EPJ Exclusive: The Regulatory Schmoozing Conducted by Jon Corzine (and Company)

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has responded to a Freedom of Information Act request by EPJ's Bob English. Bob comments:

Five and a half months later, here you have it.  The relevance is probably not obvious to anyone not intimately familiar with the details, but this clearly establishes the regulatory schmoozing Corzine et al were up to, to keep the Corzine trade alive--and his success at it.  Had his lobbying efforts failed on 7/20/11 and had CFTC Rule 1.25 (investment of customer funds) been modified to restrict such activities, MFG would likely have been toast much much sooner.  I've subsequently found that the CFTC disclosed in the Federal Register that it decided to postpone 1.25 rulemaking between 7/20/11 and 7/22/11.  This clearly establishes that Corzine and Ferber successfully stonewalled the CFTC rulemaking process to his own benefit.

Reading into this a bit, I think the only way the CFTC FOIA office was able to get away with not complying with FOIA rules and statutes (in terms of timeliness in response to my 11/4/11 request) is that they were ordered to do so, to comply with the ongoing investigation.  That they would release this to me now, I take as a form of press leak authorized at the highest levels of the CFTC and perhaps the DOJ (which would be protecting the MFG Holdings Trustee, Freeh).  The SIPA Trustee (Giddens) only last week said he was going to sue certain execs.  Most assumed Corzine.  I take this release as they want Ferber in the spotlight as well.  Perhaps Gensler.  Some of the other Commissioners, such as O'Malia, are quite pissed with him and his obsession with DF swap dealer implementation at the expense of overseeing the futures industry (a lost cause to begin with, but that's for another day).

Here's the CFTC FOIA response: