One would think that the Irish Institute of Credit Management's (IICM) newsletter might be a rather stuffy affair. Not so. The Margin is grateful for the following information: a loan collector officer with a Japanese consumer finance company was recently arrested for allegedly telling a loan guarantor to raise money by selling his body parts.

Japanese police said the employee had told the 62-year-old man that he could earn $10,000 for a kidney. An eyeball, at $4,000, was not quite such an attractive proposition.