As an overlooked story from last week’s news cycle has shown, connections between President Obama and Occupy Wall Street have become more evident — and not for the right reasons.
A securities broker called MF Global that was in charge of billions of dollars across the globe filed for bankruptcy. Like most financial institutions that were hit hard by the crisis in 2008, it was in the derivatives market, which places values on underlying assets through contracts and trades them. What had caused MF Global’s collapse was a multibillion-dollar bet on European debt that fell through after the panic in Greece began.
What’s the problem? For starters, it misplaced millions of its clients’ funds. Its derivatives were traded so often that the company couldn’t keep track of them. It’s frustrating to me that these fools didn’t learn from the lessons of three years past and get out of that volatile market.
Logically, I thought that the people involved in the Occupy movement would share in my discontent. It’s a situation of negligence on Wall Street that has cost real world folks a lot of their retirement money. Plus, it could prove to be an issue that I could agree with Occupy on, because I happen to disagree with much of what the protesters support.
So I traveled to Occupy Iowa City to try to find some common ground with my fellow comrades. I quickly bounced from occupier to occupier, asking if they knew about MF Global’s bankruptcy and the missing money. What I got in return were a bunch of "nos," which I expected. The same people (around 10) agreed that MF Global made a huge mistake and that its behavior is indicative of recent investor culture.
It’s good to hear that the local movement has a grip on reality. They correctly protested Obama and his Wall Street connections last month. On the contrary, the occupation in New York City that Occupy Iowa City stands in solidarity with has not been so outspoken.
This is troubling, since there is more to this story than I let on. Jon Corzine — the former New Jersey governor, former Goldman Sachs board member, and longtime Democrat and Obama supporter — was the head of MF Global. Between him and his employees, according to federal elections data, more than $600,000 was donated this year to the DNC and the Obama re-election campaign.
Is it unreasonable to think that some of those "missing funds" might have found their way into an Obama bank account? Not at all. Even though the Obama campaign has said they will return any funds involved in the scandal, it doesn’t change the fact that it happened.
But wait, there’s more. A recent bond sale by MF Global included a clause that showed that there would be a 1 percent rise in the interest rate if Corzine were appointed to a post in the Obama administration, which was looking to him as a replacement for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
At this point, it’s a very odd coincidence. There is no empirical evidence that there is a conspiracy between the Obama administration and MF Global, and there won’t be unless some of the missing funds wind up being found in an Obama-connected account. Fortunately, the SEC and FBI are conducting their own investigations.
Given all of this information, it isn’t surprising that the national hub for the Occupy movement is all but silent. Many of the groups that are involved in the occupation have a vested interest in seeing that Obama is elected to a second term.
In fact, as Rudy Giuliani said at an event last week, Occupy is largely a byproduct of Obama’s class-warfare rhetoric. Between labor unions and left-wing activist groups, their agendas will only be furthered in a Democrat White House that listens to them.
As I have said before, the entire movement needs to denounce these kinds of hypocrisies if it wants to be effective. It can start by making a strong statement against Mr. Corzine and President Obama’s fishy relationship.
