That sounds very eerily similar to J.K. Galbraith's description of trader collusion on the New York Stock Exchange in his classic The Great Crash 1929. In it he describes how traders would fix prices. The general public, though aware of this, still participated in the market -- there was no where else to invest, and there were some gains that could accrue to them as well.

In a sense, a stock exchange is also a sort of social network. Curious thought, that.