‘Show Us the MF Money’ Part II: Latest Round of Corzine Congressional Testimony
**Written by Doug Powers
Yet another day of “Occupy Congressional Hearing” for former MF Global CEO & Joe Biden phone-a-friend economic advice lifeline, Jon Corzine. C-SPAN 3 is carrying the hearing live.
From USA Today:
WASHINGTON – Jon Corzine has told a Senate panel that he never told anyone to “misuse” customer money that vanished when MF Global collapsed this fall.
An estimated $1.2 billion in client money is missing. Senators are demanding Corzine and two other executives at the securities firm explain who authorized the transfer of money in the days before the firm collapsed in the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
“I never gave any instruction to anyone at MF Global to misuse customer funds,” Corzine testified at a hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday.
Corzine, a former Democratic New Jersey senator and governor, resigned as CEO of the securities firm last month.
Bradley Abelow, the firm’s president and chief operating officer, and Henri Steenkamp, the chief financial officer, also tried to distance themselves from any decision to transfer the money at the hearing.
[...]
All three witnesses said that they don’t know where the money is.Yet their testimony varied in subtle ways. Corzine said he did not direct anyone to misuse the money. Abelow said he does not recall directing anyone to divert the money. Steenkamp said clearly that he did not “authorize, approve or know of any transfers of customer funds” out of their accounts.”
Wow. It’s like asking my kids what happened to the $1.2 billion worth of cookies that were in the jar.
Meanwhile, the RNC is seizing the day:
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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I hope this scum bag is found to be lying and is hauled to prison for doing so.
L
For being the world’s smartest people, these Democrats sure are stupid, naive and uninformed. Either that or they lie a lot.
Yeah, like those thieves would ever need special instructions on how to steal!
Committee: “Do any of you remember authorizing money transfers totaling $1.2B?”
Corzine: “Is that my question? No I don’t remember doing so. How about you Brad? Do you remember anything?”
Abelow: “Why no Mr… uh… what’s your name again? Maybe Henri can help you out.”
Steenkamp: “Oh sure. Blame the French guy. Damn it Brad! I’m a Chief Financial Officer, not a Chief…. never mind. What was the questions again?”
Was the question “Did you” or “Who was it”?
This guy is a slippery eel, not answering questions and seemingly not concerned with where the money is. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to retrieve. The answers should have come a month ago. Why the delaying tactics?
Show us the MF money? lolololololol!! WTF? I can’t believe we can continue to say such things and not get banned here. Um…kidding, folks. But it really is hilarious. Only the left can come up with these great acronyms! Those old unintended consequences again. Love it!!
And by the way, Corzine is screwed!
Corzine simply defines the term “misuse” much differently than his inquisitors. His party wrote the book on stealing. Whatever it needs or wants, stealing has always been its go-to option. Experts in that regard.
Can you be more specific? Your wish could apply to just about anyone in the current regime.
Corzine: Hey, some people like their cucumbers pickled.
Good point. My post could apply to all in bho’s team, bho also! The whole blooming bunch are crooks and lie.
L
You can apply that to many members of CONgress too.
Corzine carries around his thesaurus in lieu of the Bible. “I didn’t say that word ‘misuse’ specifically. I didn’t intend to…” Every statement Democrats make are full of synonyms and antonyms to avoid legal liabilities. Deceit.
Why can’t Obama force the IRS to check for secret Swiss bank accounts held by Corzine, MF Global and his fellow Democrat criminals? He did it with Swiss UBS AG. Electronic records exist. Why doesn’t the Obama administration want to find them?
Of course he didn’t tell them directly. He just made an environment where it was not only possible, but likely that they would misuse it.
Or to put it another way, he might not have ordered the “code red”, but he sure as hell made it clear what he wanted to happen…
This WSJ report isn’t going to go over well. Unauthorized sale of assets at a discount to market value to a preferred client.
Blame the Frenchman again!
“In what universe is a yacht in Monte Carlo a ‘misuse’ of customer funds” he demanded?
His friend has swiped a windfall of 1.2 Billion. In Obama’s world, this is good news. Politicians have organized their own crime syndicate. This is part of their regular behaviour.
CEOs determining their own pay by asking fellow CEOs what is the ‘market rate’. Politicians selling access to Congress and Congress funelling money back to the executives at a rate greater than 1x the amount invested. Politicians then going to work for the companies they helped while in office.
It’s all about big government, big money, power and control.
