MF Global Bankuptcy Revisited: Gary Gensler's Conflicted Role

MF Global's Bankuptcy and CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler's Conflicted Role

By R. Tamara de Silva

February 4, 2012

Does anyone police the regulators? Are more regulators needed to police regulators for conflicts of interest that at least superficially would seem to affect their judgment? And why must we as a society perpetually add to a body of existing regulations just because we seem unable to effectively enforce the ones we already have? I ask all this in thinking about Gary Gensler, the current Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC"). There is a legal standard for causality, the "but for" rule. Under this legal standard, had Mr. Gensler not been involved with Jon Corzine, $1.2 billion in customer funds may not have gone missing. In hindsight, Mr. Gensler's conflicts of interest regarding MF Global required policing.

The complete blog post can be found here: http://www.timelyobjections.com/2012/02/mf-global-bankuptcy-revisited-gary-genslers-conflicted-role.html