Three artifacts were been handed over to Italy by American officials in early November 2018. The items had been tracked to an auction house in New York City.

The clampdown on ‘cultural crimes’ happened after several repatriations of Italian art and antiquities stolen abroad and recovered when each was put up for auction.

The ancient items included:

• A wine carafe,
• A decanter for valuable oils, and
• A soup tureen

The trio had been illegally removed from an archaeological site in Italy, smuggled into America and had been listed with a New York auction house.

“Italy is introducing new laws so there are stiffer penalties applied to crimes regarding cultural heritage,” said Arkady Bukh, a prominent criminal defense attorney in New York.

While the items were handed over to Italy during a ceremony inside the Italian Embassy, other items have come to light.

The idea of Christianity and capitalism has been around since at least before Jesus tossed the money changers out of the Temple.

Museum of the Bible

Washington’s museum, The Museum of the Bible, is another agency which has run afoul of antiquities laws.

The company behind the museum, Hobby Lobby, was forced to return over 3,800 ancient Iraqi artifacts — the newest items in the museum’s collection.

The Green family, evangelical Christians, own Hobby Lobby. The craft and hobby company has more than 15,000 full-time workers in over 40 states.

In July 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s office for New York’s Eastern District filed a civil complaint against the company. The collection was intended to become the core of the “Museum of the Bible” which opened in Washington in November 2017.

Through a long string of thieves and profiteers, Hobby Lobby was able to get its hands on 4,000-year-old Iraqi artifacts. Steve Green traveled to the UAE to inspect the goodies and approve the purchase of more than $1.6 million. A dealer’s warning about the looting of the items was ignored. The company falsely labeled the shipping crates as “tile samples”.

The haul included ancient cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals. Many of the items came from the prehistoric city of Irisagrig in the time period known as the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods.

“State Attorneys throughout America have played a very significant part in having U.S. courts recognize the unique value of cultural objects,” said Bukh.

The Takeaway

Green, the lead funder of Washington DC’s Museum of the Bible, said his corporation had made ‘regrettable mistakes” and added, “we should have exercised more oversight.”

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Three former Union Bank of Switzerland–UBS–executives were convicted on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, as reported by NASDAQ. Peter Ghavami, Gary Heinz and Michael Welty were found guilty of fraud relating to bids to invest the proceeds from municipal bonds and other municipal finance contracts between 2001 and 2006. The defendants influenced the bidding process to increase the number of contracts awarded to UBS. The government alleged that the defendants’ actions cost the U.S. Treasury and municipalities nationwide millions.

The proceeding was the result of an ongoing investigation of the municipal bonds market, which has led to 19 convictions and guilty pleas. The defendants were indicted in December of 2010. Their trial lasted approximately one month.

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Today’s WSJ summarizes the debate between Thaler, a leading skeptic of market efficiency, and Fama, the leading defending of the efficient capital markets hypothesis. As the article notes, the debate could have implications for privatizing social security. It quotes Thaler as saying, “[i]f you give people 456 mutual funds to choose from, they’re not going to make great choices.” The result may be that the securities markets get detached from fundamental values and misallocate resources.

Thaler concedes that “it is not easy to beat the market, and most people don’t.” This is an important point, since it follows that we have no alternative to accepting the wisdom of markets, even if it’s imperfect.

But even if we can’t beat the market, we should be concerned if the market is detached from real values, because then investment dollars would be misallocated. On this point Thaler has little doubt, saying that Fama “is the only guy on earth who doesn’t think there was a bubble in Nasdaq in 2000.” In fact, Fama’s not alone, as I’ve noted.

Assuming markets are inefficient in the weaker sense just noted, what should we do about it? Those who align with Thaler suggest that privatizing social security would further misalign securities prices from value by bringing more irrational investors into the market. The WSJ says that “in a rational world, share prices should move only when new information hit the market. But with more than one billion shares a day changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the market appears overrun with traders making bets all the time.”

My main point here is that this conclusion, if true, has implications beyond social security. As I’ve noted, our securities laws are based on the principle that markets should be safe for ordinary investors. If we’re really concerned about a lot of irrational investors running around, then we should be skeptical not only about privatizing social security, but about the securities laws as well. This would mean drastic revisions of disclosure rules, and being honest with investors and voters about what the securities laws are able to accomplish. Investors are either rational or irrational. Public policy should follow logically and consistently from whichever conclusion we choose to accept.

Originally posted by Larry Ribstein on Ideoblog.

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