Monthly Archives: June 2012

Telegraph: Barclay’s LIBOR scandal could have far reaching consequences for banking system

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Source: London Telegraph

Libor scandal: Was Barclays the worst offender?

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By James Quinn Last Updated: 9:33PM BST 30/06/2012

As the fate of Barclays chief Bob Diamond hangs in the balance, James Quinn looks at how the Libor scandal could have wide-reaching consequences for the banking industry as a whole.

“We have to get kicked out of the fixings tomorrow,” read the email. “We need a 4.17 fix in 1m. We need a 4.41 fix in 3m.”

The email, from a senior Barclays Capital trader in the bank’s offices in the MetLife building looking down over New York’s Park Avenue, to a trader in the bank’s London offices in Canary Wharf, could have seemed innocuous to the unknowing eye.

But what the American banker was doing was telling his British counterpart exactly where the bank needed the Libor – the London Interbank Offered Rate used to set interest rates for everything from mortgages to complex derivatives – to be fixed.

For one-month Libor – “1m” – it needed it to be low. For three-month Libor – “3m” – it needed to be high.

And so it went on. Three months later, a BarCap trader in London pinged an email to a submitter, one of the bank’s staff responsible for accurately submitting information about interest rates to the British Banking Association (BBA), which then aggregated the data and produced the Libor rates. This time the trader wanted the opposite result to his colleague three months earlier: “Your annoying colleague again… Would love to get a high 1m. Also if poss a low 3m… if poss… thanks.”

Just two instances out of numerous examples found by investigators at the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in London, and their counterparts at the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) in Washington.

Following a four-year investigation, at 1.30pm last Wednesday the sheer scale of Barclays’ role in attempting to fix Libor rates was disclosed with a statement from the bank marked “Barclays Bank PLC settlement with authorities”. The five-paragraph announcement did not go into any detail, other than to disclose that the bank was to pay £290m in fines, the largest ever levied against a bank.

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World’s first genetically modified baby born in New Jersey

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Source: MailOnline

by MICHAEL HANLON, Daily Mail

The world’s first genetically modified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.

The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.

So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three ‘parents’.

Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey.

The babies were born to women who had problems conceiving. Extra genes from a female donor were inserted into their eggs before they were fertilised in an attempt to enable them to conceive.

Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year- old children confirm that they have inherited DNA from three adults –two women and one man.

The fact that the children have inherited the extra genes and incorporated them into their ‘germline’ means that they will, in turn, be able to pass them on to their own offspring.

Altering the human germline – in effect tinkering with the very make-up of our species – is a technique shunned by the vast majority of the world’s scientists.

Geneticists fear that one day this method could be used to create new races of humans with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence.

Writing in the journal Human Reproduction, the researchers, led by fertility pioneer Professor Jacques Cohen, say that this ‘is the first case of human germline genetic modification resulting in normal healthy children’.

Some experts severely criticised the experiments. Lord Winston, of the Hammersmith Hospital in West London, told the BBC yesterday: ‘Regarding the treat-ment of the infertile, there is no evidence that this technique is worth doing . . . I am very surprised that it was even carried out at this stage. It would certainly not be allowed in Britain.’

John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: ‘One has tremendous sympathy for couples who suffer infertility problems. But this seems to be a further illustration of the fact that the whole process of in vitro fertilisation as a means of conceiving babies leads to babies being regarded as objects on a production line.

‘It is a further and very worrying step down the wrong road for humanity.’ Professor Cohen and his colleagues diagnosed that the women were infertile because they had defects in tiny structures in their egg cells, called mitochondria.

They took eggs from donors and, using a fine needle, sucked some of the internal material – containing ‘healthy’ mitochondria – and injected it into eggs from the women wanting to conceive.

Because mitochondria contain genes, the babies resulting from the treatment have inherited DNA from both women. These genes can now be passed down the germline along the maternal line.

A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates ‘assisted reproduction’ technology in Britain, said that it would not license the technique here because it involved altering the germline.

Jacques Cohen is regarded as a brilliant but controversial scientist who has pushed the boundaries of assisted reproduction technologies.

He developed a technique which allows infertile men to have their own children, by injecting sperm DNA straight into the egg in the lab.

Prior to this, only infertile women were able to conceive using IVF. Last year, Professor Cohen said that his expertise would allow him to clone children –a prospect treated with horror by the mainstream scientific community.

‘It would be an afternoon’s work for one of my students,’ he said, adding that he had been approached by ‘at least three’ individuals wishing to create a cloned child, but had turned down their requests.

Ex-Wall Street Banker Apparent Suicide In Courtroom After ‘Guilty’ Verdict For Arson

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SOURCE:Forbes

Moments after hearing a “guilty” verdict convicting former Wall Street trader and banker Michael Marin of arson for setting his mansion on fire, the cash-strapped defendant cupped his hands over his face and then collapsed.

He later died from what authorities have speculated may have been a deadly dose of poison in a suicide ploy to avoid prison.

After the verdict was read, the one-time high roller, age 53, turned to friends in the courtroom. As he did, he coughed. A woman handed him a tissue and Marin bent over in his seat and went into violent convulsions, a scene played out in video from the courtroom aired by Fox 10 News. Marin collapsed onto the floor.
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In 2009, Marin was discovered by firefighters outside his burning mansion wearing scuba gear. He had escaped from a second-floor bedroom of the home he’d bought in the ritzy Biltmore Estates neighborhood of Phoenix, Arizona.

When boxes of flammable debris placed throughout the house were discovered, as well as evidence that Marin, a Yale graduate, had lost the small fortune he had earned and could no longer afford house payments, he was charged with arson. He faced nearly 16 years in a state prison if convicted.

“Michael Marin couldn’t pay his mortgage, so he burned down his house,” Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Chris Rapp told the jury in his opening statement in the May trial.

Fast forward to Thursday afternoon when Marin, with his attorneys, was called to the Maricopa County Superior Court to learn his fate. The video showed Marin removing a sports drink from his briefcase and drinking from it after he sat down at the defense table to hear the verdict.

“We the jury,” the foreman told the court, “duly impaneled and sworn in the above entitled action upon our oath, do find the defendant Michael James Marin guilty of arson of an occupied structure.”

With that, Marin dropped his head in his cupped hands and appeared to place something in his mouth. About 5 minutes later, he appeared to put something in his mouth again, and then he drank from the bottle.

After he collapsed into convulsions and fell into unconsciousness, paramedics were called and they took him to a local hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

From the video, it appears Marin committed suicide. But toxicology test results by the medical examiner, which could take up to six weeks, will reveal exactly what Marin took in the Arizona courtroom that ended his life in a very public way.