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Today, in advance of their sworn testimony, each witness to the Senate Agricultural Committee's MF Global hearing was requested to disclose what their prepared remarks would be. Sure enough, CME executive chairman Terry Duffy did that, and his prepared testimony can be found here. In and of itself there was nothing unexpected about said speech, the relevant section of which has been transcribed below. Where things got very ugly for Corzine, is when Duffy literally veered from the script, and added three unexpected sentences, catching everyone in the committee off guard (including those who had given up on the testimony...

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...

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...

The regulatory arm of CME Group has turned over interviews to the Justice Department that allege former MF Global chief Jon Corzine knew that the now-bankrupt brokerage firm used customer money to lend to a European affiliate, a CME executive said on Tuesday. The information is fourth-hand but is the strongest statement yet from a regulator that Corzine may have personally known customer funds were diverted for firm use. Federal investigators are probing why hundreds of millions of dollars in customer funds are missing, and whether the futures brokerage raided customer money to try to counter a liquidity crisis, a...

MF Global’s former chief executive, Jon S. Corzine, was gingerly questioned by the House Agriculture Committee for almost three hours on Thursday, in the end saying little enlightening about the firm’s collapse or the customer money that has gone missing. It seems unlikely that anything at the hearing can be used against him by criminal and civil investigators, so in that sense the testimony was a victory for Mr. Corzine. Rather than invoke the Fifth Amendment to protect himself, Mr. Corzine couched his answers with enough caveats and denials of specific knowledge that it would be nearly impossible to claim...

Political ties win Corzine respect in CongressBy Alexandra Alper | Reuters – 15 hrs ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A day after Jon Corzine got politely grilled by lawmakers over the collapse of futures brokerage MF Global Holdings Ltd, questions remain over the role his deep political ties and generous donations will play as he gears up for another round of congressional scrutiny. Corzine, who resigned as chief of MF Global days after the firm filed for bankruptcy on October 31, has been a prominent fundraiser and personal contributor to Democrats. He personally donated $69,300 to Democratic causes this year alone,...

“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date.” Let’s translate that Jon Corzine quote into Latin, engrave it in stone, and make it the official motto of Congress. Anybody remember that this Wall Street Democrat used to sit on the Senate committees on banking and the budget? Question: Why should we believe that the motives of people in (cough, cough) “public service” are different from the motives of people in the for-profit sector? Was Jon Corzine a rapacious self-seeker at Goldman Sachs, then a public-spirited man when he was...

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’...

Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine will not answer questions from a congressional committee seeking to get to the bottom of the brokerage firm’s collapse, The Post has learned. Corzine, who has been subpoenaed to testify before the House Agriculture Committee tomorrow, is expected to plead the Fifth Amendment in response to most hard-hitting questions, sources said. That means the one person who may know the whereabouts of the $1.2 billion in missing customer cash will not be giving up much. One source close the committee said while he might provide a limited statement, Corzine — the former New Jersey...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate panel has voted to subpoena former Sen. Jon Corzine to testify about his role leading MF Global. The trading firm filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 31 after a disastrous bet on European debt. Nearly $1.2 billion is estimated to be missing from customer accounts. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said Corzine's testimony at the Dec. 13 hearing is essential to learn what happened. The vote comes just days after the House Agriculture Committee took similar action to force Corzine to appear at a hearing Thursday. Corzine, a Democrat, represented New Jersey...