Gentleman Jon Corzine Fumbles Again: But the Posse Once Again Gets Him
Look for little sympathy in most taxpaying quarters of New Jersey for (thankfully) former Governor Corzine after he successfully sank his firm, MF Global, through bad decisions.
Those of us suffering Planet Jersey inhabitants will recall that before Mssr. Corzine spun his magic at MF Global, he was Chief Executive of the Garden State. Faced with an imminent fiscal crisis requiring bold and decisive action (which would only come from his successor Chris Christie), and beholden to no one given his extensive wealth and ability to bankroll his campaigns, Mr. Corzine nonetheless only nipped and trimmed at the edges of state spending so as not to offend the government worker’s unions. And who will ever forget his supercilious appearance at a Trenton government worker’s rally late in his term where he declared his allegiance with them, as opposed to all of the stakeholders, especially and including the taxpayers, in New Jersey? If politicians could be held for breach of fiduciary duty, that would have been a prime case.
Contrast such position as a governor with him as a CEO who cut workers at MF Global right after he took the helm, in order to right the ship. Apparently the ship of state of New Jersey, and its taxpayers, were not as important as the shareholders of MF Global.
And Mr. Corzine’s attributed remark “Europe wouldn’t let these countries go down” to justify his risky bond positins at MF Global takes us into an alternative reality where the voters of New Jersey decided to keep him on for another term. Mr. Corzine would likely have done little more in his second term to reign in New Jersey’s fiscal mess and likely would have sought the federal government to bail it out which could have precipitated an avalanche of such handouts. Thank God for Jersey electoral miracles.
The rough and undeniable justice is that Mr. Corzine has been called out twice for his shenanigans: by the New Jersey voters and the markets.
-I.M. Windee
