Your Galtian Overlords at work:
The trustee overseeing MF Global’s liquidation estimates the amount at $1.2 billion. Mr. Corzine will say in his testimony that he had little to do with the mechanics of moving customer cash and collateral and that he was “stunned” when he learned on Oct. 30 that the money was missing.
“I simply do not know where the money is,” he will say, noting that “there were an extraordinary number of transactions during MF Global’s last few days.”
Isn’t that pretty much his only responsibility as CEO of MF Global- to know where the money is?
Brian R.
MF Global, global MFs. Same difference.
Villago Delenda Est
Hey, if George W. Bush can lose a few trillion simoleons somewhere in the Middle East, why can’t Jon Corzine misplace a mere $1.2 billion?
Answer that one, smart guy!
gaz
IOKIYAGO?*
*(last 2 letters = Galtian Overlord?)
The more I hear about the GOs the more I believe that the amount of money someone makes is inversely proportional to their level of competence.
It’s a variant of my hypothesis on holding an MBA =P
Cris (without an H)
It’s down there somewhere, let me take another look.
ericblair
This is Corporate America. If we told the CEO where all the money is, he’d just take it all. So we don’t tell him. Duh.
But we’re sure as hell gonna find out who took all the ballpoint pens from the supply cabinet.
Berial
What is this whole ‘responsibility’ thing you speak of?
A CEO’s job is to work hard having lunches and meetings with other important people. The lunches and meetings are all about how the people at the lunches and meetings can make more money for themselves. If the companies they work for also makes money then ‘HUZZAH!’, a happy coincidence! If not ‘HUZZAH’, they get paid either way!
Satanicpanic
He’s a Democrat, probably gave it to ACORN
Stooleo
O.T
via, GOS. B.O. bitch slapping stupid DC reporters.
schrodinger's cat
Are you sure it was not Tunch? BTW where has he been hiding. We miss the magnificent beast.
fasteddie9318
HAHA, LOOK LIBTARDS, YOUR DEMOCRAT GOD CORZINE STOLE ALL THAT MONEY! YOU MUST FEEL PRETTY FUCKING STUPID NOW, HUH? HAS YOUR WORLD TOTALLY COLLAPSED YET? LOOSERS!
/upcomingwingnutfreakout
Anoniminous
So if a company is doing well the CEO and Corporate Board are solely responsible (heads,) if the company massively screws-up the CEO and Corporate Board were completely unaware of the problems (tails.)
trollhattan
I thought the reason WS firms needed to compensate management so extravagantly was to attract the bestest, smartiest, managiest managers on the planet.
For frack sakes, I could replace any of these humps at, let’s say, half the compensation and do as well. And let me add, I know more about wine than they, so there’s that.
burnspbesq
@John Cole:
The CEO’s job is not to know where the money is.
The CEO’s job is to make sure that there are systems in place and working, so that somebody always knows where the money is.
Even by that standard, Corzine appears to have blown it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I’d love to hear one of my kids try that line as an excuse as to what happened to all the cookies that mysteriously got ated right before dinner time. We have no idea! There were an extraordinary number of transactions!.
Come here kid, let me esplain something to you.
daveNYC
Really the only single rule that everyone on Wall Street absolutely has to follow is to keep customer and company money seperate. If this sticks, and it should, this will kill the careers of pretty much everyone involved.
Judas Escargot
We already knew that ‘accountability’ was for the little folk. So, apparently, is basic ‘accounting’.
Roger Moore
Of course that’s not his job. His job is to put a nice face on the company and convince rich people their money is being well looked after. His secondary job is to make sure that as much of the trading profits wind up in company coffers and as little in investors’ accounts as possible. IOW, he’s the grifter in chief. The petty stuff about making sure people’s money doesn’t disappear into the ether, the investments the company is making are sound, etc. are farmed out to little people who can take the fall when something goes wrong.
KG
@burnspbesq: yeah, now, the CFO, that guy, he’s fucked.
Mino
Please FSM, let Warren run in 2016. She knows what she’s doing. I’m not convince Pres. Obama does. We are deep in the shit until we restore confidence that WSers are at least well-regulated crooks.
