Regulation – Page 5 – Abnormal Capitalist

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 to Catch Spoofers Who Manipulate Markets

Of course, honest traders change their minds all the time and cancel orders as economic conditions change. That’s not illegal. To demonstrate spoofing, prosecutors or regulators must show the trader entered orders he never intended to execute. That’s a high burden of proof in any market.

→ Bloomberg

The History of E-Cigarettes

A rather neat interactive timeline of the e-cigarette.

The e-cigarette was invented by Hon Lik, a 52 year old pharmacist in Beijing, China. He reportedly invented the device after his father, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer. This timeline charts the history of e-cigarettes from invention in 2003, to present day.

→ purplebox vapours

How the Cayman Islands Became a FIFA Power

It might seem unlikely that FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, has spent $2.2 million since 2002 to build a new headquarters for the soccer association and to fund two planned fields, given that the land is swampy and a grass field struggled to exist in brackish conditions.

FIFA’s generosity might seem even more improbable, considering that the Cayman Islands, a Caribbean tax and tourist haven, is ranked 191st among the world’s 209 national soccer teams. The team has never played in a World Cup. And the entire population of the islands, about 58,000, would not come close to filling the world’s biggest soccer stadiums.

While $2.2 million seems peanut for the FIFA, there’s a twist to it :

Seven years later, though, the first field remains weeks away from completion. Plans for a dormitory and a gym have not materialized. A final grant, for $500,000 in March 2014, was for the installation of artificial turf, FIFA noted on its website, because “the current grass field cannot survive in the low-level saltwater environment.”

→ The New York Times

Roubini Says The Art Market Is Rigged

Yet another rigged market, according to Nouriel Roubini, the man who predicted the housing crisis. As recent regulation and scandals make it harder to hide money from the eyes of institutions (and whistleblowers), capitals quietly move from tax-havens safes to renowned auction houses, valuing the entire market of public sales to $16.4bln in 2014 (approx. $70bln including private sales), more than four times the highs of a decade ago. The same can be told for the watch after-market too, though the numbers are much lower and highly concentrated between Rolex and Patek.

In another article, Mr. Roubini emphasis that Art is an asset class as a whole that needs to be regulated like other capital markets are.

But without further ado, John Gapper and Peter Aspden :

Regulation is needed in the art market because it is vulnerable to money laundering, tax evasion, trading on inside information and price manipulation, says one of the world’s most respected economists.

→ Financial Times