Bob Shrum Hearts Jon Corzine But Doesn’t Want Us to Know About the Missing Customer Funds
The Democratic operative Bob Shrum has committed what in my opinion is a serious mistake in his paean to the former chairman and CEO of MF Global titled In Defense of Jon Corzine. He manages to extol Mr. Corzine’s political virtues while ignoring the apparent fact that about $600 million of MF Global’s segregated customer funds are missing. Mr. Shrum probably recalls the feeding frenzy when a Texas company called Enron went under, and from the start his party was unrelenting that the Bush administration needed to indict the top people. Meanwhile, all the author has to say about MF Global is that it entered bankruptcy “on his (Corzine’s) watch” and:
I admire what he accomplished and what he stood for in public service. For the moment, that’s been wiped away by the events at MF Global. I don’t know precisely what happened there — and by the way, neither do all those who are rushing to judgment not just about the firm, but about the man.
Fair enough. Presumption of innocence etc. And of course there have been no criminal charges and there may never be any, but when boatloads of supposedly safe customer funds go missing, is it not reasonable to be concerned that perhaps the single person who was both chairman of the board and the chief executive officer might have acted at worst criminally or at best negligently, unethically, or . . . badly in some other way? Enough for Mr. Shrum to, say, mention and then segue to his main topic, which is political? (As an aside, the drawing of Mr. Shrum the adorns his article makes it look to me as though he’s wearing a variant of a Mao jacket.)
Mr. Shrum ignored the proverbial elephant in the room regarding the missing client funds in his zeal to promote the progressive political agenda. That has earned his piece my periodic award for the most biased article of the week.
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