Source:
Zero Hedge
Presented without comment, merely to confirm that the market as we know it, no longer exists.
BCM Has Ceased Operations
(source)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - November 17, AD 2011 10:27 AM MST
Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,
It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce
that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six
years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight
years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this
morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the
futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere
spectator.
The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I
could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were
safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not.
And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and
options account in the United States. The entire system has been
utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I
could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker,
soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew
to be in jeopardy.
The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an
exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the
sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital,
with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges
themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked
flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular
fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were
intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep
customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was
quickly replaced by another firm within the system.
Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a
crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by
customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime
seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words
and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF
Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and
contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this
is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the
exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad
situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they
froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO
TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable.
The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely
intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No
informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral
person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what
is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
