If the Zuccotti Park squatters are in the market for a new Wall Street villain, here’s a suggestion: Jon Corzine.
The former New Jersey governor and US senator yesterday resigned as CEO of the now-bankrupt brokerage firm MF Global, amid multiple investigations into $630 million in missing customer money.
Guess that pretty much does in speculation that Corzine was in line to become President Obama’s treasury secretary.
Corzine said he won’t seek his $12 million severance pay from the firm.
How magnanimous.
That means he’ll have to pay for all the high-priced criminal and civil lawyers he’s started hiring out of his own (already well-lined) pockets.
Fact is, though, Corzine’s risky — and seemingly shady — management of MF, combined with his abuse of political influence, would seem to make him a poster boy for precisely the kind of financial-sector abuses the Occupy Wall Street crowd has been railing against.
(If the Zuccotti-ites do go after Corzine, Democrats might want to rethink their recent cozying up to them; after all, he’s one of the top cash bundlers for Obama’s re-election campaign. Then again, Obama has already raised more Wall Street cash than all the GOP candidates combined — while suffering little OWS wrath.)
That Corzine was hoping to make a spectacular comeback from his unceremonious ousting two years ago from the Trenton statehouse seems obvious.
In trying to expand MF into a Wall Street powerhouse, he bought up European debt, betting the farm amid the continent’s economic turmoil.
Seems he was counting on endless bailouts — but, as the folks in Greece are learning, European largess is not always guaranteed.
Worse still, it appears MF failed to separate clients’ money from its own assets — a legal and ethical no-no.
As one expert put it, that violates “the core foundation” of investor protection.
Corzine also used his significant political clout to get the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — headed by a longtime friend — to back away from a rule change that, in effect, would’ve restricted the same risky trades in which MF was involved.
Hmm. Aren’t those OWSers complaining about how government is being run by evil corporations trading on their political ties?
New Jersey voters can breathe a huge sigh of relief that Corzine is no longer able to play so fast and loose with their cash.
MF Global’s 3,000 employees, on the other hand, may not be so lucky.