Free Republic

Shortly after Barack Obama won reelection in November, New Jersey governor Chris Christie pointed out that Republicans’ cloudy political prospects had a bright silver lining. “One of the reasons you have 30 Republican governors in America, and why we’re the only organization to add Republican strength,” Christie said, “is because people see us getting things done.” Christie’s stance countered most of the elite postelection commentary, which gleefully pronounced the Republican Party’s political irrelevance. But the governor was right. Since Obama first took office in 2008, Republicans have picked up a net nine governorships, bringing their total to 30 states,...

A bankruptcy trustee has sued Jon S. Corzine and other former MF Global executives, claiming they were “grossly negligent” in the lead up to the brokerage firm’s collapse.

MF Global’s Bankruptcy Nears a Happy ConclusionWhen Mahesh Desai checked his MF Global account 15 months ago, his $580,000 nest egg was gone. Like thousands of investors and farmers who had their savings with MF Global, Mr. Desai lost his money in the brokerage firm’s chaotic final days. Regulators discovered that $1.6 billion was trapped in a web of improper wire transfers, a stunning breach that sent federal investigators scrambling to build a case. On Thursday, a bankruptcy court will review a proposal that would return 93 percent of the missing money to customers like Mr. Desai...

This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains. The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector. Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters. Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior...

Jon Corzine Might Launch His Own Hedge FundHe is unlikely to face criminal charges over the failure of MF Global By Christopher Freeburn, InvestorPlace Writer Aug 17, 2012, 9:28 am EDT With reports circulating that federal regulators will not seek criminal charges in the collapse of brokerage MF Global, the firm’s former head, Jon Corzine is considering a new career option. The one-time Governor of New Jersey and former head of Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), is mulling the idea of starting his own hedge fund, according to the New York Times. **SNIP** However, sources close to the former...

Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago. Recently, the president purportedly has been reassuring Democratic donors that his signature achievement, Obamacare, could be readjusted in the second term -- something Republicans have promised to do for the last three years. What an evolution: We have gone from being told we would love Obamacare, to granting...

Jon Corzine left Goldman Sachs with a net worth far exceeding even that of Mitt Romney today. Many accounts of his tenure at Goldman suggest he "failed up" the corporate ladder. Pushed out of Goldman in a power struggle (sparked in part by his support for a government bailout of Long-Term Capital Management), he nonetheless pocketed somewhere between $350 million and $500 million when the company went public. He used the cash to buy himself a Senate seat, spending $62 million out of his own pocket. After the Senate, he spent nearly $40 million of his own money to...

Ahead of Tuesday's Senate Banking Committee hearing on MF Global, we present the April 20 installment of Capital Account with Lauren Lyster, featuring futures industry veteran guest, Mark Melin. Ms. Lyster pulls no punches in the opener: Has the case really gone cold? Or, are those who are in charge of the investigation, the "regulators" and the trustees, simply spraying teflon on every piece of sticky evidence that could lead to criminal prosecutions--and, ultimately--the recovery of stolen customer money? We wish that MF Global were just a one-off affair--a bad apple, if you will. Unfortunately, it seems more likely to...

Barack Obama's reelection campaign has released the most recent list of names of fundraising bundlers. On that list is Jon Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey and embattled money man, the former head of MF Global: Corzine, according to the Obama campaign, has once again helped raise more than $500,000. (He was likewise named a bundler in January, when the Obama campaign last released the names of their money men.)

MF Global judge weighs release of insurance moneyBy Nick Brown and Aruna Viswanatha | Reuters – Mon, Apr 2, 2012 (Reuters) - An MF Global bankruptcy trustee asked a judge on Monday to release $25 million in insurance money to pay defense costs for Jon Corzine and other former MF Global officers facing civil lawsuits over the broker's October collapse. If paid out now, the money, part of $375 million in total insurance funds from multiple policies, could save the broker from facing larger claims later, Lorenzo Marinuzzi, an attorney for trustee Louis Freeh, said in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in...

<p>Jon S. Corzine gave "direct instructions" to move $200 million from an MF Global Holdings Ltd. account containing customer funds three days before the securities firm collapsed, according to an employee email reviewed by congressional investigators.</p> <p>The Oct. 28 email was disclosed in a five-page memo released Friday afternoon by a House Financial Services subcommittee. The panel is investigating what caused an estimated $1.6 billion shortfall in customer funds at MF Global, which collapsed into bankruptcy Oct. 31.</p>

Nearly three months after MF Global Holdings Ltd. collapsed, officials hunting for an estimated $1.2 billion in missing customer money increasingly believe that much of it might never be recovered, according to people familiar with the investigation. As the sprawling probe that includes regulators, criminal and congressional investigators, and court-appointed trustees grinds on, the findings so far suggest that a “significant amount” of the money could have “vaporized” as a result of chaotic trading at MF Global during the week before the company’s Oct. 31 bankruptcy filing, said a person close to the investigation. Many officials now believe certain employees...

Liquidation Of Customer Stored Gold And Silver Bullion From MF Global Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011 Dec 17, 2011 - 12:27 PM By: Jesse The bottom line is that apparently some warehouses and bullion dealers are not a safe place to store your gold and silver, even if you hold a specific warehouse receipt. In an oligarchy, private ownership is merely a concept, subject to interpretation and confiscation. Although the details and the individual perpetrators are yet to be disclosed, what is now painfully clear is that the CFTC and CME regulated futures system is defaulting on its obligations....

Yesterday we learned, to our great joy, that we no longer have to worry about the twin evils of global warming and hurricanes combining to stop Obama’s stimulus plan. For those of you who missed yesterday’s column, we showed that the not-greedy scientists, who very unlike the Republican bankers who took down the whole housing sector just because they are greedy… well, the scientists anyway demonstrated that hurricanes and global warming are not in any way scientifically or romantically linked. In a work published in late November on the site for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the chief scientist...

It was a humiliating moment, but Jon Corzine was determined to put the best face on it. On Oct. 25 of last year -- six days before the stunning collapse of MF Global Holdings Ltd., the New York-based brokerage and commodities firm he headed -- Corzine released the company's dismal results for the second fiscal quarter of 2012. Revenue, he was forced to report, had declined from the same period the year before, from over $240 million to about $205 million; and selected losses for shareholders were estimated at $191.6 million, an increase of almost $100 million from the prior...

ver read junk novels that are designed for the beach? Every summer, they churn out hundreds of paperback novels that people, most often women, read by the pool or ocean. The plot in these things is the same year after year, only the characters and descriptions of them change. Investment banking scandals are the same. No one involved with MF Global slept last night. Big time bankers are networked to the hilt. They derive a lot of their income from having a great personal network of contacts. Great investment bankers are super connectors. Apply that logic to what is happening...

Regulators now have a more complete picture of money transfers in the final days of bankrupt brokerage MF Global, but must sort out which transactions were legitimate before more money can be released to customers, a top official told Reuters on Wednesday. Jill Sommers, who is heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's review of MF Global, said regulators "are far enough along the trail" that they know where the money went. "Now it's just finding out which ones of those transactions are legitimate and which ones of them are illegitimate," Sommers said.

In a softball interview with Sen. Debbie Stabenow on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday asked the Michigan Democrat if it was difficult for her to grill a friend and colleague, the former New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine, on the MF Global scandal. At one point, Scarborough enthused, "Senator Corzine. I like him a lot. We like him." Co-host Mika Brzezinski started out the interview by asking Stabenow on how they would be taking on the MF Global investigation. The Michigan senator essentially rattled off the hearing's witness list. Scarborough then interrupted, not to press Stabenow about what...

I think what MF Global and John Corzine did is called “cooking the books”.   Here is a link to the hearing.  Some may jump to Corzine’s defense.  If they cooked the books, then he lied at his Congressional Hearing, which is perjury. The question I have is this.  If someone had the lack of ethics to capriciously steal customer funds and fill a hole in their firm’s books-what makes you think they wouldn’t lie at a Congressional hearing to protect their own butt?The funny thing is that the $CME is giving an exact timeline of their data.  They can...

An executive of a financial exchange monitoring MF Global told senators Tuesday that Jon Corzine, the former head of the financial firm, knew that loans were improperly made with customer funds. The claim was made just minutes after Corzine professed his ignorance for how up to $1.2 billion in customer funds had gone missing. Terrence Duffy, the executive chairman of CME Group, the exchange that regulates MF Global, told the Senate Agriculture Committee that a CME auditor was told by an MF Global executive that Corzine knew that a loan was made to a European affiliate of the company, and...

