another brokerage, not again

[hardnox604008]

Wire says PFGBest has frozen customer accounts and all accounts are liquidation only following the attempted suicide of the owner/CEO this morning.

Anybody affected, or know anything?

[hardnox604008]

http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/prominent-cedar-falls-businessman-hospitalized-after-suicide-attemp...

[dapper7]

http://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/CaseDocument.aspx?seqnum=3356

[dapper7]

only for you noxie.

[sw363535]

Thanks Nox & Dapper,

Sounds like that one has been hiding there in the weeds for a while.  

Reading the company history, I wonder if our new "techy" trading with its speed doesn't let these shell games get farther along before detection. 

[hardnox604008]

Dunno much at all.

Do know that I gave consideration to entering the World Cup this year, which now trades (ed?) through PFGBest.  Decided I didn't need the added distraction.

I guess I'm lucky that the huge pot that I'd no doubt have in it by now might be less so, perhaps quite a bit.

[hardnox604008]

http://www.startribune.com/business/90751939.html?page=3&c=y

Sounds like it might be linked to a $190 million ponzi scam in MN, which may have been linked to a Swiss outfit.

Sorta the way it works in my observations- the ultimate con is to con other cons.

[tom s. in tn.]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mf-global-redux-regulator-says-065552464.html

And this is a perfect example of exactly why deregulated greed will lead to the markets own failure and demise. No one mature enough around to operate on common sense any more.

......... another ponzi scheme ?  Tom S. in Tn.

[DW11]

What would it take for government regulators to find this out?  It sounds like somebody properly tracing the money flows could have found this out in about one hour. 

The gov. supposedly reviewed their position in Jan. and they didn't catch this?  What the heck are we paying the regulators to do?  Heads should roll! 

[hardnox604008]

I'm about 50/50 on which way we die.

Could be a black swan- where everybody is leaning the wrong way, using the same risk model, and the market goes the other way- slow and then real fast as they get overrun. The Libor scam could be the tip of that as it becomes harder to milk cash out of a few hunddred $trillion in interest rate deriviatives if they can't rig the market.

The other would be a gray swan- where a single Too Big To Fail instituion is fund to be totally ponzied out. The JPM "London Whale" trades would be the example of that.

Either way, neither requires a lot of fictionalizing as we've been near both before.

Worst thing about the drought is that it probably will keep some farms from getting totally clean, financially, before the @#$%storm hits.

I'd say that the persidential election is proably immaterial as the inevitability of this.