When Jon Corzine took the reins of MF Global in 2010, the Wall Street brokerage was a deeply troubled firm. Revenues weren't covering expenses, money was being lost, and rating agencies were threatening a downgrade.
Reversing the tailspin would not be easy, but if anyone was up to the task, it seemed to be Corzine. At age 47, the former U.S. Marine became the youngest CEO in Goldman Sachs history. In 2000, New Jersey voters elected him to the Senate and six years later, they elected him governor. When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, Corzine was rumored to be on the shortlist for Treasury secretary.
At MF Global, his strategy was simple: "We are transforming from sort of an old-like brokerage firm into an investment bank," Corzine told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. Key to his plan was a massive bet on European government bonds -- a bet that would swell to more than $6 billion, and ultimately lead to MF Global's collapse.
At the same time, Corzine was using a finance strategy known as "internal repo."* In essence, MF Global was borrowing money from the firm's own accounts and using it to fund trading in another part of the firm. During the summer of 2011, however, just months before MF Global filed for bankruptcy, internal repo was a strategy regulators were hoping to do away with.
Internal repo was allowed in the London markets but not in New York, so coincidentally MF Global was running all their accounts through London. If you were an American and signed up with MF Global to manage your commodities account, one of the clauses in four-point type in the contract gave MF Global the right to transfer your account to their London office if they wished. Shazaam, instant internal repo...
As shown in the above excerpt from tonight's film Six Billion Dollar Bet, internal repo transactions were so important to Corzine that he met with officials at the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) on three occasions to lobby for their preservation.
As CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton told FRONTLINE:
Sen. Corzine was one of the more prominent individuals who came in and told us what a drastic mistake it would be to curtail the use of these internal repurchasing agreements ... And when he told me that we were making a big mistake, it certainly put some doubt into my mind for a little bit there as whether or not we were going down the right course. But certainly somebody that had his stature ... added respect, in my view.
DOD Officials Disclosed to Filmmakers Identity of SEAL Team Six Operator and Commander; Ask Film Director to Withhold Operator's Name, 'because he shouldn't be talking out of school.'
#2
These documents show that politically-connected film makers were giving extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information, including the identity of a Seal Team Six leader,
The Seals did the raid? I thought Obummer did it single-handedly.
#3
The only thing I would enjoy seeing him to "single-handedly" is lose the White House as a primary residence. If he and Moochelle pull a HUD and strip out copper wiring and all the fixtures on their way out, no problem, we've cut our loses.
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Republican Willard Mitt Romney ...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the presumptive Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney's charisma is best defined as soporific, which is probably why he is leading the Publican field. On the plus side, he isn't President B.O... has said he is "greatly disturbed" that President Barack Obama I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go... 's administration has granted a visitor's visa to the daughter of Cuban President Compañero Raul Castro. ...Fidel's little brother... Mariela Castro, a sexologist who supports gay rights, was granted the visa to attend the annual conference of the Latin American Studies Association on May 23-26 in San Francisco.
"We shouldn't be extending an open hand to a regime engaged in the systematic and flagrant denial of basic human rights," ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... Republican presidential hopeful Romney said in a statement.
The B.O. regime defended its decision on May 18. "We don't link visa policy in cases like this to our larger political and economic and human rights relationship with countries," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/24/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
C'mon, Sarah...Figure out a way how to jump back in this thing.
Pharaoh and his MSM demons, will slice and dice Mittens. Heaven help us all.
#2
Obama's evolution to gay, coupled with ads equating Obama to Castro, seems to have put Romney up by about 6 percentage points in Florida. Also appears to be playing very well with Cuban/Latino/Hispanics in New York and New Jersey.
#3
Win-win-win. Jab Obama and Hillary's DOS for sucking up to Communist killer regimes, highlighting this bitch's rhetoric and the awful leftists that invited her and support Cuba/Castro. Oh...and if it helps win Florida, that's OK too :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/24/2012 9:29 Comments ||
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#4
#2 Obama's evolution to gay, coupled with ads equating Obama to Castro Junkiron
Will soon learn that Obama has a brother who is also a Cuban Army general?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
