Jonah, look on the bright side: The collapse of MF Global frees up Corzine to join the Obama administration.
Here’s a report from the NYT from August:
MF Global, the commodities and derivatives broker led by Jon S. Corzine, offered to sell five-year notes on Tuesday with an unusual twist: The notes promise to pay an extra 1 percent in the interest rate in the event of ‘’the departure of Mr. Corzine as our full time chief executive officer due to his appointment to a federal position by the President of the United States and confirmation of that appointment by the United States Senate prior to July 1, 2013,’’ according to a preliminary prospectus.
And let’s not forget the Corzine fundraiser with Wall Street fat-cats-for-Obama in April:
A similar benefit was held in April at the home of the wife of Jon Corzine, the ex-governor of New Jersey and former chief executive of Goldman Sachs. Both events are part of a concerted effort to lure deep-pocketed donors back to Mr. Obama’s corner for his 2012 re-election campaign. Some longtime Democrats in the finance community, angered by Mr. Obama’s comparisons of Wall Street executives to “fat cats” with outsize bonuses, have chafed at Mr. Obama’s attempt at an election-year rapprochement, and only a handful of bank executives appear as donors in recent filings connected to the campaign.
Of course, before Corzine can replace Timmy as Treasury Secretary or continue his secret help to Obama 2012, he’ll have to find the hundreds of millions missing dollars:
U.S. regulators are investigating whether hundreds of millions of dollars are missing from client accounts at MF Global Holdings Ltd., according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The firm, which filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, was ordered by the enforcement division of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to preserve records for the review, one of the people said.
MF Global, the holding company for the broker-dealer run by former New Jersey governor and ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. co- Chairman Jon Corzine, told regulators Monday about deficiencies in accounts that it managed for clients in the futures market, the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission said in an e-mailed statement.
Corzine, 64, now faces a regulatory probe as well as a bankruptcy. He wagered US$6.3 billion of the firm’s own money on sovereign European debt in a bid to increase profits. Instead, the firm reported a US$191.6 million quarterly loss on Oct. 25 as Europe’s debt crisis led to demands from regulators to boost capital, as well as credit downgrades and margin calls, MF Global President Bradley Abelow said.
Stay tuned.