And let that temp Senator that replaced Biden be her VP, please FSM.
fasteddie9318
(Or if wingnut doesn’t do it for you, here’s a different take)
Wrong Again John Galt Cole is wrong again and John Galting it all over his libertarian blog! Of course Wrong Again wants to focus on the one fund that stole a billion or so from its clients and went out of business, but is John Galt Cole going to acknowledge that there are plenty of other funds whose managers have not yet been found to have stolen millions or billions of dollars from their clients? OF COURSE NOT, BECAUSE HE’S JOHN GALT COLE, WHO ALSO IS ONCE AGAIN WRONG! I just made $3 million because you lemmings and your JOHN GALT master are freaking out over this. No, wait, $7 million! No, wait, it’s gone. Oh well, I’ll make, and then lose, more tomorrow, because I AM NOT SOMEONE WHO IS FREQUENTLY WRONG AND ALSO TOO TRIES TO ACT LIKE JOHN GALT, UNLIKE SOMEONE ELSE I COULD NAME, AND WHOSE NAME I WOULD WRITE AS WRONG AGAIN JOHN GALT COLE!
amk
The US govt should let the mafia ‘handle’ the wall-street for about a year and pay them 20% of what they bring in as compensation.
Suffern ACE
The money has been found. Unfortunately it was stashed in a tank of the Sentinel drone that the Iranian’s put on TV. Apparently the plane doesn’t run on normal jet fuel.
KG
@Judas Escargot: didn’t we learn this with Enron?
More to the point, is there anyone in DC that isn’t bought/paid for with the brass cajones to step up and say “we need to give all these companies the Standard Oil Treatment.”?
Tom Levenson
Prison. Long time. With friends from the other boardrooms
David in NY
Oddly, he’s not the first CEO I’ve ever run into who thought this was not his job. In fact, the guy who once ran the (non-profit) outfit I work for didn’t think it was his job, and it turned out there was no money. He’s not longer here, of course, but that didn’t help the people who lost jobs as a result of his unwillingness just to count.
KG
@amk: “sure would be a shame if, something were to happen to your nice little office here…”
Rafer Janders
Isn’t that pretty much his only responsibility as CEO of MF Global- to know where the money is?
Er, no, not at all. At least, not in the sense of physically knowing where it is. That’s an administrative fucntion, and CEOs don’t do that. It’s the same way that Barack Obama doesn’t concern himself with the actual mechanics of printing money at the Treasury.
It’s not to say that the President or CEO isn’t ultimately responsible, but it’s certainl not their job to get involved with the day-to-day mechanics of how things run.
Mark S.
These are unfounded allegations! Anyone could misplace $1.2 billion.
jake the snake
Isn’t that the Kenny-boy Lay defense.
“I didn’t know what was going on, I was just a cheerleader.”
Extemely well paid cheerleader. I’m sure Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku did not get paid that well for “Bring it on”.
PeakVT
It’s ultimately Corzine’s responsibility, but we’ll have to wait to know if the money was mis-used on his order or not. He seems to believe it’s not directly his fault, or otherwise he probably wouldn’t be making such admissions.
Elizabelle
Big news day.
Am wondering if the Virginia Tech shootings (again) and Plan B decision, plus former Democratic governor Corzine testifying on Capitol Hill, will allow the networks to slide past the fact that the GOP filibustered Richard Cordray’s nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The GOP wants to gut the CFPB, and to put it under congressional oversight — our Congress being sold to the highest bidder.
Villago Delenda Est
Counting, that’s for the little people. I’ve got strategic visions to attend to!
Also, too, if you have to ask how much money you’ve got, you can’t afford to have me as your CEO!
Nutella
@Rafer Janders:
It’s his responsibility to know that audited systems are in place to know where the money is. When the ship sinks the captain is court-martialed even if he was on vacation that day. Why? It’s his job to make sure that the systems work, the management structures are correctly set up, and everybody is trained. If the ship sinks it IS the captain’s fault.
I suggest they look for the money in 1) Corzine’s pockets and 2) Corzine’s Swiss bank accounts.
Relatedly, I’m about halfway through Taibbi’s Griftopia and the only possible conclusion I can reach is that everyone who worked at Goldman Sachs above the level of receptionist during this century needs to be hung by the heels from an oil platform and flayed, and then hanged for treason.
