MF Global...aptly named

Corzine... doing for MF Global what he did for New Jersey.

MF Global mixed clients' funds with its own

Regulators say money is missing from customer accounts held by MF Global, led by Jon Corzine, shown in January. (Mel Evans/Associated Press)

MF Global, the troubled New York-based securities firm, broke rules requiring it to keep clients' money and its own funds in separate accounts, the head of the Chicago Mercantile exchange says.

CME Group Inc. CEO Craig Donohue said Tuesday MF Global was "not in compliance" with requirements set by his company and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, its key regulator.

"While we are unable to determine the precise scope of the firm's violation at this time, we are investigating the circumstances of the firm's failure," Donohue said.

Also on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI plans to look into questions about whether money is missing from client accounts, and if so, whether that constitutes a crime.

The newspaper did not identify its source.MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday.Regulators said they have discovered money is missing from some of the firm's customer accounts.

Jon Corzine, a former New Jersey governor, chief of Goldman Sachs and major fundraiser for U.S. President Barack Obama, leads MF Global.

Corzine has helped raised at least $500,000 for Obama's re-election campaign since April.

Corzine prompted MF Global to make more trades for the company's own profits, a practice known as proprietary trading. Some of that trading was conducted on the CME.

He pushed for the $6.3 billion US bet on debt issued by Italy, Spain and other European nations with troubled economies that ultimately doomed the company.

Companies regulated by the CFTC must account for clients' money and investments separately from money and investments belonging to the company.

The CFTC said in September that MF Global was overvaluing some of its European debt investments. It required the company to raise more cash, according to court papers filed on Monday.

MF Global reported its biggest-ever quarterly loss last week, mainly because of losses on proprietary trading.

Credit rating agencies downgraded the company's bonds to junk status, and business partners demanded that it put up more cash to guarantee its trades. The result was a severe cash crunch that forced MF Global into bankruptcy court.

Debt from many European nations has lost value in recent months because bond investors fear one or more countries might default.

On Monday, the New York Federal Reserve said it suspended MF Global from doing new business as a primary dealer.

Primary dealers are companies considered financially secure enough to sell US government debt on behalf of the Federal Reserve.

MF Global...aptly named

Money Making Monopoly

1. Red light cameras have pissed me off from the word go. Talk about Big Brother.

2. The government counties claim safety concerns. Bullshit. They are a insidious tax. Our tax dollars used to invade our own privacy, and the local governments make more money from them then a Vegas slot machine.

To put things in proper perspective, I was never issued a ticket from a red light camera. That is not to say I haven't received my fair share of tickets.

Read the story below. Red light cameras are nothing but one big f------scam!

Red-light traffic camera deals under scrutiny

Local governments hungry for revenue are signing contracts with red-light camera companies that put profit over traffic safety, according to a new study by a national public interest advocacy group.

Some contracts restrict police from doing things like lengthening the yellow signal and leave taxpayers holding the bag if the contracts are terminated early, says the report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the federation of state public interest research groups.

"The most problematic contracts require cities to share revenue with the camera vendor on a per-ticket basis or through other formulas as a percentage of revenue," the group says. "In other words, the more tickets a camera system issues, the more profit the vendor collects."

Occupy Wall Street protester?

"It just creates this really broad incentive to fine as many people as you can," says Phineas Baxandall, a co-author of the report. "That's not a good safety model."

About 700 communities in about half the states have deals with for-profit companies to install camera systems. The trend has been accelerated during the recession as local governments seek revenue that can help them avert laying off teachers, firefighters and police officers, the report says.

The deals "sometimes prevent local governments from acting in the best interests of their citizens, especially when the terms of the deal prioritize delivering profits for the shareholders or owners of the private firm," the report says. When local governments privatize traffic enforcement, they usually retain some role. Some contracts, though, limit government powers to set and enforce traffic regulations.

Yellow-light duration, for example, has long been a contentious point in the red-light camera debate.Lengthening a yellow signal gives drivers more time to react to a signal change, thus reducing the number of red-light violations.

"However, some contracts potentially impose financial penalties on the city if traffic engineers extend the length of the yellow light at intersections, which would reduce the number of tickets the systems can issue," the report says.

Anne McCartt, senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and a proponent of automated enforcement, says cameras "are a highly effective way to reduce red-light running and reduce crashes, especially serious crashes, at intersections. … The most effective program would be one where no tickets would be issued because no one is running a red light."

