It’s Official: Wall Street Firms May Legally Steal From Their Customers

stockholmer

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Sat Nov-12-11 12:19 AM
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It’s Official: Wall Street Firms May Legally Steal From Their Customers

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/it%E2%80%99s-official-wall-street-firms-may-legally-steal-their-customers

......they may not have to pay them back, even when they are caught. The customers will be expected to 'take one for the team,' and for the good of the system. Confidence and all that. “This means they can take segregated funds and leverage them to kingdom come. It means nothing is safe.” If you have a commodity account with Wall Street, they may gamble with your money, with your assets, the rule on segregated accounts be damned. If they lose the money you might be reimbursed, or not. The losses may have to be 'socialized' and haircuts received.

This is most likely a distortion of the principle known as 'rehypothecation' in which a broker can use customer positions and holdings as collateral pledged for a margin loan for the purpose of securing funding from a third party to service that loan. The principle at play here may be closer to a type of droit du seigneur, in which any assets you have posted at a futures brokerage may be used at will by the broker for their own purposes without regard to any customer obligations. It depends on the extent to which MF took customer assets and leveraged them.

In a way it is just making the unbalanced relationship between Wall Street and its customers official. It means that customers are bearing hidden counterparty risks on assets to which they thought they had a clear title, such as Treasuries, and foreign currencies, and warehouse receipts for precious metals.

It means that brokers can go beyond the mere provision of funding for loss, and use customer accounts to fund their own leveraged speculation under exemptions duly granted by their 'regulators.'

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related

MF Global May Have Used Customer Funds In The Losing $6.3 Billion Trade Without Informing Clients

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/11/08/mf-global-used-customer-funds-in-the-losing-6-3-billion-trade-without-informing-clients/

After an intense day of investigation, I have just discovered that a CFTC rule(1.29) allowed Jon Corzine’s MF Global to use the margin and cash in customers heretofore segregated accounts to amass a risky $6.3 billion investment in European sovereign debt that backfired. Nor did Corzine have the obligation to inform any of these customers he was gambling with their money. Or that he was intending to keep all the profits for himself and his troubled firm. Nothing for the customers.

The language of Rule1.29 allows “The investment of customer funds in instruments described in 1.29 shall not prevent the futures commission merchant (MF Global) or clearing organization so investing such funds and retaining as its own any increment or interest resulting therefrom.” Increment refers to any trading profits or gains.

The criminal division of the Justice Department in New York — as well as the SEC and the CFTC and members of Congress– are investigating whether any laws were violated and if so, whether any criminal charges can be brought. As of 3pm today, there has been no sign of the missing $633 million. My sources believe it was probably grabbed by the institutions that made the margin calls on MF Global as the European bonds sank in value.

This shocking loophole, which is available to all commodity traders, whether giant ones like Goldman Sachs or members of commodity exchanges, means that huge risks are being taken with money that does not belong to the trading firms– without the customers having any idea of the danger they are in. As Andy Abraham, a futures trader in Israel put it to me today; “this means they can take segregated funds and leverage them to kingdom come. It means nothing is safe.”

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