Corzine and Blankfein can be first.
schrodinger's cat
Its that time of the year again, bonus time. BTW what the hell does a free market mean? Economically it is a nonsensical term. I interpret it to mean perfect competition, i.e. a market where no one player (buyer or seller) has enough clout to impose price they want. Firms hate perfect competition because you don’t make any profit in these markets you merely break even. Commodities markets (market for sugar, for example) is the closest we come to perfect competition.
Steve
I’m impressed Corzine testified. Most people in this type of situation would take the Fifth. Either he’s ballsy or he finds it highly unlikely he will face any type of criminal responsibility – or maybe both.
Until we know what actually happened it’s hard to say what Corzine actually could have or should have known, although it goes without saying that the CEO bears a measure of responsibility no matter what. But it’s not like his job as CEO is to physically open up the cash register every night and count the dollars. On some level you have to be able to trust what your employees are telling you.
jl
Guess we can assume Corzine knew this was going on:
” Mr. Corzine said that on Aug. 15, 2011, he met with officials from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C., to discuss the European bet.
Several days later, MF Global was told that it needed to raise capital to support its positions. He discussed a controversial lobbying effort he made to influence the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s plans to change rules regarding how futures commission merchants such as MF Global can treat customer funds.”
Let’s see what else…
” Investigators believe MF Global in the week before it declared bankruptcy shifted funds from the customer accounts to its broker dealer, which handled the European-bond bet, according to people familiar with the matter.”
” Futures firms such as MF Global are prohibited from using customer cash in their own accounts,”
Corzine’s line apparently will be that:
” extraordinary steps to ensure that it was able to honor customers’ requests to withdraw funds or collateral,”
But I read a story that MF Global, in its last days suddenly change a policy of immediate electronic transfers in response to customer requests, to doing everything by snail mail.
So, yeah, I guess the CEO should not be expected to know the details of how the maintenance staff purchase toilet paper, so I guess that Corzine is off the hook, and people who suspect Corzine to be a crook are being unreasonable.
It seems the CEO was aware that the company was going belly up, and I suspect that Crozine assumed his lobbying effort would succeed, and the company could slide by on a little ex post facto (edit: I think I mean ‘retroactive’ here) application of a rule change.
SFAW
You seem to be under the impression that they need an excuse to bury that story.
The only way anything about Cordray would make the network new would be if someone found out that he and Kim Kardashian were having an affair, which led to the dissolution of Sandra Bullock’s and Jesse “Am I a Dumb Fuck or What?” James’s marriage.
Villago Delenda Est
@Nutella:
I’m reminded of a lesson from history…Admiral Byng was shot for “failure to engage the enemy aggressively”. Now, it’s problematic if he actually was guilty of the offense he was shot for, but it did have the effect of getting the attention of every fleet and ship commander in the entire Royal Navy, and the result was Britain’s absolute dominance of the waves in the 18th and 19th centuries.
ericblair
@Steve:
From what I remember of a bio of him, he’s supposed to be quite the adrenaline junkie. Who knows, he might be enjoying it.
Montysano
By saying “I dunno” instead of pleading the Fifth, didn’t Corzine basically admit, on teevee and in front of Congress, to a violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?
Your move, AG Holder.
Steve
@Montysano: Huh?
Cat Lady
Bernie Madoff’s wondering why he didn’t just say that.
John Weiss
@fasteddie9318: As we’d say in Texas: eat shit and bay at the moon.
catclub
@daveNYC: “this will kill the careers of pretty much everyone involved.”
It is to laugh.
Tom Hilton
Or the Invisible Hand of the Market used it to wipe its ass.
Montysano
@Steve:
What’s confusing you?
One of the provisions of Sarbanes Oxley was that the CEO and CFO are required to know shit like this. Under SOX, “I had no idea this was going on” is no longer a valid defense.
harokin
He’s just the boss. It’s his responsibility to talk to corporate, approve memos, lead a workshop, hit on Deborah, get rejected, eat a bagel, promote synergy, meet a giant fish, etc. Like a boss.
The Other Chuck
@schrodinger’s cat:
Bad example, given the billions of dollars in subsidies that go toward production of HFCS and the tariffs we slap on imported sugar.
matryoshka
Yep.
