I Guess It Really Does Matter Who Your Friends Are

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted an article some of the inner connections between Jon Corzine and the Obama Administration.

In November rightwingganny.com reported:

Today’s Wall Street Journal (this is a subscriber only article) is reporting that MF Global Holdings Ltd. shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in customer funds to its own brokerage accounts in the days before its bankruptcy filing. That is illegal.

However, there are no signs of a serious investigation into exactly what was done at MF Global or what Jon Corzine’s involvement was in whatever was done. How come?

Some interesting facts stated in the article at Breitbart.com:

…the now-defunct MF Global was a client of Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s former law firm, Covington & Burling.

Records also reveal that MF Global’s trustee for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy retained as its general bankruptcy counsel Morrison & Foerester–the very law firm from which Associate Attorney General Tony West came to DOJ.

As Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer explains in the Washington Times Thursday, the trustee overseeing MF Global’s bankruptcy is former FBI Director Louis Freeh. At Holder’s Senate confirmation hearing Freeh served as a character witness for Holder and revealed that Holder had previously worked for Freeh. “As general counsel,” Freeh said, “I could have engaged any lawyer in America to represent our bank. I chose Eric.”

 This doesn’t sound as if we will ever get to the truth. However, there is hope.

The article further reports:

At least 65 members of Congress have already signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate MF Global’s collapse and the loss of $1.6 billion in customer money. What’s more, even progressives have begun to wonder whether Holder’s Covington & Burling connection explains why the Department of Justice has not charged, prosecuted, or jailed a single Wall Street executive after the biggest financial collapse in American history.

 I am not sure who the current Department of Justice is currently representing, but I have a feeling that it is not the average American.

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Where Did The Money Go?

Yesterday Bloomberg.com posted an article showing where some of the money that disappeared from MF Global Holding Ltd. under the guidance of Jon Corzine might have gone. There is a memo showing Jon Corzine gave direct orders to transfer money from customer accounts to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The article reports:

Edith O’Brien, a treasurer for the firm, said in an e-mail quoted in the memo that the transfer was “Per JC’s direct instructions,” according to a copy of the memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The e-mail, dated Oct. 28, was sent three days before the company collapsed, the memo says. The memo does not indicate whether that phrase was the full text of the e-mail or an excerpt.

Jon Corzine testified before Congress in December:

“I never gave any instruction to misuse customer funds, I never intended anyone at MF Global to misuse customer funds and I don’t believe that anything I said could reasonably have been interpreted as an instruction to misuse customer funds,”

Whoops! It sounds as if Mr. Corzine has some ‘splainin’ to do.

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Jon Corzine And MF Global

Today’s Wall Street Journal (this is a subscriber only article) is reporting that MF Global Holdings Ltd. shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in customer funds to its own brokerage accounts in the days before its bankruptcy filing. That is illegal.

The article reports:

“If they used client moneys to meet house margin calls, that’s a misuse of client funds,” said Ronald Filler, a law professor at the New York Law School.

According to the Commodity Exchange Act, customer funds at futures commission merchants “shall not be commingled with the funds of such commission merchant or be used to margin or guarantee the trades or contracts…of any customer or person other than the one for whom the same are held.”

Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Scott O’Malia said earlier this week that it “appears that MF Global failed this fundamental responsibility.” 

The New York Post posted a story yesterday with the title, “These guys want Corzine in prison.” The writer of the article talks about the impact of what was done at MF Global on four commodities traders he refers to as Eeny, Meeny, Miney, and Moe.

The article reports:

All of them were stung hard — not only because their money at MF disappeared overnight but also because they couldn’t even get on the floor of the exchange to conduct business.

Their IDs had been revoked.

Up to 30,000 of MF’s customers worldwide are said to be unable to access money they had in so-called “segregated” accounts at the company. And with the bankruptcy court and a trustee now involved, that money could be locked up for a long time.

“I want to see jail. I want to see one of these guys go to prison,” Moe said, with Eeny, Meeny and Miney nodding in agreement. “They destroyed lives because they wanted to make money. No more fines and Club Fed. People need to pay” with jail time.

Corzine, who took over the sleepy brokerage firm after being defeated for a second term in the statehouse, is the one they hold most responsible.

I think it’s time to take a good look at the way we treat ordinary people who break the law and extremely wealthy people who break the law. I am sure we will be hearing more of this story in the future.

 

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