A clearing house is a financial institution that provides clearing and settlement services for financial and commodities derivatives and securities transactions. These transactions may be executed on a futures exchange or securities exchange, as well as off-exchange in the over-the-counter (OTC) market. A clearing house stands between two clearing firms (also known as member firms or clearing participants) and its purpose is to reduce the risk of one (or more) clearing firm failing to honor its trade settlement obligations. A clearing house reduces the settlement risks by netting offsetting transactions between multiple counterparties, by requiring collateral deposits (a.k.a. margin deposits), by providing independent valuation of trades and collateral, by monitoring the credit worthiness of the clearing firms, and in many cases, by providing a guarantee fund that can be used to cover losses that exceed a defaulting clearing firm's collateral on deposit.

Once a trade has been executed by two counterparties either on an exchange, or in the OTC markets, the trade can be handed over to a clearing house which then steps between the two original traders' clearing firms and assumes the legal counterparty risk for the trade. This process of transferring the trade title to the clearing house is called novation. It can take fractions of seconds in highly liquid futures markets; or days, or even weeks in some OTC markets.

As the clearing houses concentrates the risk of settlement failures into itself and is able to isolate the effects of a failure of a market participant, it also needs to be properly managed and well-capitalized^[1] in order to ensure its survival in the event of a significant adverse event, such as a large clearing firm defaulting or a market crash.

Many clearing house guarantee funds are capitalized with collateral from its clearing firms. In the event of a settlement failure, the clearing firm may be declared to be in default and clearing house default procedures may be utilized, which may include the orderly liquidation of the defaulting firm's positions and collateral. In the event of a significant clearing firm failure, the clearing house may draw on its guarantee fund in order to settle trades on behalf of the failed clearing firm.

The term is also used for banks like Suffolk Bank that acted as a restraint on the over-issuance of private bank notes.^[2]

Clearing on options exchanges[link]

The Options Clearing Corporation is an example of a clearing house that functions for the purpose of clearing equity options and bond derivatives, in order to ensure the proper implementation of these instruments.

Clearing on futures exchanges[link]

Now a combination of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, and the New York Mercantile Exchange, CME Group owns and operates its own clearing operation while also offering clearing services (for a fee) to other exchanges. Its ClearPort operation also provides clearing for certain over-the-counter trades.

LCH.Clearnet (formerly known as The London Clearing House), for example, serves major international exchanges and platforms, as well as a range of OTC markets. It clears a broad range of asset classes including: securities, exchange traded derivatives, energy, freight, interbank interest rate swaps and euro and sterling denominated bonds and repos; and works closely with market participants and exchanges to identify and develop clearing services for new asset classes.

In 2008, Intercontinental Exchange established its own Clearing House to clear ICE Europe products and migrated clearing functions from LCH.Clearnet.

Clearing of payments[link]

In the United States, NACHA-The Electronic Payments Association, formerly the National Automated Clearing House Association, organizes the mechanism for the financial service institutions that participate in the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network. These organizations use the ACH to transfer funds either as debits or credits between participating institutions. Most, but not all, U.S. banks are members of the NACHA. Typical uses of ACH transactions are for automatic payroll programs, monthly mortgage or membership payments, or among non-profit organizations, as a monthly donor/contribution program.

MasterCard and Visa also serve as mandatory clearinghouses for transactions on their networks. First Data Corp. attempted to clear Visa transactions itself, but then Visa sued in order to maintain its monopolistic status on clearing.

Clearing of securities[link]

In the United States, U.S. securities clearing is done by The Depository Trust Company or Fedwire.

In Europe, securities clearing is offered by a variety of Central Counterparties, including EMCF, LCH.Clearnet, SIX x-clear and EuroCCP. Moreover Eurex Clearing, a member of Deutsche Börse Group, provides clearing services for some OTC products in addition to various listed products Eurex Clearing. See also to clearing services in a regulatory environment: EurexOTC Clear.