KXB
Some one needs to have Corzine meet Fat Tony
Where is the money?
Li
Massive piles of money just going missing is as American as apple pie. The pentagon has lost 10-20 trillion dollars by some estimates, 2.3 trillion by their own bald admission. HUD has lost trillions, mostly through pump and dump schemes facilitated by very poor record keeping. We bought trillions of dollars of worthless securities from banks, both foreign and domestic, at 100 cents on the dollar. That money isn’t coming back. And let’s not even get into the trillions that we have dumped into a black box marked ‘secret’ over the past three decades. Really, what is 1.2 billion between friends? That’s chump change!
Our world is ruled by thieves and criminals, and if we don’t stop them, they will end up buying our children with money they stole from us. If we could find the money that has been stolen from us, and free up technologies that have been shelved because they threaten the rule of the greedy, we could build a paradise.
pablo
I’ll bet this is the first case Holder is told to go after, which is OK, as long as a few hundred “Masters of the Universe” are frog marched to follow.
You know, both sides do it.
daveNYC
@catclub: People still gamble even though they know that every game is rigged against them, but there’s no way people will gamble if they don’t think that they’ll be able to cash their chips in at the end.
Brandon
Florida Gov. Scott’s approval numbers hit a new low. 26% I kid you not.
BGinCHI
Come on, John, you know it’s the CEO’s job to create jobs. He was so busy creating jobs and trickling down wealth that the money just got away from him.
Let’s give the hero a break.
MosesZD
Sorry, this is where Joe SixPack really needs to shut up about CEOs and their responsibilities.
The main duty of the CEO is to set strategy and vision. To execute this vision, the CEO needs to determine which markets will the company enter. Against which competitors do they directly compete. What product lines are rolled-out and which are retired.
The CEO is responsible for creating a differentiation strategy. Then there are budgets, industry partnerships, product line partnerships, meeting with the board, investors, etc. He’s also responsible for hiring the first/top level (senior management) of people needed to get the job done.
Not to be a freaking glorified bookkeeper micro managing the daily transactions. You want to know where the money is? Ask the people who moved it!
And in this case, you should be looking at the CFO: The chief financial officer (CFO) or Chief financial and operating officer (CFOO) is a corporate officer primarily responsible for managing the financial risks of the corporation. This officer is also responsible for financial planning and record-keeping, as well as financial reporting to higher management.
So, who was this guy: We were surprised to learn that Henri Steenkamp, the CFO of broker-dealer MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this week, is only 35 years-old.
Ooops. Too young as far as I’m concerned. I always want to see a 50+ish kind of guy in that place. Someone who really understands the pitfalls of the position.
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-03/wall_street/30353874_1_mf-global-cfo-bio#ixzz1fyYezn9R
That’s who you should ask. Nor Corizine. Corizine is responsible for the bstrategytment stratagy. Not the missing money, unless he gave orders otherwise.
BGinCHI
@MosesZD: So, are you defending Corzine?
Is that what “bstrategytment stratagy” means?
Did you learn some or all of this in B school?
Svensker
@MosesZD:
Perhaps Mr. Corzine should have hired a better CFO?
daveNYC
He’s responsible for the entire company. Day to day, that means ‘big picture’ type crap. He’s still responsible for making sure controls are in place to prevent this kind of crap from happening, and with SOX, it’s quite possible that he’s just straight up on the hook for everything. Though I think SOX was more for accounting fraud type stuff, and not for straight up stealing from the customers like this was.
BGinCHI
@Svensker: He was too busy setting a strategy (or a bstrategytment stratagy) of failure. He can’t be everywhere at once.
Montysano
@MosesZD:
Fail. You may wish this to be the case, but it’s simply not. A CEO can no longer preside over a criminal enterprise and then walk away clean on an “I knew nothing!” defense, leaving his underlings to twist in the wind.
As it should be IMHO.
Berial
@MosesZD: Wait. I want to make sure I understand you. You are saying that the CEO of a company that collapsed back in October when called before congress ISN’T SUPPOSED to know these kinds of answers?
If you were to ask a CEO on some random Thursday these kinds of questions, yeah, I could accept what you say. But this isn’t some unexpected questions asked out of the blue.
