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(Reuters) - MF Global fired all 1,066 of its brokerage employees on Friday, triggering anger and resentment about the firm's collapse after bad bets on European debt under former CEO Jon Corzine's leadership.
How the final blow was delivered upset many staff -- with some learning by email and others through news on the television.
"Fifteen years and no severance!" shouted one angry MF Global employee as he left the firm's offices on 5th Avenue in Manhattan after hugging the receptionist and doorman.
The trustee in charge of liquidating the brokerage said in a statement that the workers were let go immediately, though they will be paid through November 15 and up to 200 will be rehired to help with the wind-down.
The timing couldn't be worse for the employees. Not only is the U.S. unemployment rate at 9 percent, other Wall Street firms have been firing staff in recent months as trading profits decline and tighter regulation takes hold.
"The lives of so many people have been disrupted. We did not even get told individually, we got a group email," said MF Global analyst Pierre-Yvan Desparois outside MF Global offices in Manhattan.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/11/us-mfglobal-employees-idUSTRE7AA4Q720111111?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=71
Gold rises 1.5 percent on Europe hopes, tracks S&P
(Reuters) - Gold rose 1.5 percent on Friday, tracking a Wall Street rally, as Italy pushed through austerity measures demanded by the European Union and a new Greece government fueled hopes that a euro zone sovereign debt meltdown could be averted.
Bullion notched its third consecutive weekly gain, its longest winning streak since August, after Italian Senate passed a new budget law that cleared the way for a full approval of the fiscal package and the formation of an emergency government to replace that of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The metal -- a traditional safe haven which has recently taken to tracking riskier assets -- rose in tandem U.S. equities and the euro, as the S&P 500 soared around 2 percent, as former European Central Bank policymaker Lucas Papademos was sworn in as Greek prime minister with an aim to avert national bankruptcy.
10 comments:
(From prev. thread):
"So a 401k can be a nice deal if you have off setting tax breaks."
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Not really; in the end I treated it like it was a bank account, just like many other people do.
Later I read that most people borrow to fund their adoptions.
Debt - it is the American way!
The issue with borrowing is you can only borrow 50% and have to pay back in a minimum of 5 years. The good thing is the interest you pay goes back into your account. Much better than taking it out if you can afford to pay it back. if you lose your job it is the same as taking it out (based on what is left of the balance) an pay taxes and penalties. I used to manage 401k's and that is why I know all the upsides and the downsides.
For example if you were investing in 2005-2008 and the match was 2% and you added 4% the market was down 40% and you lost a bundle. I moved it all to a conservative MM account and lost about 3%, but I vowed never to invest in something that I could not pick the stock I wanted or move it until the end of business day after it was too late. Defined benefit plans are pensions and pension managers can piss it all away. Best thing to do on retirement is to take the lump sum and get the hell out of there.
"Fifteen years and no severance!" shouted one angry MF Global employee as he left the firm's offices on 5th Avenue in Manhattan after hugging the receptionist and doorman.
Yep that is just how it goes when a sociopath is running your company. Corzine should be fed to the hung. Instead he will be given a golden parachute and BK another company.
Do business with the devil and you're gonna get burnt. Although there was probably a time, perhaps within the early period when that 15-year man started working there, that MF Global was a normal company instead of a criminal enterprise. I wonder when, and how, it got rotten. I wonder the same thing about all of Scam Street.
Firing all of the employees illustrates another dynamic that's going to help bring The System down. Criminal enterprises inevitably eat their own. Movies about the mob are unreal, of course, but they illustrate an underlying point about human behaviour. And whether it's "The Sopranos" or "Scarface" or whatever, the mobsters always turn on each other. May it happen to the BIGGEST organized crime syndicate in New York!
When you're a mafia, or a cancer cell, you can't just stay at a steady state. You're driven by greed-hunger. You must grow or die -- not just because of physical requirements, but because your very nature is to expand by killing. The logic of a predator.
That's sustainable as long as there's a supply of fresh meat, when a system is expanding, when there's surplus "energy" in the form of oil or money or new sheople to fleece. But when the surplus "whatever" runs out, you have to turn on the smaller sharks. Bear Stearns, Lehman -- I've read analyses that these were smaller, less well-connected Wall Sharks, so the Great Whites chewed them in a feeding frenzy as the housing bubble lost energy.
Now that the sovereign debt bubble is melting, melting, MF is a dog shark among the tigers. It was chopped up by the others with margin calls. Corzine helped the chopping by funnelling hundreds of millions of customers' "segregated" money out the door to a larger shark -- the J.P. Morgue? -- as it went down. I wonder if he gets a back-door payoff from the ripped-off proceeds?
I hope that some of the sacked 1,000+ spill some farty beans on the MFing game. I hope this leads to loss of morale, lowered confidence, what Charles Hugh Smith calls "delegitimization" amongst other Fail Street employees. Maybe the sociopaths at the top will think they're immune, but the average money manipulator in the cubicle ought to feel the cold breath of death blowing from MF's graveyard. Let's hope that they stop giving a shit and start sabotaging the system with slack-assedness.
Bukko - well said, great comment
Mammoth - You truly have a good heart, borrowing to adopt a child. Congratulations on your generosity and compassion.
I have to say though, how are the employees at your work supposed to get there, if they don't drive a 4 X 4 crew cab dually diesel pickup? As someone who lives in a rural area, I can say that if you don't drive a pickup, the bigger the beter, the more and larger wheels the beter, you really shouldn't be living out there in the country, as you just don't fit in. Small cars are for lily livered man purse carrying wimpy urban dwellers. If the engine is smaller than a V-8. it's way too small.
Besides, pickup trucks = econmic strength! Saskatchewan has the lowest unemployment rate in Canada, under 5%, and they have about 50% pickups on the road, average age 10 years +, higher than anywhere else in Canada. The linear relationship between pickup trucks and psoperity is crystal clear!
OK, I'm kidding, but only a bit. Ciry dwellers, ignore this comment.
Yes Bukko a very good comment. My analogy comment about sharks the other day was very similar. Corzine had no business running a company that he really had no idea what he was doing.
If he took a psychological exam I am sure his sociopathic behavior would be revealed. He needs to do the right thing and go home and put a gun in his mouth.
No amount of money, taxes or penalties matter when you adopt a child as adorable as Nadia.
Palladium might be a sneaky pick right now. I don't own any, but I am considering it. Another play is Stillwater Mining (SWC) or PALL the ETF.
Stillwater closed at 8.02 on October 4 and its Friday close was 12.10. The also mine platinum, but after a rise like that, it might be a little late.
PALL is up in the same time period from 54 to 64.
I often find that Palladium flies under the radar as we look at silver and gold and copper.
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