Mr Chey has had previous scrapes, having been convicted of a billion-dollar accounting fraud in 2003.

ECONOMIST: The Korea discount: Minority report | The

At stake are trades in eurodollar futures--bets on short-term interest rates affecting American dollar deposits outside the U.S.--accounting for 53% of the Merc's overall volume.

FORBES: That Other Exchange

Even with Fannie and Freddie inflating the bubble and the Fed and the rest of the Bush Administration weakening the dollar, the crisis never would have become so unprecedentedly destructive but for a seemingly arcane accounting principle called mark-to-market, or fair value, accounting.

FORBES: Magazine Article

From an economic perspective, this kind of accounting is absurd: In keeping all of these accounts separate and refusing to treat one dollar as identical to the next, people are actually giving up real gains.

FORBES: Bitter Money And Christmas Clubs

But this revealed billion-dollar holes in pension plans on both sides of the Atlantic, created by a combination of poor management, poor accounting oversight and the poor incentives of profit-minded managers who strive to keep company pension funds as lightly funded as possible.

ECONOMIST: Getting greyer—and poorer too? | The