Am I wrong in thinking this?
schrodinger's cat
@The Other Chuck: OK you have a point. I was thinking of the price of the end product, the price of one pound of sugar is the same whether it is a name brand like Dominos or a store brand.
MosesZD
@Montysano:
Uh, no. Sarbanes-Oxley applies to financial statements and the related internal controls as they relate to outside reporting for publicly traded entities.
NobodySpecial
Check the other pocket
The Moar You Know
In fact, it’s not. He should have a general idea, but even that is not required.
That unpleasant chore falls to the CFO, who in the case of this company, is likely going to prison.
beltane
I love this blog because I always learn new things here. Until now, for example, I always thought of the CEO of a corporation being the leader of the corporation, similar to an army general or a ship’s captain. Now I know that a CEO fills a purely esoteric role akin to that of the Cumaean Sibyl.
The more I see of our Galtian Genius Overlords, the more I realize we are ruled by small, petty, inferior human beings.
Suffern ACE
@MosesZD: Every three months the CEO of a public company signs one of these. Sorry, but your marketing CEO has other responsibilities. Now if the CFO and the accounts let Corzine down, that’s another matter. I believe that he probably has asked them where the money is. At the present time there really isn’t a more pressing strategic or visionary issue on his plate than finding those missing funds.
William Hurley
anyone seen a high priced, super-secret high tech drone around here anywhere?
what institution isn’t too big to fail?
Montysano
@MosesZD:
Karl Denniger’s Market Ticker:
Nutella
@beltane:
That’s why they get paid so much.
gaz
@MosesZD: Even if I parse your earlier argument, and interpret it as charitably as I can (and I roughly agree with most of it)… there’s one point you are missing.
A CEO is responsible to the shareholders. If the CEO and the board ALLOW AN INCOMPETENT CFO to destroy the books, they can be sued by shareholders for malfeasance.
I think you understated that. Basically, Corzine owns this one way or another. He shares in the blame, because he’s at the helm. Even if his CFO did the dirty deed, the CFO reports to the CEO. Ergo, Corzine blew it.
David in NY
@MosesZD:
I rather think it’s you.
After the moment on August 15 when Corzine was hauled in to the SEC and FIRA and told he needed to raise capital to support MF’s positions, he was on notice that he better fucking know how much capital he had. And it rather looks like the steps that were taken to raise that capital were to dip into customer accounts. Since he was charged with raising that capital by the regulatory authorities, there is a reasonable suspicion, or better, that he should have been supervising the raising of the enough capital to support his positions. Now maybe he didn’t order anybody to borrow from the customers, but it was a life-and-death matter for his firm to increase its capital, and he surely was involved in that effort to a substantial degree. That is, at that point the only relevant “vision,” the only relevant “strategy,” as you put it, was fucking staying afloat. If he wasn’t paying attention to the raising of additional capital, he was derelict, and if he was, there’s a solid chance he was breaking some serious rules.
So, I rather think Joe SixPack has a point in this case.
ETA: And given the crisis, I can hardly see that he was allowed to sluff it off to the CFO. In fact, he wasn’t doing that, he was trying to get the rules changed and stuff. He had to know what the capital situation was.
Triassic Sands
Corzine: trying to be as incompetent as the typical Republican.
I never cease to be amazed by how inept many wealthy people are.
Threadkiller
@amk:
I’ll give the mafia one thing – for decades they administered the Teamsters’ Union pension fund. I’ll grant that they used it as seed money for all manner of illicit activities, but: (i) they did not loot it or lose the money and (ii) paid a decent return.
Your proposition is therefore a compelling one. . .
Platonicspoof
Um, uhh, based on (pause) the last, um, half hour of Corzine’s (pause), umm, (pause) testimony (on the Bloomberg channel), uh, ummm, I’d be, uhh, amazed if he’s ever hired to, uhh, umm, I don’t know.
If his job is people, policies and procedures (today’s testimony), but he doesn’t know who moves what money(testimony), and is surprised when a billion plus disappears, how does he know he put the right processes in place? Until it’s too late?
Legalize
@MosesZD:
Sarbanes. Oxley.
The law says, it’s his job to know. He has to certify that what he knows is “true.” By saying “I didn’t know,” he is admitting that he broke the law.
Laws are interesting things.
