I'm fascinated by this story. Jon Corzine, who in my eyes pretty much ushered in the tea party movement by being such a lousy and spendthrift Governor of New jersey, made a gigantic investment in euro debt in 08 as head of MF Global. As you can well imagine, it didn't pay off and the company is now bankrupt.
While doing this (going bankrupt) he committed some serious breaches of ethics which crossed the line to breaking the law in at least one case. He may well go to jail.
He's worth 500 million.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article31689.htmlHere's a good description of the rule he broke
"In layman’s terms, you may buy a Rolls Royce with customers’ excess cash, sell it at a profit, and pocket part of the profits. You may buy a Rolls Royce and try to resell it at a profit with your firm’s cash. But you aren’t allowed to take customers’ money to make the car payments on your firm’s Rolls Royce. If one engages in this impermissible activity, it becomes almost impossible to cover up if you have an accident driving your Rolls Royce."
At one point when customers began requesting their money MF GLobal rather than wiring them the money sent it by snail mail! By the time it got to the customers the firm was bankrupt and the checks bounced. classy
They were leveraged at 40:1 an insane ratio.
This is Enron stuff. The same way all those guys were in with the Bushes Corzine was a big Obama crony.