“MF Global was supposed to be Mr. Corzine’s comeback vehicle after New Jersey voters turned him out in 2009. Instead, the collapse of the firm appears to be a humiliating coda to the career of a one-time titan of Wall Street. In 1994, Mr. Corzine ascended to the top of Goldman Sachs despite hundreds of millions of dollars in trading losses at the bank’s bond unit, which he had overseen. He assumed leadership of Goldman, say his former colleagues, in part because he was one of the few partners who understood how to extricate the bank from its soured trades.”— The New York Times, Dec. 8.
“I simply do not know where the money is.” — Jon S. Corzine’s testimony before a Senate committee last Thursday.
The saddest news of this joyless financial season is that the reprehensible, strutting bearded rooster Jon S. Corzine, by a consensus of respected mavens, is not likely either to go to prison or to be forced to compensate investors his company, so far, has bilked of a modest $1.2 billion.
Which is to say, Mr. Corzine wiggles his head and insists, with perspiration beads forming, that he dunno where the dough went, although his pockets have not been inspected lately.
Isn’t the emissions-free environment in the gilded Age of Obama refreshing?
When HRH B.H. Obama ascended to the purple throne in Washington, lo, these 37 months ago, his second act was to absolve all present and future Democrats of sin.
To which news jubilant Jonny Corzine, Democrat, responded by exclaiming:
“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God, almighty, I am free at last.”
He declined to say whether this was an original composition.
Six weeks after the disaster became official on Oct. 31, even long-haired, tattooed schoolboys and girls today know that the arrogant, multi-failed Mr. Corzine, amateur liberal magician, made an obscene amount, $1.2 billion in illegally commingled customer funds, vanish without explanation, without defense, and it appears, without penalty.
Don’t Ask Me
Last week, the defrocked Mr. Corzine became the first former U.S. senator in a century to be subpoenaed to testify before Congress. The news was not that, predictably, he feigned sweating ignorance — which pals believed because a scholar he is not. Rather, it was how newspapers starchly defended the battery of empty, evasive non-answers he spat back at his Senate interrogators.
The Los Angeles Titanic said sympathetically:
“He remained patient amid often repetitive questioning about whether authorized the transfer of funds from segregated accounts.”
The New York Times:
“The former senator seemed comfortable sitting on the other side of the hearing room. When faced with questions about MF Global’s complex trading, he took a professorial tone, explaining the intricacies of his business and even cracking an occasional smile.”
The Financial Times of London:
“Passing up the chance to ‘plead the Fifth’ and use his right to silence, Mr. Corzine told lawmakers that he learnt that customer funds were missing just a day before MF Global’s October 31 bankruptcy and was ‘stunned.’”
Unsurprisingly, these three touted media watchdogs have failed to say a discouraging word about the well-defended Mr. Corzine since he absconded with a wallet he calls Uncle Bulgy.
The Wall Street Journal, the only balanced newspaper:
“Frequently stroking his trademark beard and fumbling with his prepared testimony, Mr. Corzine argued that MF Global was felled not by its $6.3 billion bet on European debt, but rather by a sudden lack of confidence in its balance sheet by the broader market in October.”
The New York Post:
“Like a teary child with a broken vase, Jon Corzine unveiled a two-prong defense yesterday for the epic collapse of his securities firm MF Global — he didn’t mean to do it, and it was someone else’s fault…
“Instead, Corzine…gave vague answers or claimed not to remember the events of what he called the ‘chaotic, sleepless nights’ preceding the eighth largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Brother, Can You Spare a Tire?
As you may deduce from the introduction and his sketchy testimony, you don’t want to entrust the disgraced, dethroned 64-year-old former New Jersey governor with more than lunch money or he is liable to eat it.
His record is stained, to be polite.
He gummed the financial lines at Goldman Sachs, where he lasted for 24 years before finally being pitched out a window.
What does a shameless, failed financier do for his next act? He enters the wealthy paradise of federal politics where he can scam in the daylight without drawing attention.
When Mr. Corzine kneeled down to say his bedtime prayers the last 41 nights since the scam became public, he fervently repeated the following prayer:
“Thank you, God, for making me a Democrat and the media have allowed me to make a stainless escape. If I were a Republican, I would have been emasculated by now and converted into a stale prune, useless to any living person.”
