On December 15, Jon Corzine (D-NJ), former CEO of the suddenly bankrupt commodities and futures brokerage firm MF Global, finished three days of testimony before the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. This followed the December 2nd decision of the House Agriculture Committee to subpoena Corzine after a request for a voluntary appearance went unanswered. Two other congressional committees subpoenaed Corzine in the next several days. To say that it is unusual for Congress to issue a subpoena to a former United States senator (and, in this case, governor) is an understatement. As an Associated Press article noted, "Congressional historians and Capitol Hill insiders can't recall another time when a former member of Congress was summoned by his former peers to testify about a matter under federal investigation."
In fact, the move was so rare that even the New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico—each of which had reported remarkably little on the eighth largest bankruptcy in our nation's history and America's biggest financial failure since Lehman Brothers—had to take notice.
The bankruptcy was caused by Corzine's decision (if I may borrow a phrase from Corzine's good friend, President Barack Obama) to fundamentally transform MF Global from a sizeable but relatively staid commodities brokerage firm into a gambling enterprise. MF, which was spun off from the British firm Man Financial in 2007, not only risked the firm's own money but then used customers' funds to plug the holes when Corzine's massive speculative purchases of European government debt went south. Fundamentally transforming something that was already working pretty well is perhaps not the best strategy for success.
Having read Roger Lowenstein's classic 2001 tome...When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management shortly after it was published, I was already well aware of this creature called Jon Corzine, as Roger did not paint a flattering picture of him, or Goldman Sachs, even back in those days.
This 3-page exposé on Corzine showed up as the feature article in the February edition of The American Spectator...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for digging up this absolute must read on our behalf. The link is here.