Newt is another example of the status Quo. So is Mitt Romney. Ron Paul isn’t, but then so many people think he hates Israel. Of course, these cheerleaders don’t understand that Ron Paul stood in support of Israel when it attacked Iraq’s nuclear weapons program in the early 1980′s. When everyone was condeming Israel for defending itself, Ron Paul stood for Israel. But, that’s not the story line that so many put forth, so Ron will be by-passed and we will get another 10 John Corzines during the next presidential period, because we need a ‘serious’ candidate who claims to ‘stand with Israel’.
America going down the drain all in the name of some fictional support of Israel. Can you imagine what the history books will right about the American experience, 100 years from now?
That syndicate has been around and organized for over a century, as Mark Twain pointed out over 100 years ago:
… “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress”
Of course there were no “orders” to mismanage those funds; Corzine’s folks are self-starters!
Didn’t Obumer say that he was gonna spend 1 billion on his re-election?
Somewhere some how that 1 billion has already been procured. And Corzine and buds get the 0.2 billion as a finders fee.
Makes perfect sense.
You Ron Paul people are starting to get annoying. Every thread, everywhere is all about how great he is.
He is not great. He’s a spoiled ego maniac that will guarantee Obama’s second term when he absolutely goes third party.
I cannot find the words to describe this treachery to America in her most dire need.
123upnorth:
Ron Paul is nuts. This imbecile will allow Iran to go nuclear. Hey, idiot!! An EMP attack by Iran WIL DAMAGE CANADA TOO!!!!!
This fact alone disqualifies Ron Paul.
I still don’t understand how they are even attempting to claim ignorance on where the money dissappeared to. My wife is an accountant, and during audits she is required to know TO THE PENNY where everything went. These people lost over a billion dollars and have no clue where it went? Were they carrying bags of money around? This stuff is all done electronically, so there is a trail. There should be an audit by a forensic accountant (not by MFG), and some people should go to jail.
123upnorth:
In case you don’t know, EMP stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse. All you need is ONE nuke blowing up high in the atmosphere (20-50 miles up), with a yield as small as 100 kilotons, and most, if not all, of North America goes back to the 1870s. And your idol is so stupid, he’ll open the door to such a catastrophe.
I don’t know if this is of interest, a broker giving an interview about MF Global, an eye opening article.
http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/2011/12/02/ann-barnhardt/interview-transcript
I’m sure Corzine isn’t lying at all. He never said to his peeps, “Hey, go misuse customer money.” Instead, he probably said something like, “Hey, be sure you wire all that customer money into my Swiss bank account.” Corzine would never use the word, “misuse.”
China would not allow Iran to attack the U.S., for the Chinese government would lose power from the implosion of the U.S. and world economies if the U.S. were hit with a nuclear attack. The Chinese government holds power by continuing to make their economy grow. If the U.S. gets hit, 20% unempolyment in China would happen within 3 years and the government would get overthrown. The Chinese know this.
Secondly, Israel would wipe out Iran 10 times over if they ever launched an attack. Ron Paul supports Israel striking Iran. The U.S. on the other hand, wants Israel to ask its permission before they do anything.
Thirdly, you guys have numerous nuclear subs that would wipe Iran out before they even got to see what their attack did to the U.S.
Fourthly, you have the technology to shoot down their missle attacks, yet they don’t have the ability to shoot down yours. They know this. The chance of them coming out ahead is less than 1%.
Fifthly, countries, no matter how much you think you can prevent it, will develop nuclear weapons against your interests and wishes – see Russia, China, Libya (which the U.S. wasn’t even aware had such an advanced program)
Number six, the Iranians want power and influence, as do your leaders. They actually aren’t interested in destroying themselves. What would they do with all their power and wealth once they died?
The chance of the U.S. not hitting Iran before the missles hit the U.S., plus the chance of your interceptor missles missing the Iranian launch missles, plus the chance of no other nation wiping Iran off the map if they did launch an attack, plus the chance that all Iran’s ‘friends’ would not step in the way to prevent Iran, plus the chance of Iran not realizing all of this is much lower than the chance of the status quo politicians in America bankrupting your nation if you continue to vote for big government players.
Kinda like the mobster boss that says “If the guy that owns the deli on the corner doesn’t wake up tomorrow, I won’t be sad.”
And sure enough, the guy is found dead the next day.
But the mobster boss never said to have anyone killed … right?
123upnorth:
Are you REALLY that naive, or just dumb? Don’t you know that the Iranians have a death cult, that WANTS to kill 1/3 of mankind so that the 12th Imam may come back out of the well its been hiding for 1300 years or so?
