According to NY Post’s John Carney Jon Corzine’s unbelievably swift fall is a classic story of Wall Street arrogance. Just a few months ago, the Obama administration was considering Corzine as a possible successor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Investors in the bonds of his firm, MF Global, demanded the right to an extra percentage point of interest if he left as its CEO and chairman.
Nobody else on Wall Street makes a promise like that to buyers of its bonds. Not even JPMorgan Chase, run by Jamie “King of Wall Street” Dimon. Corzine had come to be regarded as a demigod, a divinity in the mortal world. Hercules with a trading desk.
And no one believed the myth of Corzine as much as Corzine himself. When explaining to associates and investors that he wasn’t preparing to leave to become treasury secretary, he never for a moment let on that he had any doubts that he could — and probably should — be running the highest economic office in the land.
Meanwhile, Hercules was pushing his firm to take on more Euro-debt risk — even as most Wall Street firms were shrinking their exposure to the sovereign bonds of troubled nations on Europe’s periphery. In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, MF Global claimed that the market was wrong about Europe — and MF Global knew better.
Read more at http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_face_of_wall_street_arrogance_8XAZ7crBF3ZbQFUEr5SyPK
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