Did You Know...

**Written by Doug Powers

Remember last year when Jon Corzine was being mentioned as a possible replacement for Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary? What a ridiculous notion — Corzine’s proven himself much more qualified to be Energy Secretary. But at the very least it looks like Corzine can start bundling again for the Obama campaign (check that — he never stopped).

From the New York Times:

A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives.

After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case.

The hurdles to building a criminal case were always high with MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy in October after a huge bet on European debt unnerved the market. But a lack of charges in the largest Wall Street blowup since 2008 is likely to fuel frustration with the government’s struggle to charge financial executives. Just a few individuals — none of them top Wall Street players — have been prosecuted for the risky acts that led to recent failures and billions of dollars in losses.

So they’re saying the vanishing billion dollars might not have been corruption, just incompetence? The fact that the White House actively sought Corzine’s “expertise” helps explain a lot about the current state of the economy:

Not many months after Corzine’s appearance with the Stimulus Sheriff, we heard “we don’t know what happened to the money.” I think Corzine said something similar.

Update: Also according to the NY Times, Corzine is considering starting a hedge fund. Any takers?

**Written by Doug Powers

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