Don’t you know that all they need to really screw this country up is to put a nuke in a cargo container or a private plane and detonate it in any port city, no missile needed?
And yes, dummy, they don’t mind destroying themselves, as long as they can take down “The Great Satan” and “The Little Satan” along with them.
Last, but not least, the Chinese would LOOOOVE to see the U.S. destroyed. It would give them carte blanche to take over Asia and the Western Pacific region. So yeah, apparently you’re that dumb.
Watching John Corzine is like watching Nixon aides during the Watergate hearings. It’s one meaningless, weasel statement after another. According to my recollection… Not that I recall… At that point in time… No specific memory… No specific intent. Most notably, the guy, THE guy, the CEO, the go-to guy for Biden and Obama actually, it turns out, knows nuddin’, absolutely NOTHING about where his client’s money is, where it could have gone, who could have gotten it anywhere, no names, no places, no friggin’ idea. How did this clueless politico get to be anything anywhere? He was top dog at Goldman as well as MS Global. He was Senator. He was Governor. He comes off as a total idiot. I know, he’s not really, just playin’ to try to minimize his culpability, but his responses are outrageous. If he had an ounce of honor or truth in him, he’d own up. What a wastoid! And he had power over people!!! What a country. My trust in the US and it’s “leaders” is almost all gone.
***
HI CONSERVATIVE_HISPANIC–#23. I’m not sure that the 100 KT. nuke blast 50 miles up would do the wide area damage you describe. The worst damage so far was during a multi megaton ground based H-bomb test in the South Pacific in the 1950′s. It did disrupt all radar and radio communication within hundreds miles or so for about half an hour as I remember being told by someone in the test. Hardened special purpose recording equipment did operate during the EMP effect time–on board a NIKE-HERCULES Missile that was fired through the fireball shortly after the big boom.
***
All military systems go through EMP hardening and testing. At White Sands a metallic net connected to a lightning bolt generator is strung over PVC poles and the unit to be tested. Under the cement pad is a well with a fast burst nuclear reactor that shoots a burst of neutrons through the equipment as the lightning bolt hits. Most units survive pretty well. Commercial items don’t survive the test–mil spec stuff does.
***
I seem to remember that some military commo systems still use obsolete vacuum tube radio equipment for backup since it is far less vulnerable to EMP than modern transistor and integrated circuit designs. Microcomputers are especially vulnerable to EMP.
***
John Bibb
***
Kind of an important point, no?
I am sure China would have no qualms over the US being blown up. The Chinese have been facilitating our demise for some time by supportng our enemies and vetoing in the UN any measures we take to defend ourselves from our enemies.
They control the flow of information in their country. That’s how communist regimes operate. They KILL the revolutionaries and don’t report it in the state run media. Who is there to stop them? France? Canada? You do realize Mao killed millions to get into power right? Stalin? Lenin? Kim Jung Il? I don’t think they are too worried about an overthrow.
Rocketman,
Do you think the Drone in Iran was brought down by some sort of EMF, shot down with conventional weapons, was landed by our military after a malfunction, or just lost control and crash landed on it’s own?
Iran is claiming an EMF type strike on it.
***
HI 123UP_NORTH–#26. Good points all. A few comments on your 6 points:
***
First–China might miscalculate and decide that it was worth letting Iran provide a backpack type nuke to terrorists who would put it into one of our cities. The TBM warheads they are designing and building are not big super heavy items. Remember that Hitler’s Nazi Germany was deathly afraid of a 2 front war. They had a secret deal with the Russkis to carve up Eastern Europe between them–and still made the fatal error of attacking Russia. Where 4 of every 5 German soldiers died.
***
Second–Israel is a small country–a few unexpected Iranian nukes could destroy many cities and kill many people. Israel would retaliate–but the Iranians are crazies wanting Armageddon to bring the 12 Imam out of the well to redeem the world. They have stated that tens of millions of dead Arabs and Iranians are acceptable “collateral damage” to bring on paradise on earth.
***
Third–our nuclear subs would devastate Iran. If a president decided to retaliate despite not knowing where the backpack nukes came from. So far–for 30 years the Iranians have killed, kidnapped, and provided IED’s to murder our soldiers and sailors. We have never retaliated against them in any effective way. Why should they worry with Comrade Obama in charge? Although–they were afraid of Ronald Reagan–not so much of Jimmy Carter.
