21st Century Bank Run: Watching a $4 billion company fall apart in a week

msn.com ^ | 17 October 2005 | Daniel Gross

[q_an_a]

this is a great job of formating- you should be proud, but I think Jim Robinson has a legal agreement with Slate not to cut and paste their content.

[Jackson Brown]

What most here seem to be unaware of -- or just fail to mention -- is that the money for individual accounts were SEGREGATED from the company's....therefore no individual account was in jeopardy.

Here is one area where government regulation is called for....they audit the segregated funds -- through the bank that holds it -- quarterly to keep customer money safe.

[traviskicks]

I don't know much about this company or any more than just the story that was posted, but.... my reaction is that this is an example of the market policing itself:

"Once the trouble was announced, Refco's customers wondered whether it was wise to do business with a company whose internal controls were so weak that it didn't know its own CEO was hiding a nine-figure debt. So, the demise was swift. (Here's the nasty five-day chart.) Within two days of the announcement of the discovered debt, Refco had to shut its nonregulated capital-markets subsidiary because it lost liquidity. In other words, people no longer trusted Refco to make good on trades. Customers began to yank funds, clients started to steer business elsewhere, and employees began furiously to look around for new gigs."

From a libertarian stance, this sort of thing seems positive. Again, this is admittidly a knee jerk reaction... :)

[cpdiii]

(Scandal connoisseurs will recall that Refco was Hillary Clinton's commodities broker.)

and her brokers nick name was "Red Bone"

[prairiebreeze]

Good points and accurate.

[b4its2late]

Yep. Remember her futures trading...

[b4its2late]

Yep. All things just seem to sort of fall in place as time goes on.... It's amazing with these two.