The privatized traffic law enforcement industry "has amassed significant political clout that it uses to shape traffic safety nationwide," according to the report, which says vendors aggressively lobby to expand camera use. "In 2011, camera vendors employed nearly 40 lobbyists in Florida, whose agenda included killing a bill that would have required municipalities to adopt longer yellow-light times to increase intersection safety," the report says.

"This report is going to open a whole new, robust dialogue about how we should both provide public safety by using photo enforcement and about how it should be managed to protect the public interest," says Leslie Blakey, executive director of the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running, an advocacy group initially funded by the photo enforcement industry.

Money Making Monopoly

Now This Explains It

On a tip from

Bob Sweet

Here is a brief videotaping of an interview recorded by a local television station in Atlanta. 

This "Occupier" gives a clear and precise message of what the protestors are saying & are attempting to accomplish.

Anyone who really understood what she said please let me know.

Now This Explains It

U.S. sends foreign aid to China

This is ludicrous beyond belief. 

Virtually everything we buy is made in China. 

The way things are deteriorating  shouldn't they be sending us foreign aid?

When are we going to learn? 

Just about every country we have ever given money 

 to hates are guts!

  If this were the Politicians money coming out of their pocket I guarantee you it wouldn't be sent to China.

China is one of the biggest economies in the world and grew at more than 9 percent over the last year. It also has loaned more than $1 trillion to the U.S. to fund its deficit-spending.

But at the same time, the U.S. sends foreign aid to China, which lawmakers of all stripes say is just plain nuts.

"Why in the world would we be borrowing money and then turn around and giving it back to the countries that we're borrowing it from?" Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said. "If they have enough of a surplus to loan us money, they have enough of a surplus to take care of their own needs."

Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia asked the same question in a recent appearance on Fox News: "Hey, in the crisis that we're in right now, should we really be continuing to send American taxpayer dollars over to China for these purposes?"

It isn't a lot of aid -- tens of millions in bilateral aid, much more through international institutions to which the U.S. contributes.

But the question is why a nation that's competing with the U.S. economically and politically in every corner of the globe should get any money from the U.S.

"I think the Chinese are just laughing whenever they receive a check," said Dan Ikenson, a trade economist at the CATO Institute. "How silly this is of the United States to be subsidizing the faster-growing, second-largest economy in the world."

So why'd we start giving aid in the first place? "The hope and the operating assumption is that to the extent that we engage them in a variety of ways, that we can stay influential. And we can influence them," Dan Runde of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.

But Runde notes China's record of flaunting trade rules -- violating intellectual property laws, including multiple openings of fake Apple stores there recently, as well as patent infringements. He suggests the aid has had little positive impact.

The whole matter leaves Coburn completely disgusted. "You know, it's stupidity. There's no other explanation for it, other than we're stupid in Washington to continue to do that."

The Senate recently passed a bill to punish Chinese currency manipulation, while the House is about to examine Chinese trade policy across the board.

But as lawmakers debate those more complicated issues, some are asking a simpler question -- why keep sending money to a country trying to undercut the U.S. seemingly at every turn?

U.S. sends foreign aid to China

How does that catch phrase go...

Useful Idiots

Douglas Schoen warns White House: Don't back 'Occupy Wall Street'

 Fortunately they're not listening, as the exuberant idiots become useful in their own demise.

Pollster Douglas Schoen is out with a warning for President Barack Obama: Supporting Occupy Wall Street could cost you a second-term.

"President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election," Schoen said in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The movement, which has spread beyond New York City over the last month, "reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform," he wrote.

Schoen presents what he touts is probably "the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion," including data that he says demonstrates the fact that the protesters represent "an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence," and that their common bond is "a deep commitment to left-wing policies."

The Occupiers are "a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation," — all reasons that could make the administration's support for the movement "catastrophic for their party," he warns.

According to Schoen, Obama risks repeating a mistake made in 1970, when "aligning too closely with the antiwar movement hurt Democrats in the midterm election."

The president has already made the serious mistake of abandoning independent and swing voters, Schoen said, by focusing solely on pleasing voters who support taxing oil companies and the rich. Rather than supporting "increasingly radical and potentially violent activists," the pollster suggested that Democrats reach out to the country's moderates.

Put simply, Democrats need to say they are with voters in the middle who want cooperation, conciliation and lower taxes. And they should work particularly hard to contrast their rhetoric with the extremes advocated by the Occupy Wall Street crowd," he said.

“God bless them for their spontaneity,” Pelosi told reporters. “It’s young, it’s spontaneous, it’s focused and it’s going to be effective.”

How does that catch phrase go...