The Moar You Know
@MosesZD: You nailed it to a T, better than I did.
I expect that at least 3/4 of our fellow BJ posters will refuse to believe it.
Suffern ACE
@William Hurley: They’re in short supply around here for the holidays, worse than a Tickle-Me-Elmo was 10 years ago. However, I hear Haier will be coming out with a knock-off version soon, so if you wait til next Christmas, the stores will be full of them at 1/2 the price.
Ruckus
@Threadkiller:
The mafia had a code of ethics. One of those codes was not to screw the rubes too hard. That cut off the supply of cash. They understood where the money actually came from and how much there actually was.
gwangung
@The Moar You Know: I don’t subscribe to a binary form of responsibility. Corzine may not have primary responsibility–that may go to the CFO–but he’s ultimately responsible for the company. That’s why he’s CEO.
Lesser penalty than the CFO, but a penalty nonetheless.
Villago Delenda Est
@MosesZD:
You know, I’ve got title to a great little vacation hideaway island just off the coast of Outer Mongolia that I know you’d be very interested in.
Send a deposit to my account in Lagos, and I’ll give you more detail!
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
If the CEO is not responsible for the company, it’s employees and contract workers, who the fuck is?
That is his job to know the big stuff. Knowing how many pens the company uses? That’s micromanaging. Knowing where 1.2 fucking billion of assets that he is responsible for is? Not his fucking job? It is exactly his job. It may not be how a lot of CEOs run their companies, but it is exactly his job.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: Does it have a hot tub?
Fergus Wooster
@Ruckus: Yup. They made a 50% return, probably paid a little over 10% back to the fund – bleed slow and keep it going.
Also too, I think even the mob would think twice before ripping off the Teamsters.
BGinCHI
@Ruckus: There’s a shorter answer: if you don’t have some idea of the very thing that destroys your company, then you weren’t really properly in charge of it. Short of outright fraud by someone with the checkbook, you have to have a sense of the health of the operation.
scav
@BGinCHI: How hot can we make it?
The Moar You Know
@gwangung: I agree with you. The law doesn’t. Corzine’s going to face some really uncomfortable questions for a long time, questions that may, if he’s not careful, lead to other shenanigans (I’m sure there are plenty) that could land him in jail, but this isn’t even close to being enough.
His CFO, OTOH, is in deep shit.
BGinCHI
@scav: More importantly, how many people can it hold? And do I have to reach for the mini fridge or walk to it?
Ed Drone
@Mark S.:
I can try — send it over. How soon do you want it gone?
Ed
Steve
I’m not seeing a whole lot of understanding of Sarbanes-Oxley on display here, but it does seem like a lot of you must have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
The Moar You Know
@Ruckus: Depends on how the Board of Directors set up the company and (in the case of Corzine) what the BoD said his job responsibilities were. In the case of a company that hires a large state’s former governor who has little direct experience in finance, I am willing to bet a lot of money that his duties are twofold:
1. Get business.
2. Lobby.
I guess the answer to your question is “a lot of people, and each person’s degree of liability for a world class clusterfuck like this is going to take a court to decide”.
gaz
@gwangung: I’m fairly certain that you nailed it. =P
Montysano
@daveNYC:
You don’t steal $1.2B by stuffing it in a valise and then waiting for the guard to doze off. You steal it by off-spreadsheet funny business.
Also, too: Sarbanes–Oxley Section 906: Criminal Penalties for CEO/CFO financial statement certification
djork
Ated? I thought et was the preferrred nomenclature?
burnspbesq
@Montysano:
Probably, but I don’t think there are any criminal sanctions for violating 404.
The real problem from a 404 perspective lies with the accounting firm that certified as to the effectiveness of internal controls. Their ass is in a precarious spot.
Also, does 906 apply to private companies, or only to SEC reporting entities?
LABiker
Chief Wiggum: “Well, I’m fresh out of ideas.”
burnspbesq
@MosesZD:
Uh, no, yourself. There’s a lot more to SOX than just section 404. My favorite section of SOX is the one, inspired by what Andersen did in the Enron matter, that made the penalty for shredding documents that the shredder knows or should know have been or are going to be subpoenaed the same as the penalty for attempted murder of a witness.