***
Fourth–I’ve seen a lot of anti-missile test failures, and failure to engage incoming TBM surrogates. And hitting a far faster and higher IRBM or ICBM is even tougher. Particularly when a surprise attack of 10 or more of them hit you at once–with decoys, jammers, chaff, and possibly a nuke precursor blast to render all radars inoperable for tens of minutes. High tech is great when it works–but my guess is that more than 50 percent of the incoming warheads will get through. And high tech is useless against backpack nukes carried over the porous borders and detonated in high rise buildings in our big cities. The Pearl Harbor attack was successful despite our badly employed but far superior code breaking and land based bomber capabilities.
***
Fifth–Even South Africa built 2 nukes–one was tested at sea and a detector satellite reported the explosion. Which was written off as a satellite detector failure. Yes–any small country can get the nukes–buying or building them. North Korea is the proof that even a starving nation can do so. Pakistan’s leader said that his people “would eat grass” instead of food if they could get nukes. And they did both.
***
Sixth–The Russkis were evil–but they weren’t crazy. When you’re waiting for the 12th. Imam to come out of the well–all bets are off. Rational thinking just went out the window. Coming to an American city someday.
***
John Bibb
***
rocketman:
Please check EMP on Wikipedia. The EMP effects depend on bomb yield and altitude of detonation. As little as 10 kilotons can produce an EMP. An explosion at 250-312 miles altitude could affect ALL OF THE CONTINENTAL U.S.
You’re correct that military circuitry can survive an EMP, but all civilian electronics would be fried in an attack.
So maybe 100 kilotons wouldn’t makes all Amish, but I wouldn’t want to be within 100 miles of such an event. Depending of the location, the economic damage would be in the trillions. The human cost could be in the tens of millions.
Man, if I lost my cell phone signal, I would be mad! Well, as long as the toaster still works and I do have an acoustic guitar.
***
HI T_BONE–#32. I don’t have any real knowledge about these drones. However, I have seen target drones hit by missile warheads, and some that crashed when the on board jet engine flamed out when the rocket booster kicked the plane into the air off a zero length rail launcher. And some where the recovery parachute failed and the drone hit the desert at full speed from high altitude after control system or radio control link failure.
***
The drone in the photo looks real to me. It does not show any signs of a blast or fragment / bullet hit. It does not show any signs of a hard landing either. I think it either came down on a parachute or that the control system was really good enough to find a suitable landing site and made it down successfully without remote control. On board optical and radar equipment, etc.
***
As far as a failure to destruct–who knows if it had a destruct system on board? Not too popular with ground crews who will have to clean up, refuel, and launch the drone again. Some target drones had more than 40 missions on them–how long can a person trust that a destruct system won’t go off when you work on the plane?
***
I’ve tested launchers and armed missiles and their destruct systems. They only had to work once–and we cleared the area immediately once things were ready. And really hoped that the bird flew and that we wouldn’t have to disarm a hangfire missile and maybe have it detonate when we approached it.
***
Somehow the most likely scenario is that the spy plane drone lost communication with the control point. Or that the on board GPS location information was bad or missing. Satellite links allow pilots in Nevada to fly a drone halfway around the world. TV links, control and telemetry data, etc. If the link fails the drone probably goes into an orbit until it regains the signal link. Or it may be pre-programmed to fly home and land without human control if no link is regained. Hardware or software problems are always a possibility.
***
It could be possible that either a high power T.V. or F.M. radio transmitter under the drone flight path interfered with and jammed the control link microwave signals. And GPS can go nuts with a Light Squared high power cell phone tower on the GPS frequencies. Accidentally–or with real bad luck–a deliberate jammer cooked up by the Iranians or their Russki or Chinese engineer buddies.
***
There were some incidents 2 decades ago of Tornado Jet Fighters and a fly by wire helicopter going nuts when they flew too close to a high powered commercial F.M. radio transmitter in Europe. The chopper pilot was lucky to regain control and not crash. I seem to remember the Tornado went down. Lots of redesign work (RFI shielding improvements, design changes, etc.) fixed these problems.
***
And to paraphrase the old Scottish maxim, “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley!” (sp?) Ditto for high tech wonders–sooner or later something will fail in hardware, software, or operational mission setup that will teach you something that should have been obvious–but was poo-pood as unlikely or as not worth worrying about. You can get 99 percent–but 100 percent is never doable. Despite what higher management or the brass might think.
***
Murphy’s Law–”Anything that can go wrong–will go wrong!” Murphy’s Correlary–”At the worst possible time!” Murphy’s Lemma–”Murphy was an optimist!” All 3 apply.
