Forum Post: Banks are still robbing their customers - MF Global

I'm not sure if this has been covered in this Forum, but yet again, today, right now, we have a clear example of how the greed of financial institutions are still robbing their costumers. I present to you MF Global.

MF Global could not be a more perfect example of how broken our financial institutions are. Run by the financial oligarchy, for the sole purpose of making billions upon billions through financial transactions which amount to nothing more than Las Vegas style gambling. Let me point out to you the hallmarks of this classic example.

1) The CEO - Jon Corzine. Ex-executive at Goldman Sachs, Ex-Governor of New Jersey, and now ex-CEO of a bankrupt financial institution.

2) Corzine placed multi-billion dollar bets on Europe. (44 billion!) He was leveraged 44 to 1.

3) Wall St regulators told him to change his betting strategy by effectively lowering his 44 to 1 exposure. He was able to by pass the regulators and keep his over-exposure.

4) He is good friends with Gary Gensler, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Gary Gensler spent 18 years working at Goldman Sachs. Effectively, we have the fox guarding the chicken house. (Of course Corzine was able to skirt by regulators when the regulators are his good friends who worked either with him or under him at Goldman Sachs.)

5) In order for Corzine to cover his bets, he stole 600 million dollars ($600,000,000) from his depositors at MF Global.

Did anyone break any laws? Maybe not. The NYTimes reports that Corzine may not have broken any laws and acted within the frame work of Banking and Trading regulations. Regulators are "camped out" at MF Global "searching" for the missing money? How can anyone "loose" $600,000,000!!!!! in this age of computer trading. All trading action and money movement has to be recorded in databases and computer transaction systems.

Let me summarize. We have the head of a financial institution who was both a Governor of a major state of this country and an executive of one of the most aggressive financial institutions in this country. A classic mix of financial power and political power. The regulators are in bed with the financial institution thus allowing the financial institution to bypass the mechanisms put in place to avert the dangers inherent in the financial market. The institution steals money from its clients to cover its risky bets, for which if the bets played out in the institutions favour, the profits would have gone to the executives, not the clients.

Let me summarize more succinctly. We have a classic case of

                      GREED, COLLUSION, THEFT

A classic, grade AAA+++, golden, shining, perfect, example of how the oligarchy has taken over our financial system for the sole purpose to making themselves richer at the expense of the 99%.

The system is broken, and is still broken 3 years after the 2008 meltdown. MF Global is exhibit #1.

Something has to change, and change now, otherwise it'll be the 99% who will be holding the bag when the dust settles after the next meltdown.