M3 for reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D-HDakS5EsI#!

Hey BB, Totally testing the waters here, but im really starting to get bored of my 335i.... So, for around $30k, what fun/sports car would you buy? Mileage has to be under 60k and it can not be too un-DD-able (example: stripped interior turbo S2K wont work), and i cant buy a bike (which is my absolute top choice, but for family reasons, its a no go....) Some cars ive considered: -Mustang GT -Corvette (Base model or GS if i can find it) -STI/EVO Are there any fun AMGs or Audis at the $30k range? If i did swap cars, it has to be a car with similar performance (or potential) to the 335i.... So give me your choices! -Eric

So you know that awesome BMW S85 V10 revving over 8000 rpm giving somewhat of a direct link to the Motorsport division that seemed equally at home in an Italian exotic as it did under the hood of a BMW sport sedan? Yep, that one with the individual throttle bodies, over 100 horses per liter, that won all those awards, and that you could not get anything like it in a 550i, 545i, 535i, 530i, 528, or 525i? You know, a real unique M motor made specifically for an M car and only available in an M car? Say goodbye to ever seeing that again. From now on, every M motor will simply be based on an engine already in production. That means whatever cylinder count and block is already available in a chassis is all you will ever get standard model or M model be damned. The M purist has been moaning about this for years that BMW M motors will essentially just become their standard counterparts with some different software but the head of BMW M (Friedrich Nitschke) finally officially confirmed the days of the unique M motor built from the ground up by the M division are quite simply, over: So the engines will be closer to the standard engines. We already see that in the N63/S63 motors a good example being the X5 50i and X5 M. For BMW this means huge cost savings and that certain internal parts do not even need to be changed. For example, the same pistons can be used for both an M and non-M motor now: This is obviously a cost saving measure. BMW can share blocks, internals, and change software yet charge a huge premium. They can even offer performance software as a quick cash grab without having to change any hardware. The cost for the consumer doesn't become more affordable (M models are actually getting more expensive) but the profit margin for BMW increases. You get less, both for your dollar and in hardware choices, yet they make more. Hey, BimmerBoost tried to warn you. So don't expect to see anything made by the M-Division like an S54 ever again. Or an S38. Or an S65. Or an S85. Or an S14. Those are not motors you can just slap different software on and simply call M engines. The M division is officially dead kids along with BMW's pride, get it through your heads. This information all comes from an intereview by Car and Driver with head of M Friedrich Nitschke. It's quite amusing to see him believe the garbage he is spewing to Car and Driver. Some great lines to read: The M5 and M6 are on a level with the competition weight wise? All wheel drive is too heavy? The competition has all wheel drive and weighs the same as BMW with rear wheel drive if not slightly less. A recent comparison of convertible GT's had the F12 BMW M6 come in last place because of poor driving dynamics and the heaviest curb weight by far with the car not offering much more than straightline acceleration. What the hell is Nitschke talking about? Game over kids, BMW M has buried their heads so far in the sand they can't smell their own BS.

supremepower just posted a teaser pic on instagram. Anyone have any info? EDIT: "Hybrid Roots TVS Supercharger System" Sticky please change the title of the thread

I convinced my brother to buy some turbo's for the car. (we've always been in competition) What are some things you gents think I need to consider adding to the list- besides tuning of course. its a 2009 6MT E92. I cant see any VTT info, the stuff that's posted, and then the stuff that's NOT posted, so this is more of a general brainstorming session of what USERS would do. Car will DEFINITELY see the drag strip, but its main focus will be attempting to hunt down the infamous and elusive GTR's.. Thank you

OK guys, here's the results :) 19psi tapering quickly off to 15psi. Peak HP was at 5600rpms and boost was only @ 15.5psi. The tune is definitely on the conservative side(like i said it would be) which makes the 170whp delta pretty freaking impressive. Baseline was 279/300 but the dyno operator didn't save that pull. I'll be going back in a couple weeks time to push them and get some "kill mode" numbers :D

