Jon Corzine On Public Integrity: 'Hold Me Accountable'

Sometimes, life just just throws us a hanging curve ball. Jon Corzine, Obama's man on Wall Street, former governor of New Jersey, blows up a major commodities brokerage, and a whole-bunch-a-munney-hunney is missing from the customer accounts.

Let's listen in on Mr. Corzine's conference call...

Oooh, now where did that 700 million dollars go? I had it just here...silly me, after all that stress and strain screwing over serving New Jersey, I seem to have lost it.  Now, Barry, really; you're not going to get upset over mere 700 million in customers' funds are you? All you have to do is hand that sum over from the Treasury and all will be well. Besides your campaign could certainly use an infusion from those accounts in Costa Rica, right?

Then, let's contrast that with his inaugural speech in 2006...

Across this state, across our nation and around the world, New Jersey sets a high bar. We are proud that Supreme Court Justices, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cabinet officers, Chief Executives, singers, rappers, writers, scientists, and entrepreneurs all hail from New Jersey. Our children graduate from our schools at higher rates than anywhere else in the nation, and our income and education levels are among the very best. In their own lives and in their own hopes for their children, our people do not settle for less than excellence.


Today -- I pledge to you that as your governor, I will never settle for less than excellence. 

****
(It gets better...)


Public integrity is not just about reputation or principles, as important as each of those is. What's at stake is social justice and fiscal responsibility. Every dollar squandered in violation of the public trust is a book not bought for a classroom, a prescription drug with a higher co-pay, meals-on-wheels not delivered, a road or science lab not built. With a multi-billion dollar structural deficit, mismanagement and misappropriation cannot and will not be tolerated.


To earn the public trust, we must act, but we also must trust the people with the truth. We cannot build a financial future on the crumbling, papered-over foundation of a recurring fiscal crisis. Too often, for too long, under both parties, fiscal gimmicks have been invented, recycled, and reapplied to mask fiscal realities. As Governor Codey said in November, thanks, his transition report can be summed up simply: "the state is pretty much broke." 

The games are over. New Jersey must put its fiscal house in order. The time of one-shot budget fixes is past. It's time to balance the books. 

(And, finally, he ended this classic speech by saying....drumroll please....)


And, in turn, I ask you -- the citizens of New Jersey, hold me accountable. 

Thank you. 

Is that the sound of a Gulfstream warming up on the tarmac?

OS has yet to hear of any judge demanding Mr. Corzine turn in his passport.

The Broker At The Local Diner And DanHan Both Come To The Same Conclusion

OS recently treated The Sainted Mrs. OS to Saturday brunch at the local diner on Main Street, and they passed part of their time in conversation with a local broker who has strong family ties in Europe.

OldSamTheBroker told us, 'Europe is headed for a dictatorship, it's inevitable.' There was no joy in his voice.

Daniel Hannan comes to the same conclusion in today's Telegraph.

No joy in his voice, either.

Merkel's campaign for a 'New Europe' echoes much the same propoganda employed in the 1930's and '40's. She's not a crazed messianic little guy with a mustache, to be certain, and there's no intent to equate her with him.

However,  the temptation to reassemble a Greater Europe seems to never lie far from the door. 

By the way, this can only end in tears, math being what it is.

Finally, A Judge Locates His Huevos, And Asks The Obvious Question

'If Citibank steals some 700 million dollars, why does it only have to pay 160 million back?'


Well, hot-damn, ya'll!  If that's the case, under the Citibank Rule, OS should give up his honest attempts at labor, and start sticking up local convenience stores, liquor stores, and jewelry shops! He gets to keep everything, except for 23%! Such a deal!! He doesn't even have to admit to any wrongdoing, and he always walks out to make it home by dark.

So, what's wrong with this logic?

(HT Mish)

OS at Midweek 9 November

Other and better minds than OS are covering the comic opera of Europe in breathless detail. In summation, though, the consensus is: They're screwed. We're screwed, maybe, as well.

It reminds of OS of those ensemble scenes in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, where everyone simultaneously sings to the audience while the orchestra grinds away, each proclaiming his/her own side of the story; but not one of the characters will actually bother to tell one another the truth of who they are and what they're attempting to accomplish.

