Back in ’09, Biden said Jon Corzine was right;
in ’11, Corzine’s company loses $1 B in customer money
Bruce alerts me to a tweet from Michael Johns, “Remember when Biden said they used to call @joncorzine for advice?”
“The reason why we called Jon,” the Vice President said (at about 0:44 above), “is that we knew he knew about the economy, about world markets, about how we had to respond unlike anyone we knew.” Later, the Delaware Democrat reports (at 2:00) that they talked with Corzine a “long time about what the elements of a national package should be.”
Indeed, Biden wanted to start a mantra about where “Jon was right.” Doesn’t look like the defeated Democrat of a pretty blue state was right about this: MF Global Trustee Says Shortfall Could Exceed $1.2 Billion. According to the New York Times,
The amount of customer money missing from the collapsed trading firm MF Global may be more than $1.2 billion — double previous estimates — the trustee dismantling the firm’s brokerage unit said on Monday.
. . . .
Regulators currently suspect that MF Global — at the time run by Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey — improperly used customer money for its own purposes in the days before filing for Chapter 11 protection on Oct. 31.
Well, $1 billion is chump change to the Obama-Biden Democrats whose failed “stimulus” cost the country about 800 times that. Can you imagine how much coverage the above clip would get if a top Republican had said this about a fellow partisan who led his company into a (possibly) billion-dollar bankruptcy?
Well, now we’re getting a better idea of what the “stimulus” failed; just look at the economic knowhow of some of the folk who designed it.
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MF Global is a big deal. The trade clearing houses are supposed to keep customer money (yours) absolutely segregated, so you are not stuck with losses if the company goes belly-up. That MF Global violated this basic tenet, shakes some traders’ confidence in the markets and has prompted them to pull out in recent days, adding to the market’s general volatility & losses.
Corzine may well deserve jail, and may well have to get it if full confidence is to be restored. Thanks, Democrats!
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 22, 2011 @ 12:48 pm - November 22, 2011
Bob Shrum (The Democrat’s Karl Rove) says, “It’s OK that Corzine lost all that money because he’s a good progressive.”
Comment by V the K — November 22, 2011 @ 12:48 pm - November 22, 2011
Good one, V. I love Shrum’s plaintive whine:
Um, sorry jackass, but Corzine IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN a poster boy for what’s wrong on Wall Street. Namely, the Big Government – Big Banking – Big Labor nexus, that bankrupts the taxpayer (including but not limited to illegal bailouts) for the benefit of Goldman-Sachs cronies (of which Corzine is one).
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 22, 2011 @ 12:55 pm - November 22, 2011
Corzine was pushed out of CEO at Goldman Sachs and replaced by Henry Paulson. Corzine went to the Senate and then Governorship of New Jersey. Paulson went on to be Secretary of the Treasury and the author of TARP. Goldman Sachs got bailed out.
Biden goes to Corzine for advice? Why not any of the other Goldman Sachs top echelon that did so well with government backed Fannie/Freddie crap and derivatives and then got bailed out by the US taxpayer?
On January 11 , 2010, Judical Watch reported:
The Democrats continue to hire the fox to guard the hen house.
So, it would seem, if anyone would like to look in on the top 500 interlocking government/high roller players, instead of sitting around in tents in “Occupy” camps, they might just want to do a little research. However, they are likely to find an iron triangle between Democrats, certain Wall Street big-wigs, unions and radical academics.
This is not to say that Republicans do not play the game. But the attacks on the rich are aimed at the rich Republicans who are not part of the iron triangle of government/high roller players who attempt to control and fleece the market.
Comment by Heliotrope — November 22, 2011 @ 1:07 pm - November 22, 2011
Exactly. Here’s the game:
1. Hard-working, productive “new money” builds the American economy and standard of living.
2. Lazy, corrupt “old money” preaches Big Government, pretending to care about the poor to get themselves ensconced in power.
3. Lazy corrupt, “old money” (LCOM) runs things for their own benefit – either shutting down, or at least stealing from, everyone else.
4. Things start to fall apart and, in a related development, people can’t help noticing how much the LCOM is stealing.
5. LCOM scapegoats the hard-working, productive “new money”. LCOM arranges for protests, demonstrations, media coverage and hit pieces against “the rich”, to deflect attention from themselves.