Clearing of derivatives[link]

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-2010 and as part of the Obama financial regulatory reform plan of 2009, pressure has been placed on traders of derivatives such as credit default swaps to make their trades on an open exchange with a clearinghouse. In June 2009, Federal Reserve official Alfred Kohn mentioned that the largest credit default swap dealers were working on an exchange, and that only regulatory approval rather than legislation would be required.^[3] In March 2010, the Options Clearing Corporation stated that it was moving forward in backing equity derivatives.^[4]

See also[link]

• Australian Clearing House and Electronic Sub-register System
• Central securities depository
• Central Counterparty Clearing
• Swap Execution Facility
• Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS)
• Options Clearing Corporation
• Bankers' clearing house - historical origins

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• OTCclearing.com
• LCH.Clearnet
• Depository Trust Clearing Corporation
• Argentina Clearing

Look up clearing house in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Clearing house may refer to:

• Clearing house (finance)
• Clearinghouse (GIS)
• Clearing House (EU), an EU intelligence body
• Clearing House, California
• Railway Clearing House
• A computer reservations system for an airline
• Publishers Clearing House
• Biosafety Clearing-House
• Access to Information Central Clearing House (UK)
• Fire Safe California Grants Clearinghouse

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Richard Boyd Barrett TD
Teachta Dála
Incumbent
Assumed office 26 February 2011
Constituency	Dún Laoghaire
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Councillor
In office June 2009 – 26 February 2011
Constituency	Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown
Personal details
Born	November 1967 (1967-11) (age 44)
Nationality	Irish
Political party	People Before Profit Alliance
Other political affiliations	Socialist Workers Party, United Left Alliance
Alma mater	University College Dublin
Website	www.richardboydbarrett.ie

Richard Boyd Barrett (born November 1967)^[1] is an Irish politician who is currently a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency.^[2]

Boyd Barrett is a former member of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, and chair of the Irish Anti-War Movement^[3] and on multiple occasions has been cited on war issues in the Irish media.^[4][5][6][7] He opposes the Iraq War and helped mobilise mass popular protests against it in 2003, amid concerns that the war would lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Domestically, he has campaigned to reverse job losses, supported the Rossport Five and voiced opposition to Ireland's bank-bail outs and the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) among other issues.

Boyd Barrett was elected to Dáil Éireann in the 2011 general election. He is known for, what the The Irish Times described as, his "consistently passionate outrage and opposition to the Government’s handling of the [financial and banking] crisis."^[8]

Family and education[link]

Adopted as a baby, his natural mother is actress Sinéad Cusack, with whom he was later reunited.^[3] This was revealed in the last week of his unsuccessful 2007 Dáil election campaign, during which Cusack, a vocal opponent of the Iraq War, canvassed for him.^[3] He was raised in Glenageary^[9] by adoptive parents David and Valerie Boyd Barrett, attending St Michael's College.^[1] He holds a Master's Degree in English Literature from University College Dublin.^[1]

Political career[link]

Local politics[link]

Boyd Barrett is a member of the Trotskyist^[10][11] Socialist Workers Party. He contested the 2004 local elections for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. He was not elected and received 1,439 votes or 7.4% of the poll. In 2009, he was elected to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council winning 22.8% of the vote, topping the poll.

National politics[link]

Boyd Barrett ran for election in the Dún Laoghaire constituency at the 2002 general election for the Socialist Workers Party and at the 2007 general election for the People Before Profit Alliance. This identification was intended to broaden his support from non-socialist voters.^[12] In the run-up to the election in 2007 he participated in high-profile campaigns against highrise development, bin and water charges, privatisation of hospitals and support for the Rossport Five.^[12] Boyd Barrett lost to Ciarán Cuffe of the Green Party, by 9,910 votes to 7,890 votes in the 10th count.^[13][14]

2011 election breakthrough[link]

Boyd Barrett again contested the Dún Laoghaire constituency at the 2011 general election as part of the United Left Alliance.^[15] On the ballot paper Boyd Barrett was named a member of People Before Profit, as the United Left Alliance had not yet been registered as a political party.^[16]

He was elected on the 10th count without reaching the quota.^[17][18][19] This followed a "nail-biting two days" of counting and recounting votes. At the time of his election, he did not own a suit.^[20]

Dáil Éireann[link]

As a TD Boyd Barrett supported protests against cuts to Dublin Bus services, saying that "Some of the older and disabled people are literally prisoners in their homes now as a result of the cut or discontinuation of the service they previously relied on".^[21] In Dáil Éireann, he condemned the 2011 murder of PSNI officer Ronan Kerr as "an utterly brutal action, which leads back down a road which has failed".^[22] He drafted the text of the first Private Members' motion which suggests there is an "overwhelming democratic case" for putting the EU/IMF bank bailout to a referendum of the Irish people.^[23] He also committed to facilitating the nomination of Senator David Norris for a place on the ballot paper ahead of the 2011 presidential election,^[24] and welcomed the release of Teresa Treacy, the Offaly pensioner jailed after she tried to protect her trees from government contractors.^[25] Her imprisonment was raised in the Dáil when Boyd Barrett rejected a statement by Minister of State Kathleen Lynch that public representatives would have to request in writing a visit with her, saying the deputy governor of Mountjoy had not responded. Kathleen Lynch replied: “I will take on board very much Deputy Boyd Barrett's issue about the visits and make inquiries.”^[26]

