a letter about MF financial

[rdking647]

i found this letter online to the trustee for the MF financial bankruptcy. what I think should be done is corzine and the top execs should be ordered to bay the missing money and then if its recovered they get it back. If not then they lose but either way their customers are made whole



To: James W. Giddens, Trustee, SIPA Liquidation of MF Global, Inc. and Martin Glenn, United States Bankruptcy Judge

From: Cathy Cuthbert

RE: MF Global Heist

I am a lucky, former MF Global client. Unfortunately, I’m not a multi-billionaire who got the memo. I had a modest account that was supplying me with a modest livelihood, when suddenly one Monday afternoon, my account was frozen, my livelihood was essentially gone and four years worth of trading profits vanished into cyber space. You might be interested to know that sitting on my desk as I write is an application for a part-time, seasonal position stocking shelves at the local Rite-Aid. Then again, maybe not…

Let’s try a thought experiment. Suppose I worked at a little bank in Anywhere, USA and it just so happened that I had a few peccadilloes I needed to clean up. So I borrowed just a tad of money from a few clients’ accounts without it showing on their statements or anything – don’t want to alarm the little tykes – intending all along to of course return the money ‘cause ya know, I’m good for it, but somehow I just couldn’t come up with the bucks fast enough and somebody found out. Do you suppose I could just resign, go home and suck a sore paw while someone else looked high and low, under my desk, in my filing cabinet, maybe pieced together my shredded docs hoping to find out where, oh where the money went?

Don’t be ridiculous. Not only would I immediately be tased, hand cuffed and thrown into the slammer, hard evidence or no, but the money would be very quickly found since there is not one thin dime that passes between accounts in all of the entire USA that isn’t thoroughly and incessantly tracked anywhere and everywhere it goes. Not one thin dime. You fellas know it, I know it, but worse for you, the whole world knows it and I don’t have to tell you they are all watching.

Should I remind you that the key factor in any financial market is the belief of all the participants that the market is mostly fair? Oh, please, don’t call me naïve. I am well aware that futures trading is a negative sum game, and that there are plenty of shenanigans going on with bad fills, running stops and the like. That’s ok, though, since it is petty theft and we can figure out ways to stay in the game regardless. But what everybody needs to know is that nobody is going to clean out our accounts. We need to be assured that flagrant grand theft is simply out of the question. If the idea were to become credible that anyone’s account – or, as in this case, everyone’s accounts – can be stolen with impunity and with no recourse for the aggrieved, nobody in his right mind would be in the futures market.

You can obfuscate with legal mumbo jumbo about how depositing money into a futures account makes me an unsecured creditor, but I can assure you that you don’t want to go in that direction. Here’s why. If you use that excuse to pay off the Big Boys by letting them cut ahead of us clients in bankruptcy due to our status as unsecured creditors, what does that mean for my account at the friendly, neighborhood Bank of America? Steal from us MF Global clients, and the hoi polloi, who are already slowly but surely waking up to the banking scam, just might figure out that they, too, are unsecured creditors every time they deposit their paychecks.

Yes, Jimmy and Marty, you are staring in the face of not just a run on the futures markets, but a run on the banks.

Let’s stop pretending that you don’t know where the money is. Corzine got a margin call from the Big Boys and paid it. So claw it back. Yes, it’s that simple. A mere $600 million is not going to solve their multi-billion dollar problems, anyway. While you’re waiting for the clawback, you can make all the clients’ accounts whole with funds from SIPC if you have to. Forget this pathetic 60% recovery of collateral. Nothing less than 100% will do. And don’t forget to order Corzine his orange jump suit. Either he bunks with Madoff or no one will believe that this can’t happen again.

