Jon Corzine, Symbol of Wall Street (Chip East/Reuters)
Former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has spent the last year and a half, since his defeat for re-election, running a company that has existed in America for almost 230 years...
right into bankruptcy:
Shares in MF Global Holdings were halted for trading early on Monday, as the brokerage prepared to file for bankruptcy protection and sell some of its assets to the Interactive Brokers Group, according to people briefed on the matter.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a statement that it had suspended doing any business with MF Global until the firm “is fully capable of discharging the responsibilities set out in the New York Fed’s policy.”
MF Global is a primary dealer, meaning that it is one of 22 firms allowed to trade directly with the Fed and make a market in securities like Treasury notes.
...
The last-ditch rescue effort is a major blow to the reputation of Mr. Corzine, 64, who formerly co-led Goldman Sachs and was also a United States senator. With a sale of MF Global, Mr. Corzine’s role at the firm will almost certainly end, though he is expected to receive a severance payment of nearly $12.1 million.
He runs a company that for most of its history was venerated on Wall Street right into the ground. For that service, he will get $12 million. To conservatives....let that simmer in your free market loving brain for a while. Ruin a company, make a fortune. If this doesn't convince you that something is clearly wrong, I don't know what will.
He's been a banker all his life. He worked his way up on Wall Street in the go-go Reaganomics 1980's and eventually became CEO of Goldman Sachs. Moving other people's money around has made him a billionaire. Then after getting GS caught up in the crash of Long Term Capital Management, he was forced out with $400 million in severance.
Then Corzine turned his fortune towards buying himself a seat in the United States Senate. He spent $62 million of his own money, buying every politician in New Jersey that he needed to grease. After sitting in the Senate for five years, he then turned his sights on the Governor's office. He spent another $38 million of his own money for that. After failing at that job as well, Corzine walked right into a comfy position running MF Global, which old-school Wall Streeters remember as the venerable ED&F Man founded in 1783. Merger and Acquisition fever in the last 30 years of Reaganomics allowed Man to grow into Man Financial and then MF Global. This company survived 200 years of American wars, a civil war, a great depression, droughts, natural disasters, and numerous crashes and panics. But it could not survive Jon Corzine.
So here we have a man who has not done anything to build America over the course of his entire life. He's moved with ease in the most elite circles in both Washington and New York. Everything he has touched, he has either been average at best or ruined it at worst.
For all this...he has been rewarded with wealth that will last him his entire life. And all because as a young college student he decided to go to work in banking rather than, for example, construction. Or manufacturing. Had he done anything else in life, such as taken a job as an assistant manager at Sears, he no doubt would be among those who get fired the old fashioned way.
This isn't a story of invention and success, like Thomas Edison or Andrew Carnegie or Steve Jobs or even Linus Torvalds. It isn't even a story of good salesmanship and management like Henry Ford or Bill Gates. It's just a story of somebody well connected, making money with other people's money, building nothing and leaving nothing in its wake but financial crashes, bankruptcy, and golden parachutes with no criminal or even market-based accountability.
Corzine is no right wing Republican. He's a Democrat of the socially liberal sort. The plague of people like him infects BOTH parties.
He'll probably land somewhere else, rest assured. A philanthropic chairmanship as a result of some socially conscious donation. Possibly he will buy himself a building at a university and name it after himself. He will still enjoy servants, a large mansion, private jets, beautiful women, and whatever else he decides to accord himself. This is all we have come to expect from our elite. Failure, self-indulgence, no accountability, and ownership of our political system. We just shrug our shoulders. Hell, even some people like it like this and want to reward people like Corzine with a "job-creators" tax cut.
In the end, he serves as a symbol of all that is wrong with the elite in this country. This is why we need #OccupyWallStreet.