Shrink the State. End the Fed. Balance the budget. Make a profit. Leave an inheritance.
Gary North
Written by Gary North on January 17, 2012
A lot of Americans do not know how ownership of stocks is handled. They think they personally own the stocks in their portfolios. They don’t. There were investors in MF Global who thought they owned commodities. They didn’t. Consider this. Do you own gold and silver mining stocks? Or any stocks for that matter? Even […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 16, 2011
Jon Corzine will spend the next five or ten years and a lot of his fortune paying lawyers. MF Global’s former clients will do their best to get him to pay for the losses imposed by MF Global, but it is unlikely that they will get anything. Still, they will impose great pain on this […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 13, 2011
This joke has it right. Question: A Greek, an Italian and a Spaniard walk into a bar. Who picks up the tab? Answer: The Americans. The author understands how the financial markets work. The Europeans will pay for their bankers’ stupidity. So will we. MF Global was just the beginning. And then there is the […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 7, 2011
When a big firm like MF Global goes under, taking investors’ funds with it, the investors will probably not get paid. The people of the other side of derivatives (futures) contracts will. Recently Bank of America transferred a bunch of derivatives into their banking arm. “A bunch” means somewhere around $80 trillion worth. Now pay […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 6, 2011
It was obvious a month ago that Jon Corzine, the CEO of the bankrupt MF Global, would spend the next decade or so fending off lawsuits. The first one has begun. Former MF Global employees are suing Corzine and the board for misrepresenting the economic prospects of MF Global. On November 2, I wrote this: […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on November 23, 2011
When The New York Times has figured it out, it’s real. This story reports on what amounts to a run on the banks. Rich investors are selling PIIGS bonds, pulling out of PIIGS banks, and fleeing for safety. This forces up interest rates in PIIGS countries. This forces banks to raise rates to borrowers. This […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on November 21, 2011
The bankruptcy if MF Global is creating ripples. The outfit was high leveraged, using commoidity futures. The managers used customers’ money — cash basis, no debt — to cover losses in its own speculations. The customers cannot get their money back. They must wait. They may suffer 50% losses. Always before, the clearing house assured […]
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