Forum Post: WSWS: Corzine resigns from MF Global amid mounting probes. Obama kicked off his fund-raising drive in New York City at Corzine’s Fifth Ave. apartment

from today's World Socialist Web Site:

Corzine resigns from MF Global amid mounting probes.

Corzine, who is at the center of the growing bankruptcy scandal, was CEO of Goldman Sachs until 1999, when he left with a fortune of $400 million. He used $62 million of this to fund his successful campaign as the Democratic candidate for the US Senate from New Jersey. He subsequently spent another $38 million in 2005 to become the Democratic governor of New Jersey, but was defeated for re-election by Republican Chris Christie in 2009.

In March 2010, he returned to Wall Street to become CEO and chairman of MF Global. In the 18 months before the firm’s collapse, his total compensation rose to $14.25 million, including a $1.5 million sign-on payment and $2.75 million in bonuses, as well as stock options. While his contract guaranteed him a severance payment of $9 million, plus a $3 million bonus, it was announced Friday that he would not try to take the additional money out of the firm he bankrupted. No doubt this decision was taken with an eye towards how it would look to investigators and a potential judge and jury.

While taking in this obscene level of wealth, Corzine gave a series of lectures as a visiting professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs decrying excessive compensation on Wall Street and calling for stiffer regulation. In one lecture, he condemned major Wall Street financial speculators for leveraging shareholder equity 30-to-1. Under his direction, MF Global was financing its high-stakes bets on European debt with short-term loans, bringing its debt-to-equity ratio (leverage) closer to 40-to-1.

Corzine had emerged in recent months as one of the principal fundraisers for President Barack Obama’s re-election, bundling some half a million dollars for the campaign. Obama kicked off his fund-raising drive in New York City at Corzine’s Fifth Ave. apartment overlooking Central Park, where well-heeled Wall Street supporters were invited in return for making the maximum legal contributions to both the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party.

This close relationship between Corzine and Obama, highlighted by the crash of MF Global, poses political problems for the Democratic president’s cynical attempts to exploit the tide of anti-Wall Street sentiment.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/corz-n05.shtml