Corzine connection
The MF Global implosion is also fraught with questions about the recently defrocked Jon Corzine, who resigned as MF Global's chief executive earlier this month. Corzine's background as a co-chairman at Goldman Sachs before he became Democratic New Jersey governor presents certain difficulties. For one, Gary Gensler, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission – one of a handful of agencies investigating the MF Global disaster – previously worked with Corzine at Goldman Sachs (GS). As a result, he had to recuse himself from leading the probe. CFTC commissioner Jill Sommers has taken his place. While Sommers is a senior commissioner, this appointment shows Washington's continued disinterest in mounting a real crackdown, as Sommers is widely seen as friend to the futures industry and – in keeping with MF Global's conflict-of-interest quotient – a former employee of the CME.
The CME's own actions, it turns out, also are not above scrutiny, as a source privy to a non-public review of the MF Global scandal at the exchange reveals that red flags cropped up shortly before MF Global's collapse, but were not disclosed to the CFTC as they should have been. This would be a violation of the rules applying to the CME as a self-regulatory organization. "It's absurd that a self-regulating body can exist when it's a non-regulating body," the New York trader says. "This is a public exchange. Everyone is terrified." For its part, the CME has issued a statement saying that such reports have been filled with "inaccuracies."
Meanwhile, the CFTC, which is supposed to be the central watchdog agency of the futures market, can be thanked for relaxing the rules restricting how firms like MF Global use customer funds when the customer's not using it – a privilege for which MF Global, among others, furiously lobbied for years. Late last week, reports trickled in from the MF Global probe that the firm may have unlawfully relaxed those rules ahead of its bankruptcy, using client funds to pay off its debts and bolstering the $6.3 billion bet on sovereign European debt that ultimately overturned the brokerage.
All of which means the money might not just be missing, it could be gone for good. While many large-sized traders believe that the tangles in the MF Global web will eventually be sorted out, that doesn't help the smaller investors who continue to suffer.
"We expected some hiccups, but it's been botched from the get-go," says Sean McGillivray of Great Pacific Wealth Management, an introducing brokerage that's attempting to advocate for its clients. "It's shut us down and it's effectively shut down tens of thousands of futures investors and their supporting brokerages. I try to reach the trustee every day. Once I got voicemail. But usually it rings off the hook."
