First they came for the MF Global customers, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t clear MF Global

POSTED BY ANN BARNHARDT – JULY 9, AD 2012 11:22 PM MST
Uh, so do you believe me now?When I said, “Get the hell out,” do you understand that I meant to GET. THE. HELL. OUT.?

When I wrote in my Going Galt Letter that the problem was SYSTEMIC, do you now understand that I wasn’t just typing big, fancy words so that I could hear the soft pitter-pat of my keyboard?

When I said over and over again in interview after interview that the so-called regulatory system overseeing the futures industry was no such thing, but rather an evil, despicable mafia, administered by politicking psychopaths on the take, and staffed by affirmative action hires to provide plausible deniability and scapegoats, WERE YOU NOT LISTENING?

How did I see this coming? How could I NOT see this coming?

PFGBest, which used to be the old Alaron Trading, has stolen at least $220 million of customer funds, which is fully HALF the entire customer asset base. The firm’s owner attempted suicide this morning in the parking lot outside of the corporate HQ in Iowa.

While claiming to have over $200 million in bank accounts, it turned out that PFGBest only had $10 million at most. And they had been short NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of their seg funds for at least five months, and it may be closer to two years. The reportage on the timelines is very fuzzy.

Alright. Here’s where we call bullshit. Action item number one for any auditor is the independent confirmation of bank account balances. When little tiny me was audited both by the regulators AND for my annual Sarbanes-Oxley audit done by a local accounting firm, the first thing I had to do was sign the balance confirmation requests that the auditors then sent to Wells Fargo. This is the fundamental purpose of an audit. Make absolutely sure the flipping money is where they say it is.

What this PFGBest situation tells us is that the auditors were NOT independently verifying the bank account balances and were instead using internal, falsified, forged documentation provided not by the bank, but by the firm itself.

Oversight by the auditors? Mistake by the regulators? Oopsie? No flipping way, Jack.

Try: Premeditated fraud. Try: Conspiracy. Try: Full knowledge, complicity and cooperation by the regulators in covering the stolen customer funds, and all within mere WEEKS of MFGlobal.

Try: Capital Economic Treason.

Try: Life in prison or execution.

Some of the MF Global rape victims were actually bulk transferred to this firm back in November. The owner (who attempted suicide this morning) pitched a fit back in November and got about 700 of the MFG accounts bulk transferred over to PFGBest.

So, yes, there are now people, many of whom are agricultural hedgers, who have now been raped by having their equity stolen TWICE in nine months.

And yet, how much do you want to bet that a significant percentage of these people go back for more? How many of them are so whipped, and so stupid, and so convinced that they just have to be trading futures and options because that’s what all of the cool kids do, that they will go right back to the Penn State gang showers with Mr. Sandusky?

How many other traders and hedgers are out there telling themselves that this STILL isn’t any big deal, because it didn’t happen to them?

“First they came for the MF Global customers, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t clear MF Global. Then they came for the PFGBest customers, and I still didn’t say anything because I didn’t clear through PFGBest . . . . ”

It seems so familiar.

Finally, for all of you brokers who cleared PFGBest, not only do I not have any sympathy for you, I actually hold you in contempt, and hope that your clients all sue you personally. You knew that the entire system was suicidally risk-laden and yet instead of being honest with your customers and yourselves and walking away from a known death-trap, you decided to live a damnable lie and pretend like your customers’ funds were safe, because you were too chickenshit to do the right thing.

And that goes for every other broker out there right now. You know that it is just a matter of time. You know that your FCM could blow sky-high next week. You know that every assurance of integrity and solvency and “compliance” is bullshit, and has been bullshit for quite some time. You know that every bank wire and check that comes in from your clients is being deposited into the gaping maw of a living lie. You know the NFA, CFTC, SEC and the CME are lying, thieving psychopathic criminals, and that your clients are viewed as nothing but zeroes and ones on servers that can be “harvested” whenever JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs sees fit to do it, and then Tyqueesha in the back office and LaNeequa the junior auditor and Jamahl the assistant compliance manager/robosigner will be blamed. If you continue to expose your clients to that, then you are no better than the criminals, and will deserve to be sued into the ground for lying to your customers about the safety of the markets.

The ultimate catch-22: by the very act of being in the futures business, you are by definition breaching your fiduciary duty to your clients, and are thus in violation of the law.

Welcome to Communism. Welcome to hell.

 

      
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