Good Evening, Tomorrow Garth undercover undercoverangie will be dyno testing my car. Some of you are aware that my car put down 469/491 (e85/no meth) last time it was on the dyno but with terrible HPFP failure in the mid range When I saw VargasTurboTech HPFP solution available I immediately ordered it and it was finally installed today. Garth is also sorting some meth woes, installed an n55 catless mid pipe and an e85 sensor to closely monitor the quality of fuel I will be running on map 6. I will be posting up logs, dyno results and video tomorrow afternoon. Terry@BMS I will likely be emailing you for some help with the backend flash while on the dyno. Can you email me with the latest high concentration e85 flash you have, thanks in advance. Haven't had the car for almost a month so I am PUMPED to get it back tomorrow!:awesome:

Hey guys, Had a chance to get our E92 manual back to the dyno today. We've recently replaced the clutch and added a meth kit. Full mod listing: JB4 G5 ISO BMS back end flash -- "race" file BMS downpipes CPE intercooler CPE chargepipe w/ tial valve BMS DCI BMS OCC Spec clutch w/ steel single mass flywheel BMS 2.2g meth kit w/ 80% ethanol / 20% water, CM12 nozzle E40 fuel (40% E98, 60% pump 91 octane) "Option2" inline booster pump I'll post the log later but peak boost was ~20.5psi and we're running around 13 degrees peak advance on it. Overall car performed very well and we were happy to raise the bar on stock turbo performance a bit. Attached is the dyno sheet and a photo of the car & Jon working the dyno software.

This warrants a discussion because it confuses me when people use weird names and I am always curious. My own name for instance. Wtf, does he want to be called stinky? Or Sticky? Right, so let's hear it. I will go first. Mine is kind of long so bear with me. I've always noticed that BMW's have this smell to them. Any E46 and prior BMW I ever stepped into had this smell and I always loved it. When I started learning more and more I always wanted some sort of M car. Low and behold after 7 years of waiting I bought my E46 M3. Should have done it a lot sooner. Anyways, the smell, in a way its a stinch, so I call my BMW stinky. My mother always called me stinky and now my wife calls me stinky as well. Therefore, StinkyM.

Gentlemen, here is the master plan. With a new version of Vbulletin finally being released I can get moving on this. I hope to have this implemented in the next few months. I'm going to need to work and be chained to my computer for 16 hours a day as if I was a Chinese kid making sneakers in a Nike sweatshop. I think if I pull this off it will be a thing of beauty. Only problem? ToyotaBoost.com is taken. As is ScionBoost.com. Taken by Toyota and it's not like I can outbid them so I'll have to come up with a solution there. Also need a central site name. Take a look and tell me what you think, rough draft:

I'm just seeing which of our guys has the strongest turbo setup. I would like to do a comparison between a built motor E46 M3 turbo and my car. I don't care who wins or what, just want to make a great video for the community for fun. Win, lose, draw, whatever I'll buy the beers afterwards.

Hey guys, here are some dynos from Vargas Stage 1 turbos as installed on my car. Details on these turbos can be provided by Tony. The reason it took this long to get these to you guys is primarily to do with the way the actuators were installed on these units. Tony can explain in more detail but the way I understood it it has to had to do with the way clips that secure the actuator in place were installed. This causes low RPM and WOT onset boost control to be next to impossible to control properly as the actuator doesn't have smooth movement in that area until it gets moving. Sort of gets stuck then goes. I literally had to run not even 10% wgdc during spool up and in the transition to get the turbos to spool to 26psi but given WGDC can't just magically drop boost instantly as it reaches target it causes boost overshoot and huge torque humps, which can be fun to drive at times but certainly can be dangerous at others. Given these were already on the car I tried my best to still work with them instead of having them taken off to have them adjusted. This same actuator clip issue was on the first set of of stage 2s sent out but all those guys had the benefit of me trying them out before install and they have all been instructed by Tony to swap the clips to the other side of the actuator arm (lucky bastards hehe) :) In any case, here's the dynos. I do realize some will attribute gains to my cylinder head work. To be honest I'd love that to be the case. I've asked Tony to also put Stage 1s on another stock motor N54, which he'll be doing soon, and we'll go through tuning it on the same octane. So take them as you wish. Tuning wise boost down low would be random between 19psi at times all the way to 28psi due to the actuators. Past 5k rpm it'd settle down finally and you can see the curves level off nicely. At 6k rpm boost on this tune is hitting 18.5psi, 17psi at redline. This was done on our local Sunoco pump 94 octane and the Aquamist HFS-4 with two 1.0mm nozzles. Timing is about 16deg through midrange to 24 deg at redline that ramps up past 5500rpm :) I've tried a number of things with them including low boost, much higher boost to redline. They could hit 21psi at redline (which wasn't possible on some other turbos I've tested in the past). However, that boost actually caused power to start dropping off earlier towards redline. If anyone's interested in seeing those I can post those up as well as a study into why holding HIGH boost to redline can be counter productive when it comes to making power (even though there are no timing corrections/knock) and there's plenty of fuel/octane. Keep in mind that my own car was making 402whp/450wtq on this same pump gas octane and meth back in the day, all out, on the procede with about 19psi running about 17.5-18psi at peak power on STOCK turbos. There were two cars right before mine on the dyno. First was the new DCT record holder that we pro tuned at 450whp on race gas + meth and stock turbos and another 6MT car doing 428whp on map3 75 meth and an older version of a BMS flash (more available with a new more custom flash). I'm mentioning these just to give you an idea of where this dyno scores same day, same place, hour or two apart.

