Did Dominique Strauss-Kahn Just Mess Up the Derivatives Market?

In the arrest in New York yesterday of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director and head of the International Monetary Fund, on charges of attempted rape, unlawful imprisonment, and a criminal sex act, the financial press got a rare tabloid-quality story. Financial reporters may be gleeful now, having an opportunity to step back from EBITDA, NAV, SIPC, CDO, and MERS, and turn to allegations of an international financial leader, buck nekked, lying in wait to ambush a hotel maid, chasing her down a hallway and generally behaving like he follows Attila the Hun on Twitter. All reporters need to be good writers, but the truly successful ones have the hunter's instinct for knowing when to pounce. Strauss-Kahn, who might have thought he was the hunter, surely has no trouble hearing the howling of the pack closing in on him.

As a matter of law, Strauss-Kahn remains innocent until proven guilty. But the charges seem to have blown up his political prospects--he had a good chance of becoming the next president of France. And his career in finance is impaired. Another consequence is the new, enlarged bailout for Greece that the EU has been working on may be delayed. Strauss-Kahn, an internationalist who was sympathetic to bailouts, will have trouble getting bail for himself, let alone Greece. He was arrested four hours after the alleged crimes, while seated in a jetliner at JFK International Airport minutes away from leaving for Paris. That's a prosecutor's wet dream (whoops, sorry) for arguing against bail. And it's kind of hard to organize an EU-wide sovereign bailout if you're sitting in jail, eating baloney on white, WWII surplus canned fruit, and week-old brownies. A day of that and never mind haute cuisine. A Croque-monsieur and a demi de biere would seem pretty good.

The IMF says it will soldier on with work on the bailout. And surely it will, because international financial organizations don't justify their existence by saying no. But one can't help but wonder whether some players in the derivatives market who bet on a bigger Greek bailout are wondering if they're going to get margin calls. Even if the arrest of Strauss-Kahn doesn't move credit default swap prices a lot, most traders who play with derivatives mainline margin credit. A little price move can sometimes f . . . foul things up. Strauss-Kahn's arrest by itself won't trigger a financial crisis. But it's something that everyone dealing with the EU sovereign debt morass really didn't need.

There is no derivatives contract covering the risk of the head of an international financial organization being charged with acting really sexy in a wolfish way. No matter how much Wall Street's financial engineers churn and crunch data, there will always be some risks that won't be accounted for. That's why banks and other financial institutions need to be well-capitalized. Even if the next head of the IMF is already well on the way to beatification, you can never completely know when the elephant that is the real world is going to plop a heap of dung on your head.