"But perhaps the most stunning piece of news we're getting in the wake of the MF Global collapse is in the clients of the firm who managed to get away scot-free, with no freezing of accounts or capital -- particularly the accounts of the mega-cap independent oil company Koch Industries, run by the politically active Koch brothers.
A recent report in Reuters has described the billions of dollars of client accounts that were withdrawn from MF Global in the last few weeks before their collapse, including 8 accounts from Koch industries engaged in oil trade that were transferred to Mizuho Securities after years of a steady and profitable relationship with MF. The Reuters piece concentrates on the possibilities of legal "clawback" of client money if the bankruptcy does not allow remaining client accounts to be made whole.
The Reuters piece misses the point.
Both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange were charged with overseeing MF Global, their clearing member. If we are to believe them, they had no idea of any difficulties within the firm before customer accounts went missing just a few days before the collapse. But someone clearly knew of the cratering positions and imminent collapse of MF Global, as billions of dollars of accounts were "coincidentally" withdrawn. And what do the Koch brothers say was the reason for these withdrawals? There's been no comment."
Daniel Dicker, MF Global and the Koch Brothers: Friends to the End, Huffington Post, Nov. 11, 2011
“It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion. Democracy is weakening; few people would disagree. Corporatism is strengthening; you only have to look around you. Yet none of us has chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites quite happily continue down it. Certainly corporatism is creating a conformist society. It is a modern form of feudalism.”
John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization, 1995
"The Ivy League-derived orthodoxy of the professional, educated class saturates all areas of American society. Alternative voices and viewpoints are ostracized through a number of means. If you do not possess the expertise and stamp of approval as authorized by the academic infrastructure, your ideas are often dismissed out of hand, however profound and substantive. If you posses the authorization to speak, but step outside of the boundaries of permissible thought (and action), your voice will remain virtually meaningless, or worse, maligned. While scholarship, research, writing, and practices outside of orthodox parameters exist at universities and in other professions, the work of these professionals does not generally penetrate the paradigms of larger society, nor does it affect large-scale public policies."
Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, April 4, 2016
"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving. Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."
Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, October 4, 2011
As a reminder, tomorrow is a stock option expiration.
Stocks attempted to continue their rallied, but failed. And the major indices went out on the lows.
Gold and silver were rallying, but lost ground into the late afternoon trade.
But gold has held on to its breakout from the big symmetrical triangle. It needs to punch up through the overhead resistance on the charts to confirm it.
Stocks are continuing a trend of lower highs and lower lows.
This is not constructive to the bullish case being touted by the Wall Street talking heads to the spokesmodels head-bobbing agreement.
People tend to hear and forget what is going on, preferring to lose themselves in the slogans and passions of the moment.
It is like we have the situational awareness of goldfish.
Well, so much the better for the privileged few.
Have a pleasant evening.
