Posted on 12/15/2011 4:22:16 AM PST by Kaslin
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 today.
Does anyone in their right mind think that no one else on the street might know something about what happened at MF Global? Of course people know things. They are either hoping no one asks them, or that they don’t get found out and they can write a book about the whole scandal that is published after they die. That’s why the bombshell dropped in the Senate hearings yesterday by $CME is so intriguing. It’s time to play “who knows what at which bank or fund”. Place your bets in the comments.
Someone, somewhere with really good information is talking. They are looking to save their skin. Hopefully, they have recorded everything, saved all their email and phone records. If they did, it’s only a question of time before a scandal like this begins to spread to other banks, and other bankers. Maybe even a complicit hedge fund. More information will drip out, tightening the noose on people that have clammed up. Agonizing drip by drip. The Chinese water torture that began yesterday is only beginning.
How would you like to be the guy that knows something, or did business with MF and is hoping to hide for awhile until it blows over? Now, you know someone is talking. And it’s not just an underling. It’s someone that has information and you have no way of knowing who it is or what they have. Rumsfeld logic applies for that person, the “unknown unknowns”. If you don’t want to spend any time in the pokey, your life becomes a game theory question of “prisoners dilemma”. Wait too long, get caught, and you are modeling orange jumpsuits. Go too early and you lose a lot of face on the street and have to get a real job.
Because of the titanic theft, and the fact that Corzine is so politically connected with deep and long business ties, it will take some time to tease out. But, someone knows a lot of particulars. I’d stay tuned. Scandals like these have a tipping point. Once the momentum turns, we will find the money and a lot of information about how it got to the places it went.
Next summer, it will make a good trash novel, drip by drip.
I’d like to know what the admin, the Fed, and ratings agencies knew and when they knew it. And if any pols got outta MFG just in the nick of time....
Was the $1.2billion in currency or gold deposits? Or was it an accumulation of paper titles and certificates of deposit?
I have not been paid in ‘greenbacks’ for decades - only paper transactions - makes me wonder where the actual currency for my savings, checking and CDs is held.
I have no idea how ‘bankers’ and ‘fund managers’ work - can someone summarize for me?
The banksters have a damn good track record when it comes to skating on their crimes. My money’s on them.
I bet all their secretaries could tell them a lot.
“Scandals like these have a tipping point.”
Slightly off-topic, but I’m still waiting for the Fast & Furious tipping point.
OTOH, yesterday’s Asbury Park Press had a pretty damning front page. It was huge, took up 1/2 the paper (and the APP is still a full size paper, not a tabloid) with a big photo of Corzine swearing in at the Senate hearing and the headline: ANOTHER HEARING ANOTHER DENIAL and it even had some little bubble/box pointing to his head referencing the 1.2 missing billions.
Don’t bother looking for this on the home page (app.com if anyone is interested in South Jersey News) it was all local stuff.
“I bet all their secretaries could tell them a lot.”
Look for a lot of secretaries marrying their bosses!
-——makes me wonder where the actual currency for my savings,-——
First, money does not exist. Your money and all other money exists as entries on an electronic ledger. The currency you think is money is merely a representation of blips on a very big ledger.
Accounts are settled these days by zapping part of your entry to some other ledger instantaneously electronically.
Your summary is being hypothecated. After multiple rehypothecation it will be returned to its rightful owner which has ceased to be you.
That was my conclusion - and I found it astonishing.
So, the FDIC is the entity that I depend on if I want to withdraw all my assets (from the bank) in cash?
My thought is...
The FDIC does guarantee the value of your ledger entry against bank failure to an upper limit.
If you have a pile of cash under the bed, it will steadily decrease in real value as it is ravaged by inflation. Also, tomorrow morning, the $ could be devalued and the pile though the same number and denomination of bills would buy you less.
http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/dis/
Limit is $250,000 per account - but categories are further defined. A little confusing.
will peruse later
Smarty pants;) LOL!!!!
The fact that Soros came in and bought up the pieces for chump change tells me everything. It was a payoff to Soros.
Do you think the SEC missed a big heist like this again because they continue to spend 8 hours a day on porn sites? Was anyone ever fired for that, for completely missing Bernie Madoff? Do the guys at SEC also get a pass on insider trading like congress?
Since they could no doubt replace the Obama Administration with an equally compliant Gingrich or Romney Administration by crooking a little finger, I don't expect any serious attempt to investigate MF Global. Some mid-level executive will be hung out to dry, and told if he "testifies right" he might live long enough to see his family again in fifteen years.
The bigger problem for the Powers That Be is that MF Global was just a crack in the dike, and there are many more coming. We haven't seen what lengths they will go to to hold on to power, but I expect they will end up making Chairman Mao look virtuous.
Worth noting that 80% of investor funds have been found.
The Trustee has already petitioned the Court to return most of that.
This tells me we do not have a major fraud or financial collapse pending.
And, all the former executives say the same thing...
Since being fired, they have no access to the financial records.
Thus, they have no idea how the Trustee came up with this number.
I reject the howling mob myth that money just “disappears.”
There is ALWAYS an electronic trail.
Former executives may avoid prison, but they ALWAYS get sued.
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