Barnhardt: Without Rule Of Law, Parts I & II

From Miss B:

W.R.O.L. (PART 1)

POSTED BY ANN BARNHARDT – NOVEMBER 2, AD 2011 9:40 PM MST

New acronym for those of you who don’t know it already: W.R.O.L. = Without Rule of Law.Sadly, the MF Global clients are learning first-hand what WROL is and what it feels like. This is just the very, very beginning of WROL in (what once was) the United States.

I have talked to several cattle industry contacts who had accounts with MF Global. They have been calling me looking for guidance and assurance that everything is going to be okay and that they are going to be made whole. Sadly, for me to tell them any such thing would be boldfaced lying on my part. And so I tell them the truth.

As of this writing, the amount of customer segregated funds that are missing and have been stolen from MF Global customers stands at a staggering $1.5 Billion, more than double the initial estimate from Monday of $700 million. I will not be the least bit surprised if the $1.5 Billion figure is ultimately revised up even more.

As I laid out earlier, MF was charging very, very high margin requirements relative to the rest of the industry. I suspect that MF (Corzine) was doing this as a means of raising additional interest-free capital.

Quick story. I decided to start my IB in the fall of 2005, and traveled to Chicago to interview FCMs. To my shock, I learned on that trip that the majority of the money made by IBs and FCMs (at that time) was not commissions, but rather the INTEREST on the customer segregated funds. All of the free cash in client accounts, meaning that money not tied up in margin requirements, was invested by the FCM in US Treasury paper. Every month the FCM and the IB would then split the interest income. The FCM I eventually went with offered me a 50-50 split on my office’s free cash at the 90 day T-Bill rate. I was very surprised by this dynamic. Having worked in a branch office up until that point, I had always been told that paying interest on customer free cash balances was IMPOSSIBLE, and the only way for customers to earn interest on their funds was to buy T-Bills themselves as initial margin “collateral”, if you will. Since T-Bill purchases were in large denomination blocks, all but the largest clients were effectively shut-out of this option. I thought that was just the way it was.

No, no. The reason I was told that interest payments were impossible is because the interest income was a MAJOR income stream for the branch manager. Immediately I was very, very uncomfortable with the idea of clandestinely profiting off of my customers’ opportunity interest expense. So, here is what I did. I offered the FCM a 60-40 split, with the FCM getting 60 percent IF and ONLY IF they would calculate and credit my customers’ accounts with the remaining 40% every month. I felt it right to pay the FCM more than their usual take for having to go through the extra step and labor of doing these interest credits for each account every month. And, my customers recaptured 40% of their opportunity interest expense (at 90-day T-Bill rates), which effectively cheapened up their commission rate, and in some cases eliminated it completely. It also set me apart, because at that time I was one of the only, if not THE only IB in the United States that paid interest to all of my clients as a built-in matter of policy, and I was able to advertise that fact. And finally, I made exactly the same amount of money that I had initially assumed I would make – namely my commission payout. Win-Win-Win. That, along with a genuine and unique knowledge of my business and field thanks to training I received from an old-timer cattleman, is how a 29 year old girl became a fairly good-sized livestock and grain brokerage firm.

Ever since the last meltdown, the Fed has synthetically suppressed interest rates. T-Bill rates dropped from around 5% to just epsilon above zero and have been that way for years now. I haven’t paid any interest to anyone in years because there is no interest income whatsoever from T-Bills.

People are honestly trying to justify MF Global and Corzine’s theft by stating that FCMs have sure had it rough these past two years because they have made no money on interest. Uh, like that is some sort of an excuse for STEALING CUSTOMER FUNDS?

As I laid out earlier this week, MF had some seriously inflated margin requirements. It appears that Corzine did this because he viewed the excess cash in the customer segregated accounts as “interest-free capital”. Why borrow money from a bank at interest when you can use your customers’ money interest free? Who cares if it is illegal? You’re Jon Effing Corzine. You are Barry Obama’s top Wall Street fundraiser. The laws don’t apply to YOU.

