MF Global Trustee Giddens Asks Customers To Release Legal Claims In Return For Their Money

It is hard to believe that the Trustee Giddens intends to ask customers to surrender their right to sue Jon Corzine and other parties in return for only a partial repayment of their stolen money. 

This could be a simple misunderstanding. This would be a bit much even by the outrageous double standards of this scandal.

Let's see how this is resolved.

Bloomberg
MF Global Customers Call Trustee’s Demands ‘Unwarranted’
By Linda Sandler
Mar 8, 2012

MF Global Inc. trustee asked futures customers to release claims on the defunct brokerage in return for money they are owed, demanding an “unwarranted” transfer of legal rights, a group of customers said.

The customers, including William Fleckenstein, Thomas Wacker and Summit Trust Co., said in a court filing yesterday that they were notifying the judge supervising the firm’s liquidation of their “concern” in case he wasn’t aware that trustee James Giddens had mailed his demands to some customers along with his determination of their claims. One of Giddens’s demands may require customers to release claims made in class- action lawsuits, they said.

“It may be interpreted to release claims being asserted in the numerous class action lawsuits filed by aggrieved customers,” the customers said in the filing. “It could also potentially be asserted as a bar to recovery by some or all of the defendants joined in these lawsuits, including claims in the suits against parties alleged to be responsible for the misappropriation of customer funds.”

MF Global futures customers including Fleckenstein, a Seattle money manager, have filed at least seven separate suits against Jon Corzine, the parent company’s former chief executive officer, over the alleged theft of their assets, according to filings in federal court in Manhattan. Giddens has said there is a gap of at least $1.6 billion between funds he can obtain and commodity customers’ claims.

Kent Jarrell, a Giddens spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on yesterday’s filing. The futures customers will publish a detailed account of their objections to Giddens’s request later, they said in the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan...

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

"When the international monetary system was linked to gold, the latter managed the interdependence of the currency system, established an anchor for fixed exchange rates and stabilized inflation. When the gold standard broke down, these valuable functions were no longer performed and the world moved into a regime of permanent inflation.

What will be the character of the international monetary system in the next century and how will gold intersect with it? This subject may strike modern audiences as a strange topic, but back in the 1960s, when people were deliberating about the future of the international monetary system, gold figured importantly in the discussions.

Even today, the importance of gold in the international monetary system is reflected in the fact that it is today the only commodity held as reserve by the monetary authorities, and it constitutes the largest component after dollars in the total reserves of the international monetary system."

Robert A. Mundell, Nobel Prize in Economics 1999

There is a fairly tight cap on silver.

The equity market seems to be pricing in a Greek settlement that is favorable to the paper markets. It is not yet clear that this is valid.

Let's see if this proves out, and how the precious metals react.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

The stock market seems to be pricing in an outcome in the Greek debt crisis that is favorable to the international banks.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Remembering Django Reinhardt

I am concerned about the Greek situation, and a little guarded about the non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

On the bullish side, the Fed is going to start up QE again as soon as they get the proper excuse. Their rationale is going to include the notion that by printing new money to buy debt from the banks, they will not contribute to inflation because they will lock up the money on their balance sheet.

It is just a variation of the 'excess reserves' play they have been making for the last few years.

Zimbabwe Ben is going to print. That is all we need to remember. The pity is that the printing will be used to specifically benefit the wealthiest perpetrators of fraud and will have negative side effects for the real economy.

In the light of such boorish ugliness of these cheats and financiers, let us sit back and enjoy enduring greatness.