Montysano
@burnspbesq: You’ve just passed beyond my level of understanding, so…. I don’t know. I rely on Denninger and Yves Smith for much of my financial education; both say, unequivocally, that Corzine is in violation of SOX.
rikyrah
I know I wasn’t the only one who laughed when they read that.
dmbeaster
I keep waiting to hear the dirty details on exactly what happened here. I am surprised given the public nature of the bankruptcy that so little is publicly known about exactly what happened here. But some pretty clear inferences can be drawn with a high degree of confidence.
Basic FINRA rules require customer funds to be in separate accounts from company accounts so that they are secure from misuse. It is the same basic principle of trust accounts used in countless businesses that hold fiduciary funds: real estate companies, attorneys, escrows, etc. For 1.2 billion to be missing, someone had to either: a) deliberately raid the customer accounts to make up shortfalls in company accounts; or b) simply not segregate the funds in the first place. However, the second circumstance is supposed to be prevented by regular outside audits, so I doubt it occurred as a regular practice. The second circumstance could occur in the final weeks by making wholesale deposits of incoming client funds from transactions into company accounts in the ordinary course so as to create the shortfall, which is really just a variation on the first circumstance. In short, what occurred here is straight up theft under any scenario. This is not about careless bookkeeping. Someone at a very high level authorized the thieving of billions from customer accounts – realize the shortfall here is probably the “net” loss rather than the total amount thieved. It is hard to imagine Corzine not knowing about the practice that created the shortfall (though why he testified is also a curiosity), because otherwise some lower level executive with still enough seniority to authorize such a dramatic irregularity allegedly went rogue without his knowledge? The multi-billion dollar theft would have occurred ostensibly to save the company (I’ll pay it back on Tuesday), but it is such a gigantic irregularity that it is hard to conceive anyone other than the most senior management authorizing it. The most telling fact in the whole story is that allegedly the funds started going missing in the final week, which means someone extremely senior decided to do thieve the money is a last ditch gamble to keep things afloat. And that occurred after weeks of spiraling downward. It happened at the most senior level, and it is hard to believe that everyone acts mystified about how it happened.
burnspbesq
@burnspbesq:
Answering my own question:
The Section 302 certification requirement applies only to companies required to file periodic reports under Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the 34 Act.
dmbeaster
This isn’t a SOX issue unless the underlying practice was in place when a quarterly or annual filing occurred, which is unlikely.
The Moar You Know
@burnspbesq: Correct.
And all the provision of SOX only apply to public companies. Which MF Global is. So 906 could apply as well.
burnspbesq
@Montysano:
There’s no doubt that, in SOX 404 jargon, there was a material weakness in internal controls related to financial reporting, and a lot of people are facing serious civil liabilities for that.
There is a company called MF Global Holdings Ltd. that is subject to 34 Act reporting requirements. Corzine and Steenkamp signed 302 certifications on its most recent 10-Q.
I guess we’re about to have our case of first impression about how much of a duty of inquiry the CEO and CFO have under Section 302.
burnspbesq
@The Moar You Know:
The mental state under 906(c)(2) is wilfullness. Corzine can take a shot at a pure heart, empty head defense, and it might work.
Montysano
MF Global forces the question: is this an isolated incident, or have other zombie financial entities done exactly the same thing in a desperate attempt to stay afloat?
burnspbesq
@dmbeaster:
Here’s the relevant part of Corzine’s 302 certification that is part of MF Global’s most recent 10-Q:
5. The Registrant’s other certifying officer(s) and I have disclosed, based on our most recent evaluation of internal control over financial reporting, to the Registrant’s auditors and the audit committee of the Registrant’s board of directors (or persons performing the equivalent functions):
(a) All significant deficiencies and material weaknesses in the design or operation of internal control over financial reporting which are reasonably likely to adversely affect the Registrant’s ability to record, process, summarize and report financial information; and
(b) Any fraud, whether or not material, that involves management or other employees who have a significant role in the Registrant’s internal control over financial reporting.
burnspbesq
@Montysano:
Help us, Obi-Wan Bharara! You’re our only hope!
gene108
I really feel a bit bad that this will effectively kill Corzine’s career.
