Two Discretionary tales from the 1%-ers.

Because the ideals of the 99% are very much a part of my thoughts right now, I'm offering these two stories as a package deal--they represent what is going on with some of these 1%-ers.  There aren't, as you may have been able to statistically deduce, as many of them as there are of the 99%-ers, but their stories still need to be told. And in the interest of inclusion--I mean to tell them.

I will start with my main man Jon Corzine. He used to be my boss, actually, which is part of my "what goes on in Jersey, stays in Jersey" vow of omerta. But anyway, now that he isn't the governor of New Jersey, I want to point out that what happened with MF Global sure does look a lot like Goldman Sachs redux--as in: they just don't learn.  There is no such thing as house money--there is only investors' money, and a fiduciary responsibility to actually try to not lose money. Unfortunately, the impulse to gamble "as if" remains.  This is a discretionary tale about the sensible hand supposedly shaping markets--no.  Investors and movers and shakers can look like gamblers--they are individuals who do their own thing, whether it is sensible or not.

Also, one of the lesser-spoken-of in these pages contestants in the Best of the Worst 2012 Presidential Race, Mitt Romney, has a bit of a family affair going on regarding connections to a Ponzi scheme, of all things. And I don't mean Social Security!  It appears that one of the fine, young, upstanding freshly scrubbed Romney scions, Tagg, launched a "fund of funds" that invested in investing. And it turned out that the investing was not about investing, so much as profiting.  Hmm. And some of the people involved were even connected to the Stanford Ponzi scheme.

Ya know, I sort of sympathized with Romney when he admitted to going to his landscaper in a pet about immigrant workers and crying out "But I'm running for office for Pete's sake!"  But why didn't these same instincts kick in re: not financially partying like it was pre-2009?

So 1%. They know not what they are doing with so much of the wealth they have. There but for the grace of the markets go I, you know?

Does anyone ever learn?