Dart-throwing monkeys and now Tokyo housewives prove that they should be in charge at trading desks across the Street. The one downfall of the Tokyo housewife investor, however, is that she is not as adept at tax evasion as your average fund manager.

A Tokyo housewife who made $3.4 million in recent forex trades got nabbed for tax evasion today. From Reuters:

Yukiko Ikebe, 60, got a suspended jail sentence and was fined 34 million yen after she used relatives' names to make her gains look smaller and avoid paying tax, public broadcaster NHK said. "She felt it was unfair to have to pay tax on her gains, when she made losses some years," NHK quoted the judge as saying. "She spent the money on kimonos and jewelry."

Housewife hid $3 million in forex gains [Reuters]

Brokers and exporters of your favorite Colombian agricultural product are smiling this morning, as the New York Board of Trade is introducing a US Dollar-Colombian Peso futures contract. Colombia has no home-grown futures market, and until today currency hedging has been difficult challenge that could only be accomplished indirectly.

AFXNews explains why currency risk is such a major issue to Colombian exporters:

"Their costs of production -- largely labor and land -- is in local currency; what they sell is in dollars," said Greg Anderson, director of currency strategy with Netherlands-based AMN AMRO. "If their local currency rises against the dollar, all of a sudden they become a more expensive producer than some other place."
And the dollars they bring home buy less."

Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham are long-time China hawks, and most recently have been threatening China with tariff sanctions if it won’t adopt a flexible exhange rate for its currency. Today they are meeting with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who is viewed as friendly toward China. Or, to revert to more typical DealBreaker parlance, Hank’s a China-Hugger.

Presumably, Paulson will ask the Senators to give him more time to negotiate with his Chinese counter-parts.

US senators to meet Paulson on China yuan concern [Reuters]

Does it make us more or less perverted if while reading this, the first thing that occurred to us was that the porn industry needed to start hedging against currency fluctuations?

“We’re paying in US dollars, so in Brazil we’re able to pay the performers about 50% of what it would cost in the United States.

“If a standard boy-girl costs $1,000 (£788) in the US, it would cost me $500 in Brazil. But to the performer in Brazil, that $500 may be worth $1,000 down there.

“Right now the strength of the American dollar against the euro is diminishing, so in Hungary or Prague the performers get about the same as you’d have to pay in the US. You used to pay a Czech girl $600, but now — because she has to change those American dollars into euros — she needs $1,000,” Steele told XBiz.

By the way, that quote comes from one Lexington Steele, who we are assuming is not at all related to Lockhart Steele.

Outsourced porn gives more bang for its buck [The Sunday Times]