I'm currently talking to a few shops overseas, and am going to contact a few local ones as well.. wondering if anyone else could potentially be interested in a set depending what they come back with for materials/pricing etc?

Here's a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a piece of history. Yes it is true, I am selling my Orange HPF Widebody M3 ($49,500) and the 28 ft. HPF Trailer w/built in winch for ($6,900). The car runs and drives great. In the past year I have only tracked the car once and we are raising capital for development on newer models. This was the first E46 M3 to ever have a working turbo kit on it when it was blue. It was then turned into a street/track car with the first Asuka widebody kit in the world and was painted pearl white. After that it was painted orange and turned into a full blown track supercar. As most of you know, this car is the real deal. It has been on the cover of countless magazines. It has set nearly every horsepower record for the E46 M3 over the years. There are so many mods (over $150K) done to this car that it would take a day to compile a list. Bring your truck to Portland and you can drive them both away. MODIFIED LUXURY & EXOTICS (Aug 2007) FREAKING FAST MAXPOWER (Dec 2009) DER MONSTRUM PERFORMANCE AUTO & SOUND (Feb 2009) WHITE HEAT PERFORMANCE BMW (Mar 2009) FREAK LIKE ME PERFORMANCE AUTO & SOUND (Aug/Sep 2010) KINGPIN

Anyone know wtf is going on?

Results of a test I just posted on n54tech. For those that are interested in this sort of thing. Test car is our 135i running 100% factory fuel system, E85, with an inline pump *after* the regulator to allow for higher than factory low fuel pressures. We're finding with the factory and modified high pressure pumps an inability to hold full pressure below 5500rpm at high torque levels when you push the system with certain combinations of high torque, a richer AFR targets, and 100% E85. I am hoping raising the lower inlet pressure is the answer. So far this is the only test I've done and the results were not entirely what I hoped for.

Was wondering if rattling from rpm 1500-2000 is the dp's touching the subframe?(not at idle or above stated rpms) Heatshield? I had em installed at a local performance shop and I'm pretty there incompetent and I should have installed them with a buddy or two.. anyways its going back tommorow morning to give them one more shot at fixing it. Also They said they needed to use an O2 extension??? Never heard of one needed.. Also considering I have no secondary cats and catless dp, will smoke be very frequent? I'm starting to get annoyed already lol.. Might have to weld in a set of resonators where the secondary cats were( will that help with smoke?) Thanks..

So my friend signed with Vivid and we need to pick her name. Finally guys, you get to name a pornstar. Anyway, her first name she chose and it's "Ivy." So, pick the last name. Or just go with a whole name if you want if you think it sounds better, whatever. I suggested Ivy Divine, Ivy Angel, and Ivy Bell and she didn't like any of them :(

Interesting read here. I don't even know how I missed the Libor Scandal: By Matt Taibbi April 25, 2013 1:00 PM ET Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything. You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets." That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps. Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget. It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture. The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks. "It's a double conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality." The bad news didn't stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. "Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry," CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said. But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants' incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place. "A farce," was one antitrust lawyer's response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal. "Incredible," says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases. All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system. If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2RWGtVXMy Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook