MF - Global Banking Fiasco

http://www.realecontv.com/videos/banking-malfeasance/mf-global-fiasco.html

Incredible in so many ways

Friday, the firm was having "some trouble."

Monday it was bankrupt - with the very same numbers it had posted to the ratings companies which previously declared the firm and its books investment grade.

But wait, there's more.

Apparently, as of now, $800 million to $1 billion in funds is missing...from client money in segregated accounts no less.

This isn't money that was invested in the firm or that the firm invested on behalf of clients. This is money - deposits - that the firm's clients had on account to support their own trading.

Taking money from these accounts is about as legal as your bank drilling your safe deposit box and using your money to go to the track to bet on horses. It's that serious. It's criminal with a capital "C."

Speaking of criminal with a capital "C", let's take a look at new CEO Jon Corzine, former CEO of Goldman Sachs who felt that MF Global's hundred plus year old business was too "boring" and needed some shaking up.

Reports are he wanted to convert this reliable futures trade clearing company into a Goldman Sachs-like hedge fund. Instead, he blew up the company and may have been involved in a Bernie Madoff-level crime.

If this amount of money was really taken from segregated customer accounts, someone needs to go to jail. If Jon Corzine had knowledge of this, that someone is Jon Corzine.

Meanwhile, hundreds (thousands?) of real futures traders are forced to sit on the sidelines while their trading capital is tied up and they search for a new company to clear their trades (assuming they have any capital to trade with.)

This is a mammouth train wreck whose importance is being massively understated by the financial news media.