For some comparison about the S&L crisis versus the crisis today I like the comments of William Black. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8CqaHTygSc In 2007? he came to Calgary to talk about corruption and regulatory capture and law. It was an excellent talk. I bought a copy of his book "the only way to rob a bank is to own one". Some research and some thinking convinced me that financial markets are corrupt worldwide now and most have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. Along with the money system, all of the corruption will need to be reset as well I think. Until the culprits are finally punished, there are actually two world-wide crises - one of finances, and one of morality. The second is by far the bigger issue in my view.
There is another way to read this comment that would be just scary. If the NFA KNEW he was in deficit after their audit after the MF global affair, perhaps they were supporting him until he corrected the problem. However, if their bosses were forcing electronic verification on them this year (to prevent terrorism and crime) they would have had to pull the plug sometime. Would they rather take the heat on not knowing or on supporting him while trying to rectify the problem? I am sure that this senario can't be true. The question then would be, are their others out there right now ready to explode at any time?
For an even deeper rabbit hole scenario (that couldn't have really happened) , read my previous post.
MF and PFG would have been much less severe if a lazy auditing accountant could just pick up a phone and call the custodial banker directly in order to verify the FCM's reported figures. Our industry is going down the tubes because every freaking auditor is lazy and apparently inept and incompetent it would appear. That freaking simple. Call the bank - don't take figures at face value from the regulated entity who is the subject of the audit.
Those who do the auditing are there for a reason, to do poor auditing. This is the system they want in place for our current environment, sorry but that is the facts. Protect your account capital as best you can and good luck!
Well if the FCM pinky swore the numbers were accurate I guess the auditor had no choice but to give approval. If only he would have checked their other hand to see if their fingers were crossed..
Better grab your PFGBest SpongeBob limited edition set before they are all gone... they are not making anymore of these you know!! Only $259 for 4oz of Silver (2x the market price) and a toy treasure chest but who's counting... http://spongebobcoins.com/
I just noticed that Robbins, owned by PGFBest, are continuing to update the World Trading Championship as at 7/10/2012. Doesn't all this crap effect them?
One of my very intelligent clients appeared on Fox Business News yesterday afternoon and was interviewed by Liz Claiborne about his PFG account. He explained that after the MF debacle, he had wisely opened several futures accounts in order to spread his risk out. When she asked how much he lost ( with headlights like that, you apparently can get away with such a line of questioning ) he demurred that while the loss stings, it would not alter his trading or his family's quality of life. He is the only client I know of who cleared PFG; unfortunately, I have several clients who cleared MF ( two of them are CTA's ).