Chaos ensues, comic chaos in Mozart's opera, something less amusing in real life today.

It isn't like this obvious sort of unraveling wasn't something unexpected. After all, if government debt is 120% of GDP (Italy referenced here), and yields climb above 7%, well then, you're screwed. The students can riot in the streets, the unions can strike, the religious fanatics can preach, the politicians can speechify forever. The math is the math is the math--it is inexorable.

They're screwed.

Enough about that. We now get to witness the proverbial other shoe drop in our generation, and wonder what will arise to take hold of the situation. And how much of the bill we here on Main Street will foot for the great welfare state experiment of post-1945 Europe.

Closer to home, this has been one of those weeks, one in which OS notices that it has become increasingly laborious to get simple stuff of life done. The firms he has encountered this week, in different industries, all seem to suffer from 'too much work/too few employees' syndrome, or 'internal conflicts of interest' syndrome, or 'failure to think ahead' syndrome, or 'failure to think pragmatically' syndrome.

It's been frustrating. Yesterday afternoon, OS just had to take a break and go for a walk, to calm down. He called a couple of friends who helped restore perspective. It's good to have friends.

Today, he's back in harness, pulling his load into the stiff headwind of the culture of the United States.

No great insights to lend, no news to report, no scandals to incite. OS is simply tired.

One bright spot however, comes from BBC Radio 3 this week. The Choral Evensong from Ely Cathedral was glorious this morning. The broadcast repeats Sunday afternoon, and then in podcast for a week after that. 

Papandreou Resigns: Gulfstream Warming Up On The Tarmac

Having won a vote of confidence, he finally admits that things have spun out of control, and he's getting of Dodge while he can, before anyone notices the missing bullion stowed in his luggage.

A quick stop-off in Zurich to lighten the luggage, and thence to the manse in Scotland, away from prying eyes.

Remember, ya'll. ThePeopleInChargeOfSuchThings have been assuring us allllll along that they have the situation firmly in hand.

Nothing to see here, move along. Ball games to enjoy, Dancing With The Stars to follow.

What's All This Bother About A Geek Referendum?!! Geeks Don't Deserve A Referendum! They Don't Have Lives, And They Hoard All The Good Grades From The Rest Of Us!

Never mind...

Wish it were actually a funny situation.

The Herman Cain Dust-Up: A Couple Of Additional Questions

ABC News asks a cogent question: Who, exactly, are Cain's accusers?

Another good one is: Where are they? After all, if we are to be about the business of tarnishing the reputation of a public person, seems that going public would be the thing to do. A good rule of thumb would be: If'n yew don't wantcher pictcher in the paper or alllllll over the internet, don't deliberately say and do stuff that creates media interest. Sorta' like, don't cover yerrself in hunney and walk into a big anthill.

So, here we are, with the wheels coming off Europe, riots ginning up in California, the professors of Southern Illinois University on strike (Really, ya'll! Why do folks with tenure go on strike?), another trading firm gone tits-up with 700 million of the clients' dollars missing, run by one of Obama's ardent supporters (Jon Corzine, former senator, former governor of New Jersey), large swaths of the Middle East in chaos, Iran working on a nuke--so let's spend our time obsessing about....drumroll please/the envelope please....what Herman Cain did or didn't do in the 1990's (the age of, ummm, Bill Clinton).

Hmmm....

So, OS has another question or two as he scratches hiz ole' grey head in puzzlement: Let's assume, fer the sake of argumint, that all those tarrrible thangs they sayin' 'bout Herman iz true! Does it disqualify him from running or taking office? Really?

Remember the stock phrases about Bill Clinton?

It's not about character, all that matters are his policies.

This does not rise to the level of an impeachable offence.

It's his business what he does with that cigar and that intern, none of ours.

He wasn't lying when he denied 'having sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky', now was he? All that stuff they were engaging in in that bathroom off the Oval Office, that wasn't really sex, you know.

So, Bill is lionized, with all his actual misbehavior documented in detail.  Herman is vilified, based upon anonymous allegations.