***
John Bibb
***
***
HI AGAIN CONSERVATIVE_HISPANIC–#34. I’ll check Wikipedia’s EMP article. And also–if the Jihadis get nukes–I don’t think they will waste them on cooking our toys. They want the maximum number of dead innocent people–Nagasaki and Hiroshima style max payback devastation. The proper altitude for max city damage is probably one of the upper floors on our skyscrapers.
***
John Bibb
***
How much was it that Obama’s campaign folks said they were going to raise for his campaign? $1 billion? Maybe they got it one fell swoop through MF Global courtesy of Corzine.
rocketman:
Your theory is sound only if you’re dealing with ignorant, bloodthirsty foot soldiers. If any of them has brains, they could put a bomb on a plane, fly it as high as possible, then detonate it. Sounds counterintuitive, but consider this:
An EMP attack wrecks all infrastructure. That means planes, trains, automobiles. No electricity. No water and sewer service. All hospital are reduced to WW2 or Korea MASH units. Imagine if the attack happens at rush hour. All roads are suddendly cloged with tons of metal debris. That’s because all cars built after 1980 have electronic fuel injection, and the computers get fried. Ditto for all trucks. The only trains that could operate are the steam engine ones, and they’re all in museums. Civilian planes would be useless too, cloging the airports. Within a week all food would run out. Depending on the season, the people would either freeze to death or bake to death. An EMP wouldn’t cause an immediate massive loss of life, but in the medium to long run, it would be more devastating than a simple surface explosion.
T-Bone #35:
I’m afraid that after an EMP attack, your cellphone would only be useful as a paperweight, your toaster oven would only serve as scrap metal, and you better make sure that your guitar is an old school one, as in non-electric. Otherwise, it would only be good as firewood. Sorry to spoil your fun.
I thought an EMP pulse only affected electronic devices that were in use at the time?
Of course, your microwave would be plugged in and receiving power, so I guess it would be taken out.
Hiraghm:
That’s a myth. Please check EMP on Wikipedia. See if you can sleep well tonight after you read it.
I haven’t really slept in a month. I just lay there a few hours til I pass out or I have to get up.
Damnit Joe; I’m a former democrat Senator, what do you mean I can’t steal from the people anymore? You know a billion isn’t real money anymore, we blow that on aid to Bengladesh, how the hell am I supposed to keep track of chump change. I’m a big picture guy, former governor, former Senator, I don’t have time to worry with the lives of the riffraff.
I believe that the management dropped account security to help themselves to customer funds to attempt to generate profits to save themselves. Maybe they succeeded, maybe not, as it couldn’t be done temporarily without leaving big footprints leading right back to themselves. Once customer account security was dropped, the brokers with access to that system churned every account for their personal sales commissions or even outright stole the money for themselves (depends on specifically just what trace accounting capabilities were disabled)
If they want to find the money, look at the personal holdings of all the brokers with access to the system.
Where’s the rest of the people associated with this brokerage? I keep seeing stuff about Corzine…but, there’s got to be others involved here. This is like Solyndra all over again…missing money, missing accountability. Gee, is Eric Holder CEO in secret of MF Holdings? This is the kind of crap that makes most Americans angry and frustrated.
Thank you for that analysis. I had not thought of the parachute. I was hoping our drone technology would be ahead of any electronic buggery by the Iranians.
I guess my saxophone will be good to go then and the harmonica will be good for hobo songs.
Stop the kabuki theater. To get answers, subpoena direct reports of the CEO,COO and CFO. Have them answer questions. $1,200,000,000 doesn’t vanish without a trace.
If I remember correctly, Sarbanes-Oxley required that the company officers, CFO, CEO, etc, sign the financial statements verifying they were accurate. And they were legally held accountable for the financial state of the company- fines and jail time were specified. That law was written by a Republican congress in 2002, and signed by a Republican President (Bush), so lefty lies that the Repubs want to eliminate all regulation falls flat. I don’t remember it being repealed, but since the Oblahblah administration is selective about enforcing our laws, there seems to be no fear among his powerful friends that they will suffer any consequences for violating that law either.
On an unrelated note, if you really want to not sleep at night, read the book “One Second After”. The story of life in a single town on the east coast after a high altitude EMP blast, and the resulting mayhem over the following year. I read it in one sitting: it’s truly frightening how dependent we have become on technology and how unequiped we are to live like our ancestors did.
Far as I can tell, Corzine is your typical JACKASS, just another corrupt Dem who still has the millions he stole. Anybody look in the Jackass-In-Chief’s mattress, or perhaps, in his $Billion campaign fund. I hear things are going “unexpectedly” slow otherwise.