So here’s the deal. You can be the heroes or you can be the goats. You can take the high ground, convince the Big Boys that they have gone too far for their own good and return the futures markets to some semblance of reliability, or you could be the ones to kick the last prop out from under the vestiges of capitalism and send the world spiraling at an ever accelerating pace into a fascist future.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

[Tansy_Gold]

1. Forgive me, Cathy, but I'm not too terribly sympathetic

Your "profits" were nothing more or less than gambling winnings. Your "investment" did not contribute to anything other than the casino.

You indeed were lucky -- for four years you lived off your winnings, while someone else footed the bill. Maybe that someone, or some of those someones, worked at Rite-Aid for barely above minimum wage. I'll bet you never even noticed them, paid any attention to them.

You had, at one time, enough to invest in MF Global that your investment provided you with an income you could live on. Most of the Riteaide employees who actually work for their living can't say as much. You did nothing but sit on your ass and take the money.

Now you may actually have to go out and work for your living, Cath. Welcome to the real world.



Tansy Gold

[rdking647]

2. while you may not agree with futures trading

it does serve a useful purpose... and no one else "footed th ebill"

i realize some people here are to blinded by their hatred of everything capitalism but it still works better than any alternative.

[Tansy_Gold]

3. Look up Henry Shatkin some time

I worked for him many many years ago and I learned from working for his commodities trading firm that it's nothing but speculating. I know all the justifications, and I still say it's nothing but greedy speculating at someone else's expense.

I have no sympathy for someone who has sat on their ass and lived off someone else's labor and then whines about it.

And if I were you, I wouldn't brag about how well capitalism is working these days.




Tansy Gold, proud socialist

[rdking647]

9. i know henry shatkin

i was a trader for 20+ years on the floor... how is speculating at someone else's expense??????

[hughee99]

4. Seriously?

She didn't lose her money speculating, she's not complaining about losing her money speculating. She's not complaining that MF GLOBAL made bad investments for her. They stole her money. They took money, HER money, that they were not legally entitled to. It's the same as getting robbed.

In the real world, people usually get upset about this rather than blaming the victim.

[Tansy_Gold]

5. I am not blaming her

I just don't have any sympathy for her.

Most such investors are warned that their money is at risk and that there are no guarantees. Given what's been going on in the investment (sic) world the past four or six or eight years, why would anyone think there's much honesty in the markets?

There's an article/letter/essay floating around here written by a financial advisor who closed her business and is getting all her clients out of the markets because she knows it's not sane. The fact that she claims Obama is a Marxist is silly in and of itself, but at least she knows there's no honesty or safety in what used to be called investing.

It's also indicative of the writer of the letter in the OP that she considers working at Rite Aid to be a real step down from her previous life of leisure. But the fact that there are no better jobs for someone of her obvious station, education, skills, etc., etc., etc., is directly attributable to the greed of the "capitalists" who have made the world economy what it is. And maybe if she didn't have such obvious contempt for working people, I might have at least a little better opinion of her.

But I don't.


TG

[hughee99]

6. They are warned that their money is a risk,

because the market could do anything and they could lose it all. But she didn't lose money because of what the market did, or because the market is rigged in any way. She didn't stay in the market too long, or make bad investments. MF global went to customer accounts, took money out of them, and spent it for their own purposes. This isn't about the market AT ALL, it's about robbery.

But speaking of speculating, it sounds like YOUR more than happy to speculate about her life of leisure. The fact that she doesn't have a job doesn't mean she's sipping mojitos on south beach. She could be caring for sick relatives, have a medical condition that makes it difficult to work regularly, doing volunteer work, or a widowed mom who invested her husbands life insurance money.

If you don't want to have any sympathy for her, that's your choice, but this is NOT about playing the marking or having to get a job. It's about getting your life savings ripped off, not by bad choices, but by outright THEFT, and having those responsible walk free (and not even return the money). Some DUers are still bothered by that.

[Citizen Worker]

7. Oouch Tansy. That stings all the way over here. Well said by the way.

[Hotler]

8. Boo-hoo missy! Now go write us a short essay on.....

why you thought that you could trust Jon Corzine and and his pals with your life savings.