Some of the recent OWS protestors were real-life, LCOM individuals “standing with the 99%” as useful idiots and as financiers, hoping to send others to the eventual guillotine.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 22, 2011 @ 1:46 pm - November 22, 2011
ILC,
I can not get enough of John F’n Kerry and his outrage that the rich are not stepping up to the plate.
This clown’s only business experience was driving a cookie franchise into the ground. His first wife was the heiress to the real estate fortune that is now Hilton Head. Then he wooed and won the widow of John Heinz who walked away with his fortune. (Kerry passed over the Gilby’s heiress in the interim because she was a little light in the bankroll.)
So, John, the military hero, buys a seat in the Senate from Massachusetts. Then he orders a yacht to be built in New Zealand (not New England) and berths it in Rhode Island to escape Massachusetts taxes. He rides around in the Theresa Heinz Kerry family jet and lives a life totally isolated from knowing what is on the Wendy’s menu or just how Wal-Mart is laid out. (How can there be so many watches and no Rolexes?)
But, by golly, he sure does think that the rich should take a greater role in handling their fair share of financing a government running on full profligacy.
I can only imagine that Andrew Carnegie had some Kerry ancestor carping about how old Andrew didn’t build a big enough library down the street from the Kerry mansion and how even that undersized library would not bring the books to his mansion and read them to him.
Comment by Heliotrope — November 22, 2011 @ 5:00 pm - November 22, 2011
Well, now we’re getting a better idea of what the “stimulus” failed; just look at the economic knowhow of some of the folk who designed it.
Yup. Loot other peoples’ money to hand it out to your worthless cronies and welfare-addicted base.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — November 22, 2011 @ 10:32 pm - November 22, 2011
I hope he goes to jail for a long time.
Comment by Cinesnatch — November 22, 2011 @ 11:39 pm - November 22, 2011
I continually-amazed that after several weeks the MSM still refer to the funds as “missing” rather than “stolen”. Today’s financial news states that the innocent depositors will MAYBE get 85-cents on the dollar for their own money.
And no-one’s been charged, nor arrested.
Don Corleone was correct. “,…You can steal more money with a briefcase than with a gun”,
and as the old James Cagney song goes, ,“…Never steal anything small.”
Comment by Ted B. (Charging Rhino) — November 23, 2011 @ 10:49 am - November 23, 2011
Forbes now reporting $1.7-billion-dollars missing from MF Global.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/11/22/1-7-billion-customers-money-missing-from-mf-global/
Comment by Ted B. (Charging Rhino) — November 23, 2011 @ 12:27 pm - November 23, 2011
There is plenty of sleaze and illegality when it comes to Corzine’s company. Was the CEO in the loop or not? Who knows, but an investigation will determine who should go to prison for absconding with over one billion dollars in funds.
Comment by davinci — November 23, 2011 @ 7:14 pm - November 23, 2011
We will have to wait and see how dirty Corzine’s hands are. But understand that Corzine made his fortune taking hedge fund risks. He differs from Soros only in his light weight pocketbook. Soros has the money to manipulate the outcome. Corzine is just an addicted gambler. But I am certain he would play at the Soros level if he had the means.
Comment by Heliotrope — November 23, 2011 @ 9:25 pm - November 23, 2011
Eurozone national bonds have been going down in part because of the “deal” a couple weeks ago where Merkel and Sarkozy decided to impose a “voluntary” 50% haircut on Greek bondholders. Markozy do not understand markets, and are determined to bend markets to their will. They will fail. They are already failing. They imposed the “voluntary” 50% haircut in order to avoid triggering CDSes (credit default swaps). CDSes on sovereign bonds are supposed to be an insurance policy against the country defaulting. In imposing a “voluntary” 50% haircut (that cheats people out of CDS activation i.e. CDS payment), Markozy defrauded CDS holders, proving that CDSes do not in fact provide the protection (against national bond default) that they were supposed to. That means Eurozone national bond holders were suddenly holding a risky asset with no protection. The only prudent thing for them to do was to sell some part of their bond holdings. They have been. Thus, the crash in Euro area national bonds, and Markozy are bit in the ass by their own effort to defraud markets.
Now I’m not sure about this next, but I think the above *might* have played a part in the Eurozone bond bets of MF Global going bad, unexpectedly. If true, then Markozy’s bad actions have rippled out even further with the crash of MF Global. Thanks, Markozy!
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 24, 2011 @ 11:30 pm - November 24, 2011