I don’t know. Maybe he should have stuck with the Fifth Amendment:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Jon S. Corzine, the former U.S. senator and governor who presided over the collapse of the commodities brokerage MF Global, told lawmakers Thursday that he never intended to authorize a transfer of customer funds to the firm’s accounts and that if he did “it was a misunderstanding.”Under pointed questioning by members of the House Committee on Agriculture, the New Jersey Democrat would not rule out the possibility that someone at the firm misinterpreted him as suggesting that the struggling firm tap into investors’...

Simply said: when one truly digs in, MF Global exposes the 2011 equivalent of the 2008 AIG: virtually unlimited leverage via the shadow banking system, in which there are practically no hard assets backing the infinite layers of debt created above, and which when finally unwound, will create a cataclysmic collapse of all financial institutions, where every bank is daisy-chained to each other courtesy of multiple layers of "hypothecation, and re-hypothecation."

A legal loophole in international brokerage regulations means that few, if any, clients of MF Global are likely to get their money back. Although details of the drama are still unfolding, it appears that MF Global and some of its Wall Street counterparts have been actively and aggressively circumventing U.S. securities rules at the expense (quite literally) of their clients. MF Global's bankruptcy revelations concerning missing client money suggest that funds were not inadvertently misplaced or gobbled up in MF’s dying hours, but were instead appropriated as part of a mass Wall St manipulation of brokerage rules that allowed for...

Probably far more anticipated than the monetary announcements out of BOE (which just announced it is keeping rates at a record low of 0.5%, but no more QE), or even the ECB, and certainly far more than the latest and not greatest European summit which begins today, is the 9am testimony out of the House Agriculture Committee by one "Honorable" Jon S. Corzine, as well as the Q&A that will follow. Naturally the Q&A will be the focus, but as for the prepared remarks, they have just been released and are presented below. The choice selection: "Obviously on the forefront...

The millions that Jon Corzine amassed as head of Goldman Sachs have become an alluring target for investors who were crushed by the collapse of MF Global, the brokerage firm he led until earlier this month. And Corzine isn't the only one who may be financially vulnerable after the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Others include MF Global's other top executives; its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers; and some big Wall Street banks. Even MF Global itself, which can't be sued while in bankruptcy protection, could sue its former executives.

We’ve already established that no one will go to jail over $40 billion turfing of the brokerage firm MF Global, one of history’s largest bankruptcies. MF Global died by the hand of the former Jon Corzine, the former golden boy at Goldman Sachs, the former Senator, the former Governor, the former Obama guru with a master’s degree from the University of Chicago; the sage with the Sixties beard wrapped in a custom-made Burberry suit and tie.   Like a lot of stories these days, Chicago works its way in there like a burr buried deep in someone’s hair since the 1960s.   ...

Earlier this year MF Global issued Investment Grade bonds. In the underwriting process they added a clause to the bonds ... IF Jon Corzine is chosen to be the Secretary of the Treasury the bonds will have an additional 1% kick-in. I would say that was like saying, "Hey, there is a good chance that Jon Corzine is going to be Secretary of the Treasury and you will get another 1% on these bonds." Today bondholders would probably prefer that the clause say that ... "If Jon Corzine takes down the firm you will receive back your principal."This is a...

This was forwarded to me by a colleague…Great letter To: James W. Giddens, Trustee, SIPA Liquidation of MF Global, Inc. and Martin Glenn, United States Bankruptcy Judge From: Cathy Cuthbert RE: MF Global Heist I am a lucky, former MF Global client. Unfortunately, I’m not a multi-billionaire who got the memo. I had a modest account that was supplying me with a modest livelihood, when suddenly one Monday afternoon, my account was frozen, my livelihood was essentially gone and four years worth of trading profits vanished into cyber space. You might be interested to know that sitting on my desk...

The court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of MF Global’s brokerage now estimates that the shortfall in the firm’s customer funds could be more than $1.2 billion, double previous estimates.

Friendship has its claims; so does fairness. And in the wake of the bankruptcy of brokerage firm MF Global, the media's portrayal of Jon Corzine, MF's ex-CEO and a former Democratic senator and governor in New Jersey, strikes me as profoundly unfair — and not just because he's a friend.

"Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise."

Jon Corzine nearly cost Sam Easley his home. The 49-year-old Tennessee small business owner had trouble paying his mortgage after the cash in his account at Corzine’s MF Global brokerage went missing. The money, representing most of his savings, is part of $600 million that is missing from MF’s books — customer money that investigators now believe was used improperly to cover company bets gone wrong, sources said. And that means it may never be fully recovered and that customers like Easley may never get fully reimbursed. For weeks, regulators have been holding out the possibility that the missing customer...

MF Global chief Jon Corzine donated $5,000 to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in April, but that money could be returned if Corzine is accused of any wrongdoing. As reported by Reuters, an official on the Obama campaign said all $500,000 raised by Corzine and donated to the president would be restored if the CEO has either civil or criminal charges brought against him. Corzine, who was head of the now bankrupt MF Global, has been thrown under a firestorm of controversy this week regarding the securities of the company. The former Goldman Sachs executive has not yet been accused...

Jon Corzine has been the CEO of Goldman Sachs, a United States senator, and the governor of New Jersey, the position he held in 2009, when the Obama administration was preparing to take office. His mix of Wall-Street and public-sector executive experience is doubtless why the Obama transition team called on him for advice. As Joe Biden tells it, they'd gathered a few dozen economists in Chicago to talk over the financial crisis. Some were suggesting a bank holiday. "I literally picked up the phone and called Jon Corzine and said Jon, what do you think we should do," Biden...

Screw you, Jon Corzine. All 1,066 employees of the bankrupt trading house MF Global got the boot yesterday in a pre-holiday massacre that left workers without severance and benefits -- and they blamed only one man for their woes. ... If Corzine were around, DiMatteo told Bloomberg News, “I would punch him in the face.” ... Bankruptcy trustee James Giddens is still trying to find about $600 million in missing customer money. Forensic probers are trying to account for the brokerage firm’s assets, and federal agencies are investigating whether MF mixed company funds with money missing from customer accounts.

Call it the mother of all margin calls: Up to 50,000 former customers of bankrupt broker MF Global must find some $1 billion in additional collateral almost overnight, or be forced out of their trades. Come Friday, with the mass transfer of commodity trading accounts from Jon Corzine's fallen firm to six of its erstwhile rivals, margin clerks will be wrapping up a reckoning of how much additional money is needed to cover millions of positions. Clients who can't quickly meet their margin will have to liquidate, making for a tumultuous day's trade. A court order to move the trades...

Jon Corzine appears to have committed more than a few sins in the runup to the demise of MF Global, including possibly using client money to pay for the risky trades that forced his brokerage firm into bankruptcy over the weekend. But possibly his biggest sin was his steadfast belief in the power of government. The former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs chief executive went wrong by assuming that a government bailout would somehow turn his firm’s bet on some of the worst investments in the world -- the sovereign debt of Italy and Spain -- into gold. That...

Jon Corzine, who ran Goldman Sachs Group Inc from 1994 to 1999, has demonstrated when you do not have the political game rigged; merely working at GS does not mean you are smarter than the rest and immune to market swings. This is yet another example of how corrupt things are in New York. Name one scandal that the SEC or CFTC have EVER prevented? I can think of none. All of a sudden it now comes out that hundreds of millions of dollars are missing because the firm FAILED to segregate their own funds from those of their clients....

Reports: Corzine Being Eyed As Possible Replacement For Geithner August 5, 2011 7:56 AM NEW YORK (CBS 2) – Former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine may be looking at a new job in Washington. He’s reportedly being eyed as a possible replacement for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. That’s if Geithner leaves before the end of President Obama’s first term. Corzine is former chairman of Goldman-Sachs and now works at the investment firm MF Global.

NEW YORK — Hundreds of millions of dollars of customer's money has gone missing from the brokerage firm run by former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, sources told The New York Times. The New York-based company, MF Global, filed for bankruptcy Monday following bad bets on euro zone debt. The discovery of the missing millions stopped a last-minute deal to sell a major part of MF Global to another brokerage firm from going ahead, The New York Times reported. Corzine, 64, who once ran Goldman Sachs before becoming a U.S. senator and then governor of New Jersey, had been trying...