Which leads to another question:

Is there one set of rules for white Democrats, and another for black Republicans? 
(Remember the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings? This all feels soooooo familiar to those of us alive to have witnessed that dog-n-pony show.) It was a replay of the Robert Bork debacle, only with the hoods and burning crosses on display for good measure.

Which leads to another question, which OS refers to as the 'Homer Simpson Question':

Is there anyone alive, who has really engaged the world, attempted to get stuff done, worked with all manner of people, who hasn't had a few Homer Simpson moments along the way? 

 OS can certainly look back to more than a few moments of 'Dooooh!'. He actually owns up to a 'Decade of Doooooh!' He works diligently to not create more of them, to put another day of distance between him and them with every day that passes. But he, like everyone else alive, is not immune. It doesn't mean he doesn't go out and engage the world today.

Herman deserves the same consideration, in the humble of opinion of a life member of the 'Dooooh!' fraternity. Last time OS checked, Herman only smokes his cigars, and didn't illegally take 700 million of his clients' funds and lose them on the roulette wheel of the European sovereign debt casino.

That, ya'll, is an actual 'Dooooooh!' event.

Who Sez President Obama Doesn't Plan For The Future?

After, he'll need a hobby to keep him occupied after January 20, 2013...

The Wheels On The Greek Bus Are Coming Off...

As always, there's the bad news at the lead of the article, and the really grim stuff is saved for the final few paragraphs.

Merkel, Sarkozy and company chased David Cameron off, and struck a deal to 'solve' the GreeceProblem. Problem is, they didn't check in with the Greeks...

When a country that's lived on credit cards for decades gets news that the bank wants at least part of its money back, well, folks gits all upset, and they may decide to tell the bankers and the rest of Europe to go hang. Bankers and Northern European politicians just hate dealing with uppity Southern Europeans, 'cuz no matter how you try, they just won't sit still and play nice. Why they ever decided to issue national credit cards to Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and let's not forget the Irish, OS will never know. The Euro is a Fig Newton of the central bankers' imaginations, the proverbial round peg in the square hole of each nation's culture.

This droll read of the situation from BBC's Paul Mason is worth a read.

He is cynic enough to suggest that the entire exercise of late has been designed to encourage the Greeks to leave, and hopefully not have the door hit them in the keister on the way out. Of course, since any true effort to do more than paper over the mess has been a kick-the-can-down-the-road exercise, Greece's departure will be exceedingly ugly. Actually the ugly has already begun:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Greek elite are buying up property in London just as fast as they can find berths in Poole for their yachts. They are voting with their spinnakers, on the basis that the game is up. In any future Greece on offer, they will have to start paying taxes and they do not want to.

One banker told me the Greek super-rich have mostly left.

The one thing governments have that investment banks do not is intelligence services with the power to wiretap people. If you ever wonder why serving politicians go grey so quickly, it is in part because they see the intelligence. So Mr Papandreou may have looked at the file and said, I can't sell this to my party, nor to my voters, and the business elite are emigrating en masse, so throw the dice.


Last week's market euphoria (nice Greek word, that) has stalled. As the world runs back to the dollar, the US markets will sink again, because the entire rally since 2009 has been fueled by devaluation of the dollar.


Oops.

At October's End, 2011

The hardwood forests that cover most of Tennessee beam with color, especially as the sun's light slants in at dawn and dusk. Contrasted against the bright blue of the skies, they are a glory unto themselves. The walk on the golf course is more about the visual than the sporting during these days,and it is hard to focus on the little white ball with such beauty pressing in from all sides.

This week, OS hopes he remembers to enjoy these days. The work load and schedule, the responsibilities (for which he is grateful, in the main) will ramp up shortly.

The silliness, craziness and venom of the 2012 elections is upon us already. It arrives now sooner with each cycle. Remember when things really didn't get underway in earnest until Labor Day before Election Day? What has happened to us? The free-floating anger is palpable, and shows up in the strangest places--at a jazz concert OS attended this weekend, in pulpits (not too surprising there), everywhere. At least the golf course is exempt in the main. Hard to hit the little white ball whilst obsessing on the latest news.

This week, OS hopes he can set that aside, and recover another day wasted in his mis-spent youth, instead of wasting another of the depleting inventory of days he has left.

Have a good week, ya'll.