 
W.R.O.L. (PART 2)

POSTED BY ANN BARNHARDT – NOVEMBER 2, AD 2011 9:39 PM MST

And now back to the concept of WROL. I have told the MF Global customers that I have spoken to this week that they should spiritually accept the fact that all of their money is gone. IF there is any reparation, it will take a very long time, and it will be far less than what was stolen from them. This way, if they do get any money back, they will be pleasantly surprised and won’t let this consume their spirits and blacken their hearts.

And yeah, I’m completely serious.

HEAR ME OUT.

Granted, at this, every single person has become upset and said, “There should be a law to keep this from happening! The government should be able to recover our money!”

And here is where the conversation gets really, really unpleasant.

There WAS a law. There WAS a very, very strict law.

WAS.

Past tense.

What we are seeing right now is what every single culture that has been conquered by Marxists has experienced: the elimination of the Rule of Law. This nation is no longer a nation of laws. It is a nation of men. The law no longer matters. All that matters is who you are and who you know. Jon Corzine is part of the Marxist-Obamaist cabal, and therefore laws do not apply to him.

Further, the government that you, up until now, have turned to in order to enforce the Rule of Law is now itself the entity that is stealing from you. In other words, there is absolutely NO ONE to turn to for law enforcement because the is no Rule of Law. Technically, your County Sheriff chould have jurisdiction over this, but in reality if your County Sheriff made any move toward enforcing the law and holding Jon Corzine or any of the rest to account, your County Sheriff would himself be removed, arrested or killed by the lawless Marxist-Obamaist regime.

Do you understand now? Do you understand the gravity of what is happening?

Let me tell you about the Ukraine in the early 1930s. Stalin was ruling the Soviet Union with an iron fist, and wanted to get rid of the Ukrainian population which he deemed a threat to his power. Beginning in 1931, local Soviet administrators began refusing to provide the Ukrainian farmers with seed wheat. The farmers, watching the planting window close rapidly, were eventually BEGGING the Soviet administrators and central planners for seed. None was ever provided. When the next harvest came around, the Soviet administrators demanded full-quota harvest production from the Ukrainian farmers. The stunned and livid farmers reminded the Soviets that they had refused to give them any seed at planting time, and thus there was no crop. The Soviets then accused the farmers of hiding and hoarding the wheat harvest from them.

The men and working-aged boys were summarily executed on the spot as “counterrevolutionaries”. The women and children were left to starve. Cannibalism set in, and many mothers, driven insane with hunger, killed and ate their children. By the end of 1933, millions of Ukranians, both urban and peasant farmers, were dead of a manufactured and completely unnecessary mass starvation, with estimates ranging from 3-5 million dead.

“How can they do this to us? How can they get away with this? Surely there must be someone we can report them to. Surely there is someone who will help us.”

Not in a Marxist state. Marxists will rape you and rob you blind and then kill you when you don’t display your undying gratitude to them for doing it, and beg them for more. The MF Global victims are learning this lesson right now. Sadly, I fear that what happened to MF is going to eventually become systemic via outright theft and confiscation, and via inflation, which will render all assets held in U.S. dollars essentially worthless. And because this is all being done willfully and consciously by your own Federal Government, there will be no one to turn to to “make it right” or to enforce the Rule of Law.

Welcome to WROL. You MUST keep your wits about you. You MUST accept the reality of what is happening, and prepare and react accordingly. We have one hell of a fight on our hands, and in order to fight effectively we must not be consumed with rage. We must be clear-headed and be able to think rationally and tactically.

Consuming rage is extremely detrimental.

Righteous anger?

Oh, hell yes.

Consuming, blinding rage?

Absolutely not.

If you haven’t purchased long guns and ammunition, freeze dried food, water and fuel, you better be getting about that with a quickness.