He was an arrogant prick, as governor of NJ, but at least he tried to make sure poor school districts were funded, social services were funded and tried to make sure things ran in this state, unlike Christie, who cuts taxes for the rich and slashes services for the poor.
He took a bet on European debt, which at the time looked to be a good bet, with the way people thought the European debt situation would play out a few months ago.
The problem he had at MF Global is they were a very conservative company that had been losing money for a couple of years because their business model relied heavily on interest income, which has dried up because of the low interest rates in the U.S. and Europe.
He needed to do something to boost the company. He did it in a much too reckless manner based on the infrastructure MF Global had to keep track of all the transactions he was pushing them to undertake.
As a CEO, he should’ve been aware of the limitations of his company and should’ve acted accordingly, with regards to the higher volumes of trades he wanted MF Global to do.
Just poor leadership on Corzine’s part.
Barry
@MosesZD: “Corizine is responsible for the bstrategytment stratagy. Not the missing money, unless he gave orders otherwise.”
Aside from that word from another language, Corizine is responsible for (a) hiring the CF-ingO, and (b) making sure that the CF-ingO is auditing and audited properly.
Barry
@burnspbesq:
Wh*reson, after the Penn State thread, why should we trust your advice? As far as I’m concerned, you’re no more trustworthy than Corzine’s attorney.
gene108
@gaz:
Corzine’s the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. When he was CEO of Goldman Sachs he pushed and succeeded in taking them public.
Corzine should know a thing or three about finance, even if he’s been out of it for a while.
dmbeaster
It is possible that Corzine is innocent of any wrongdoing here, as I suspect that the wrongdoing occurred all at once and in the final days of the company’s existence. If so, that is not something that the CEO is normally expected to be responsible for. But it is hard to believe that such gigantic wrongdoing was initiated by senior executives who chose to keep Corzine in the dark about it. That was plausible when Reagan the clueless was in charge of the White House that stole US funds and ran an illegal gun running operation out of the White House, but not here.
gaz
@gene108: Not sure you meant t o respond to me because
A) I never said what you attributed to me.
B) When I was responding to the other commenter, it was about comment #82 (you can click the name to link back to it) – which also doesn’t quote what you attributed to me.
In fact, I’m not quite sure where you got that quote (I suppose I could find it) – but my point here is made – and is essentially this: WTF man? I never said that?!!
BBA
@Montysano: There was a specific loophole allowing commodities brokerages like MF to “borrow” customer funds and purchase investment-grade sovereign debt. Despite the ongoing Euromess, only Greece has lost its investment-grade status.
This loophole was rapidly closed by the CFTC, and it’s unlikely that other firms would be so brazen as to just take customer funds. Convoluted Lehman-style schemes to hide the rot, sure, but who’d be so obvious? Aside from Corzine, of course.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Nah.
Corzine’s responsibility was to make sure the money multiplies. If that requires letting it go out, party, do some lines of blow, screw some hookers, and fuck over a few peasants while he’s not looking, then he’s not always going to know where all the money is — and no one cared as long as it comes home multiplied.
.
Jason
Clearly, he must have left the 1.2 billion dollars in his other pants. Due to the extraordinary number of transactions, he promply forgot about it, and sent his other pants to the drycleaners. It’s probably still there, if some less than honest drycleaning worker hasn’t made off with it by now.
Mike G
I used to work for a douchebag CEO like this. While everything was going well, he was Mr. Large and In Charge, indispensible and worth every penny of his fat paycheck. When things went south, suddenly it was Who, Me? Market Forces, It Was The Board’s Decision and hoocoodanode?
Corporate America rewards aggression and credit-hogging, with competence way down the list and integrity on another planet.
square1
It would appear that Jon Corzine violated the cardinal rule (aka the Madoff Rule): Don’t steal from the 1%. I expect him to go down hard.
Roy G.
As I understand it, Corzine’s sales pitch for taking this position was to make MF Global more like Goldman Sachs – in other words, win big by leveraging big… and by skirting the law. His bad, and his criminal liability. He can’t even plead Alzheimer’s like Reagan.
I can’t believe the obfuscation that’s being thrown up around this simple fraud, but then again, after seeing Jerry Sandusky playing innocent on tv, I guess we live in strange times.
Felonious Monk
It’s a CEOs job to hire someone to take the fall for this kind of mismanagement.