Here is a suggestion to resolve the MF Global debacle. CME and ICE immediately need to institute a special surcharge on every contract traded (ten cents, twenty five cents, a dollar, whatever is necessary) and use these funds to create a futures version of SIPC, a Futures Traders Protection Corporation. The exchanges (CME and ICE) should contribute a percent of their profits to this fund (five percent?). This fund would have one simple purpose - guarantee all customer segregated funds. This fund also must backwards guarantee all segregated funds in MF Global. Once this is done, or even planned, then there would be zero excuse for the MF Trustee to delay returning at least 75 - 85 percent of customer money. Fortunately I was not an MF customer, but every futures trader has an interest in seeing this issue resolved quickly and correctly. Every day MF Global customers go without an absolute guarantee that all their money will be returned damages our industry and threatens each of us who have a stake in this game. Since the people who should have acted to ensure the sanctity of segregated funds have failed badly (the CME and ICE especially), it falls to us, the individual traders to act. I have no idea how to get something like this done, but feel very strongly that us non-MF traders need to stand up for our fellow traders who through no fault of their own are caught in this quagmire. We need to state very loudly that we are willing to pay a little more on each trade in order to ensure the security of segregated funds in the future as well as guarantee that every MF customer is made whole. It is in all our interests to make this happen.
How about the fed stepping in again and retroactively declaring every FCM a Bank just like GS and have FDIC back stop the frauds.