Boyd Barrett spoke at the Dublin edition of the 15 October 2011 global protests inspired by the Spanish "Indignants" and the Occupy Wall Street movements.^[27] The same month he said Enda Kenny's government was engaging in “spin and disingenuity” to cover up its austerity policies, decrying the closure of hospital emergency departments around the country for “health and safety” reasons.^[28] On 2 November 2011, Boyd Barrett led the United Left Alliance TDs out of the Dáil in protest against the government's decision not to hold a debate on the payment of more than €700 million to Anglo Irish Bank bondholders. "You will not even give the parliament the right to vote on the handover of all the money you have taken out of the health service", he objected.^[29] On 15 December 2011, he helped launch a nationwide campaign against a proposed household charge being brought in as part of the 2012 Irish budget.^[30]

It was reported in the Phoenix magazine that after a Technical Group meeting with the Troika, on the 17th of January 2012,^[31] Boyd Barret was confronted by another member of the Technical Group, Mick Wallace, who angrily criticized Boyd Barret for "ignoring their advance strategy of dividing up questions between them and dominating the meeting with a raft of his own queries and assertions. ^[32]

Boyd Barrett was part of an Oireachtas delegation that met the Bundestag's Budgetary and European Affairs committees in Berlin in late January 2012.^[33]

Campaigns and policies[link]

Domestic policy[link]

Richard Boyd Barrett has campaigned against Ireland's bank-bail outs^[34] and the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA),^[35] organised protests, and supported initiatives such as The Right to Work Campaign.^[36][37][38] He also proposed direct investment in public enterprise and strategic industry to create jobs in areas such as renewable energy, food production, generic medicines and IT development.^[39] Boyd Barrett has organized a campaign to oppose the sale of St Michael's Hospital to private developers,^[40] led campaigns to protect public amenities in Dún Laoghaire,^[36] including the Save Our Seafront campaign against a high rise development on the site of the Dún Laoghaire baths,^[41][42][43] and more recently he has been campaigning to prevent the acquisition of Dún Laoghaire harbour by private companies. He has also been involved in campaigns to reverse job losses, such as those by staff at Connolly Shoes (a shoe shop).^[36]

Critics, such as the print and broadcast journalist Vincent Browne, have described Boyd Barrett's economic views as "Cloud Cuckooland".^[44]

Foreign policy[link]

Boyd Barrett helped to organize mass protests against the war in Iraq in 2003.^[45][46] He addressed the Dublin leg of the March 20, 2003 International Day of Action.^[47] He said that it was "almost certain" that any war would lead to between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths.^[48] He said "the complicity of the Irish Government in this murderous war through providing facilities for the US military at Shannon airport" was "an absolute disgrace" and urged people to protest in their thousands "to show this carnage is not being mounted in our names".^[49] In 2009 he supported the pro-democracy protests in Iran.^[50]

In March 2005, according to the Irish Anti-War organization, Boyd Barrett attended the Cairo Anti-war Conference in Cairo, Egypt, focusing on American intervention in Iraq.^[51]

In 2007, he called for Ibrahim Moussawi, head of the Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV station, to be allowed to enter Ireland to attend a Dublin conference organised by the Irish Anti-War Movement. According to the Irish Independent, Boyd Barrett said that banning Moussawi amounted to the suppression of "free public debate in the country".^[52]

In April 2009 Boyd Barrett addressed the Al-Aqsa Conference in Dublin.^[53] He said that Israel is "a state built on violence, oppression and apartheid" and "has no right to exist as long as it denies rights to Palestinians.”^[53]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (September 2011)

Richard Newell Boyd (b. 19 May 1942, Washington, D.C.; Ph.D. MIT 1970) is an American philosopher who has spent most of his career at Cornell University,^[1] though he also taught briefly at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of California, Berkeley. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

He is well-known in philosophy of science circles as a philosophical realist and a scientific realist. In moral philosophy circles he is a leading defender of moral realism. His co-edited book The Philosophy of Science (ISBN 0-262-52156-3) is widely used in undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses. He has also made important contributions to the development of Cornell realism, a distinctly naturalistic position in moral philosophy.

Boyd's doctoral thesis, directed by Hilary Putnam, is called "A recursion-theoretic characterization of the ramified analytical hierarchy", and his degree was one of the first Ph.Ds awarded in philosophy by MIT.

See also[link]

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Page

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