<p>First of all, RS, I happen to have first hand knowledge of MF.</p>
<p>I happen to know, too, that when Corzine came in, he caused huge trouble for the guys managing the clearing business, which was their main business and profitable before Corzine came in.</p>
<p>I also happen to know a few of the jokers he hired when he first came in, with million dollar garauntees, and at least two of them had lost millions and millions for other groups and couldn’t even get an interview with a reputable hedge fund. But, since MF was public, who cares if you give away the house to people who are wildly incompetent.</p>
<p>He actually hired one of the bozos who was fired by moodys for ratings issues on the CDOs, imagine how bad you had to be to be fired for THAT, to broker in case the CDO’s went exchange based. When they didn’t go exchange based, they let the guy trade! Do you have any idea of the difference in talent sets for a broker and a trader? For one you don’t even need a college degree, practically, and for the other, you’d better know your stats. </p>
<p>Corzine just fell victim to the haze that surounded him in the government and at goldman. He thought if he got himself into trouble he’d have his 7-12 months to unravel his position. I think he might have thought he was too big to fail. He wasn’t.</p>
<p>I think he will be tried in a court of law.</p>
<p>poetgrl, not one word of your post suggest corzine engaged in criminal behavior. It is not illegal to hire incompetent people. It is not illegal to be a bad manager. What criminal law do you know Corzine broke?</p>
<p>There is no way that the clearing funds were comingled without his knowledge.</p>
<p>His whole goal was to bring this “sleepy” company into more risk. If he did not know? He still belongs in jail.</p>
<p>At some point, when you break THE cardinal rule of your business, you go to jail. It is a hard and fast rule, RS, not even one that has ever been up for debate. Clearing money legally must be kept safe by firewalls.</p>
<p>It’s a rule to protect the exchanges themselves, btw. It happens to protect the brokers and traders, but it is there to protect the exchanges.</p>
<p>Here: let me use an example I’m sure you will understand: There is no way Holder didn’t know about the guns walking in Mexico, and even if he didn’t know, he still needs to be fired, because he did not do his job.</p>
<p>Any first year law student can tell you that what you just wrote is untrue. I can cite you a million cases from every jurisdiction in America saying that you only be convicted of a crime if you have criminal intent. That standard requires some form of knowledge of the behavior in order to support a criminal conviction. I am sure you are sincere but I am not willing to take your word that Corzine must have know about and approved the criminal behavior in his firm. I would rather wait until there is some investigation and facts reveal what he knew. </p>
<p>I don’t like Holder any more than I like corzine but I really do not know if Holder knew about the gun running operation. If he did, he should be prosecuted by an independent prosecutor.</p>
<p>I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think now is not a good time to be caught with culpability in that particular business.</p>
<p>They are looking for people to send to jail like crazy right now. And if they can send an ex-goldman guy to jail? bonus. They will do it.</p>
<p>I believe he will be tried in a court of law.</p>
<p>I could be wrong. But I believe he will be.</p>
<p>Unless they find the money. I know IBG backed out of the sale because they could not find the money. Given the bet that they had on and the way it was trending against them, the fact that they were leveraged up 40 to 1, I say he ends up on trial.</p>
<p>“Corzine is the scum of the earth and the reason people have such bad feelings about the financial industry.”</p>
<p>You’ve got that right. I guess with these jokers, the buck doesn’t stop at their level but somewheres belo - probably a low level working stiff.</p>
<p>I wonder if Corzine really was the crook here or if he is merely guilty of poor supervision. Do you think he reverted to the role of head trader and personally waved in $6bil worth of Greek bonds, or did he hire a few former Goldman traders and gave them too much rope? Somebody clearly thought they were still at Goldman, where you can just keep buying while whatever you are buying goes down, and just keep buying until it goes up. That doesn’t always work in the real world.</p>
<p>I think this is a pretty balanced view of his involvement.</p>
<p>He fired half the employees and hired new people to replace them.</p>
<p>What is also interesting, in the article, is how they talk about how he was hired because the FED’s policy of keeping interest rates so low has made it difficult for clearing to make enough money to survive, and they needed to trade to remain profitable. At least that was the most interesting part to me.</p>
<p>Fifty thousand accounts are tied up with MF Global. </p>
<p>Corsine resigns…has hired an attorney…</p>
<p>663 million dollars is still not accounted for…</p>
<p>Anant Shah, who runs a fund, has 35 million tied up at MF Global…and he does not have access to his account…and he has positions that are expiring. He said half the fund is at risk.</p>
<p>Things should be speeded up so people and firms can have access to their accounts. For firms that have capital at firms outside of MF Global…maybe they can take take opposite positions with margin rules waived… So these firms are not tying up capital. I guess that would be a bookkeeping nightmare.</p>
<p>So now we have firms at risk…</p>
<p>And MF Global…depending on what we read…either took on 33 to 1 leverage or 40 to 1 leverage…</p>