"Sounds like he did pretty good big bucks as a bond trader@ GS " correct but zt the end he blew up the bond desk at GS.
This guy Corzine is a thief; yet he may have done nothing illegal -- we'll find that out later. Apparently it is legal to steal a clients money by first moving it to a subsidiary outside the U.S. and then re-hypothecate it with virtually no limits. Now its a problem for not only the client but for the additional parties making claim to the same asset. MF's clients signed on to that when they signed the brokerage agreement. It would not have made any difference had their clients read the fine print. Only an expert in these matters, such as Corzine, would have known what the fine print meant and the risks the clients could be exposed to. Corzine has now been revealed as just another sleazy Wall Street operator, wishing his clients had not lost 1.2 billion, not out of concern for his clients so much as concern for his own inconvenience. With his personal wealth alone he could go a long way toward making clients whole. Reasonable, if it turns out, and it will, that he made the decision to expose his clients to huge risk on a gamble in European sovereign bonds. Personally I hope he goes to jail and never comes out, but I seriously doubt he'll be found to have broken any law. We badly need a change in the law to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. This is not a political issue -- not at the moment anyway -- but another example of Wall Street legally lying cheating and stealing. If it turns out MF global broke the law, Corzine is responsible, and he doesn't get prosecuted, then it will be a political issue.
He needs to be put in front of a jury. The jury wont care about the technicalities, all they will see is a greedy ex Banker worth 100s of millions who screwed over hardworking farmers in his pursuit of making even more money for himself (via bonuses that would have been paid had his reckless bets paid off).
I'd do that bet in a nanosecond if you were in the office next to me. But no chance I'd go thru all the grief of doing an online bet. Suffice to say, we'll make it a gentleman's bet and I'm very, very confident he knew everything about how these events transpired.
If the latest articles on this are correct, the firm apparently got a 1 billion dollar margin call. I suppose they all found out on Friday afternoon sometime. If this is correct the margin deficiency would have required a billion dollar deposit into the customer Reserve Bank by Tuesday.
Being recklessly indifferent to the consequences for his customers of over-leveraged proprietary trading is just as bad. They forced out MF Global's Risk Manager in early 2011 after he complained to the Board. Actually, he probably went so far as to create "plausible deniability" as much as possible. For example, he may have said something like "Meet that margin call from LCH Clearnet right now and I do not care where you get the money from - just get it and I do not want any excuses!
I wonder if this case will inspire the SEC to ban mandatory arbitration clauses in customer contracts. Execs should fear the risk of punitive damages and litigation when they engage in improper activity. http://www.blog.stockbrokerattorney...tion/dodd-frank-and-mandatory-arbitration.htm