The Daily Omnivore

In legal parlance, a peppercorn is a metaphor for a very small cash payment or other nominal consideration, used to satisfy the requirements for the creation of a legal contract. It is featured in ‘Chappell & Co Ltd v Nestle Co Ltd’ (1960), an important English contract law case where the House of Lords stated that ‘a peppercorn does not cease to be good consideration if it is established that the promisee does not like pepper and will throw away the corn.’ However, the cited passage is mere dicta, and not the basis for the decision.

In English law, and other countries with similar common law systems, a binding legal contract requires that each party must provide consideration. In other words, each party will give something of value to the other party for the contract to be considered binding. The situation is different under contracts within civil law jurisdictions because such nominal consideration can be categorized as a disguised gift.

read more »

Front running, also known as tailgating, is the practice of entering into an equity (stock) trade, option, futures contract, derivative, or security-based swap to capitalize on advance, nonpublic knowledge of a large (‘block’) pending transaction that will influence the price of the underlying security.

In essence, it means the use of knowledge of an impending trade to engage in a personal or proprietary securities transaction in advance of that trade. Front running is considered a form of market manipulation in many markets.

read more »

Georgism is a way of thinking about economics and land use. It is based on the ideas of Henry George, an American economist and social philosopher. Georgists believe that people should have equal access to the benefits of land, which is a natural resource. They argue that the value of land comes from the community, and that this value should therefore be shared equally among all members of society.

Georgism proposes a system of taxation that is based on the value of land. This is called a “land value tax” or “single tax.” The idea is that people should pay a tax on the value of the land they own, but not on any improvements they make to the land. This would discourage land speculation and encourage the efficient use of land. Georgists believe that this would also promote social justice, by reducing inequality and poverty.

read more »

In accounting, a slush fund is a monetary fund or account used for miscellaneous income and expenses, particularly when these are corrupt or illegal. Such funds may be kept hidden and maintained separately from money that is used for legitimate purposes. Slush funds may be employed by government or corporate officials in efforts to pay influential people discreetly in return for preferential treatment, advance information (such as non-public information in financial transactions), and other services.

‘Slush fund’ was originally a nautical term for the cash that a ship’s crew raised by selling fat (slush) scraped from cooking pots to tallow makers. This cash was kept separate from the ship’s accounts and used to make small purchases for the crew.

read more »

A pig-butchering scam is a type of online fraud where the victim is encouraged to make increasing financial contributions over a long period, usually in the form of cryptocurrency. The term compares the initial phase of gaining the victims’ trust to the fattening of pigs before slaughtering them. Such scams are commonplace on social media and dating apps, and often involve elements of catfishing (using false identities), investment fraud, and romance scams.

The scammer builds trust with the victim through online communication, subsequently persuading them to invest in a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme. Perpetrators are typically victims of a fraud factory, where they are lured to travel internationally under false pretenses, trafficked to another location, and forced to commit the fraud by organised crime gangs.

read more »