That is the refrain you hear over and over again when MF Global insiders try to explain why they went along with Jon Corzine’s risky trades — the same ones that caused a crisis of confidence at the firm and, ultimately, its bankruptcy on Monday. Mr. Corzine was at Goldman Sachs for nearly 25 years, rising to become its senior partner before being ousted in a boardroom coup in 1999. He was considered a bright, aggressive trader who had a history of making big bets that paid off. When he joined MF Global last year — after a decade in...

The big story of the day in finance is the bankruptcy of MF Global -- the futures trading house run by ex-Goldmanite Jon Corzine. Even before filing for bankruptcy, the firm was suspended from dealing with the New York Fed, and two exchanges banned the firm's traders from accessing their trading floors. A major contributor to the firm's downfall: Outsize risks taken by Corzine, as it bet heavily on European debt last year, something that obviously hasn't gone so well. So what happens when the firm goes bust, Corzine leaves, and lots of other people lose their jobs? DealBook reported...

Former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, former technology executive Bernard Schwartz and banking executive James Staley were among 30 well-connected figures in the business and finance world who met with President Barack Obama at the White House in March for an unusual economic discussion organized by the Democratic National Committee. The White House released the names on Friday under a policy Obama instituted in 2009 to disclose nearly all White House guests approximately three months after they visit. The March 7 meeting in the Blue Room of the residence has drawn attention and criticism because most of the attendees were...

The new head of MF Global Holdings Ltd. outlined dramatic moves to cut staff and costs as the brokerage reported a $96.5 million net loss for its fiscal fourth quarter. Jon Corzine, the former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs chief who took over as chief executive officer in March, plans to realign the company, drop some new initiatives and cut 10% to 15% of its work force after reporting its fifth consecutive quarterly deficit. "Let me state the obvious," Mr. Corzine said on a conference call discussing the results. "These are not the kinds of results that MF Global...

Former New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine will take the helm of futures and options brokerage MF Global Holdings Ltd., returning to the private sector after nearly a decade in government. Effective immediately, the 63-year-old takes over from Bernard W. Dan, who has resigned as CEO for personal reasons but will remain through May 16 to help with the transition. Alison J. Carnwath is stepping down as chairman in August, after completing her three-year commitment to the company. A former chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Corzine served as state senator from 2001 to 2006 before becoming governor of New...

SOURCES: N.J. Gay Marriage Vote Planned for Thursday Matt Rooney | December 2, 2009 According to Save Jersey sources, N.J. Senate Democrats plan to hold a gay marriage vote next Thursday. Expect a session vote on Monday. The rationale? Gay marriage faces a steep uphill climb in the legislature, but Democrat leaders may feel the need to appease powerful liberal constituencies within their own party. Ahead of next Thursday's vote, Republican support is solidifying against a gay marriage provision. From the New Jersey Family Policy Council: New Jersey Family Policy Council Founder & President, Len Deo issued the following statement...

Fearing a potentially devastating Democratic loss, the highly controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) group and its affiliated organizations are gearing up to tip the scales and re-elect embattled incumbent in the hard-fought New Jersey gubernatorial race, sources tell Newsmax. "Acorn is heavily involved in Gov. Jon Corzine's get-out-the-vote operation, but is maintaining a low profile at the insistence of the Corzine campaign," Matthew Vadum, senior editor of the conservative Capitol Research Center think tank, tells Newsmax. "If Corzine manages to win reelection, he doesn't want the victory tainted by his close association with Acorn." Wall Street...

I've been watching the numbers change at Intrade for the last few days. IIRC, Corzine was at 66 last Friday. Today he's at 45, which I guess translates to more likely to lose than win. Hoffman's numbers took a dive after the Dede endorsement of Owens, but are now back in the healthy range. Last price 66. Bob McDonnell has been in the high 90s throughout.

CAMDEN, N.J. — In a final campaign swing on behalf of the only governor seeking re-election this fall, President Barack Obama on Sunday pitched Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine's bid as a key component for the White House to make good on its political promises. "He's one of the best partners I have in the White House. We work together," Obama said. "We know our work is far from over."

WABC TV in New York carried a story about one of Jon Corzine's close aides ( I missed the name) being arrested. He was stopped for talking on cell phone and the police found 15 viles of drugs. Anyone know anything more. Of course this is being smothered. This is not even on WABC TV's web site hmmmmmmmmmm