Financial Justice

Blackstone / Codere CDS Event Highlighted on Daily Show Exposes Larger Economic Issues

A recent credit default swap (CDS) payout event, humorously highlighted by The Daily Show, actually opens a much larger issue, pointing to a core problem with unregulated OTC swaps whose notional value exceeds $600 trillion and dwarfs the world GDP [...]

Outgoing CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton Makes Strong Statements Regardings

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been at the center of a fight to regulate the derivatives that were at the center of the 2008 crash.  This fight took center stage when CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton recently gave what is [...]

CTAs / CPOs Call For Industry Leadership in Horizon Cash Management Survey

The fastest growing segment of the financial services industry was the one hardest hit by MF Global’s suspicious demise and overt fraud at Peregrine Financial Group (PFG). The managed futures industry, which had grown from $14 billion under management in [...]

Is JPMorgan’s Voluntary Return of MF Global Customer Assets Fruit From a Hard Investigation?

The voluntary return of $546 million in MF Global customer assets, the subject of hard fought 2 ½ year battle, was not motivated solely by the kindness of JP Morgan.  Rather, it could be considered fruit from a likely hard [...]

MF Global Criminal Investigation Likely Headed Into Final Stages

The MF Global investigation is expected to be entering its final stages after two and a half years of on again, off again activity. There will be several paths the investigation could take, the most likely of which starts at [...]

MF Global Stand Down Order Questioned For First Time

It was October, 2012 and the Futures Industry Association (FIA) conference was winding down at an eerie point in time. It was near Halloween, an event that will always bring back clear memories of the MF Global criminal incident.  One [...]

What’s Missing in the Debate over Residual Interest Income: Monopolistic Control Over Futures Industry Brokerage

While it sounds mundane, the “Residual Interest Income” issue has the potential to literally change the face of the regulated derivatives industry. In just one line of a massive Dodd Frank bill with unnecessary complexity and obfuscation, large bank interests [...]

NFA Board Holds Off Lifetime Ban On Jon Corzine… For Now

The National Futures Association Board of Directors did not immediately act on a motion to ban former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine for life, but left open to possibility of the self regulator taking action after ongoing investigations currently underway [...]

Documenting the Journalistic Tone Regarding Financial Crimes & MF Global

It took 60 minutes (CBS) and Frontline (PBS) to publicly document what had been known to many inside the derivatives industry. In 2008 derivatives crime that cost the US economy $12.8 trillion were not prosecuted.  But worse yet, these crimes were not [...]