Category: Politics

Secret Art Storage Facilities Under Scrutiny

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Oligarchs cannot be blamed for being extra-opportunistic anyway.
That said, art has been commoditised for too long without being properly regulated.

Nearly a third of art collectors and professionals surveyed last year by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. said they had used a freeport. Experts speculate that the freeport in Geneva, which traces its roots back to 1854 and is controlled by local authorities, may house the most valuable art collection in the world—although its holdings are generally secret.

Someone interested in laundering money could arrange to use ill-gotten funds to purchase a painting inside of a freeport, Mr. Palmer said, and then resell the painting inside of the facility a few months later. Experts say it can be difficult for a customs official relying on a printed summary of a sale conducted inside a freeport to know for sure if the amount exchanged was appropriate, or if a painting that was purportedly sold was real.

→ The Wall Street Journal

Société Générale Contre Jérôme Kerviel : Fin du “Game” ?

 
Jean-Philippe Denis :

Et voilà comment la troisième ironie peut finalement être empruntée à… Jean de la Fontaine. Lorsque les animaux sont malades de la peste, on le sait, on devrait souhaiter « selon toute justice, que le plus coupable périsse ». La Fontaine toutefois a prévenu : tel est rarement le cas puisque « selon que vous serez puissant ou misérable, la justice vous rendra blanc ou noir ». Mais, vingt ans après le scandale du Crédit Lyonnais, à avoir ainsi permis dans le cas EADS que ne soient tirées les leçons des singularités et dérives managériales qui se jouent dans les « zones grises » du capitalisme français et de ses « grands corps… malades », le Conseil constitutionnel pourrait bien finir, « à l’insu de son plein gré », par donner tort à Jean La Fontaine.

→ The Conversation

Was Tom Hayes Running The Biggest Financial Conspiracy in History ?

 
It was an audio CD from inside Barclays. Gensler, his coterie, and members of the enforcement division gathered on scuffed-up sofas and chairs in the waiting area outside his office—the only meeting place with a working CD player—to listen. It was a telephone conversation between two Barclays middle managers that had taken place 18 months earlier, during some of the most turbulent days of the crisis. Speaking in a cut-glass English accent, one of the men told a subordinate that he needed to start lowering the bank’s Libors. When the more junior employee started to object, the first man told him the order had come from the most senior levels of the bank, who in turn were acting on instructions from the Bank of England.

Kervielesque :

“Well, that’s sort of ironic that you’re firing me, given that you were involved in it up to your eyeballs,” Hayes later recalled telling McCappin.

→ Bloomberg Businessweek

Rain Man In Trouble

 The Unraveling of Tom Hayes, Pt. One :

Ms. Tighe printed out the settlement documents and went through them with a yellow highlighter, with Joshua balanced on her lap. She was relieved. They made it clear that Libor manipulation was widespread. Her husband wasn’t even named.

That evening, as she prepared a joint of roasted lamb for dinner, Mr. Hayes sat nearby, puttering on his Apple laptop. A news alert popped up. Mr. Hayes clicked the link. A video of the U.S. attorney general at a news conference in Washington started playing.

“Sarah, I’ve been charged by the U.S.,” Mr. Hayes announced.

Credit : Peter Mlekuz, Janko Klavora

→ The Wall Street Journal

How Europe Crushed Greece

Op-Ed by Yanis Varoufakis :

The fact that few people ever got to hear about the Greek plan is a testament to the eurozone’s deep failures of governance. If the “Athens Spring” — when the Greek people courageously rejected the catastrophic austerity conditions of the previous bailouts — has one lesson to teach, it is that Greece will recover only when the European Union makes the transition from “We the states” to “We the European people.”

Across the Continent, people are fed up with a monetary union that is inefficient because it is so profoundly undemocratic. This is why the battle for rescuing Greece has now turned into a battle for Europe’s integrity, soul, rationality and democracy. I plan to concentrate on helping set up a Pan-European political movement, inspired by the Athens Spring, that will work toward Europe’s democratization.

Credit: Death of Euros, Goin

→ The New York Times