You've Got to be Kidding Me.
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - November 22, AD 2011 7:20 PM MST
Now that I have stopped simultaneously laughing, crying and throwing things at my monitors, I can now post on this little gem. That little bit of ego in me would like to think that maybe my little screed from last Thursday helped to spur this amateur Kabuki theater presentation, but NAH. That would imply that any of these people actually read, and I seriously doubt that.
First, note Mayor Daly's lack of eye contact or acknowledgement upon his introduction, followed by some of the most furious fake paper rifling action I have seen in a long time. Then, at the 0:21 second mark, please enjoy the Nixonian "I-don't-belive-my-own-lies-but-I-expect-you-to" nose scratch from hell from Terry Duffy. Bwah-ha-ha-ha. Here is the whole transcript with my comments in bold:
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Good morning.
{Not for the MF customers, it isn’t.} I’m Terry Duffy, executive chairman of CME group and I want to thank you all for being here today. I want to welcome you to our press conference and thank Mayor Daley for being here.
{SMOOCH!}I want to recognize my colleagues, Mr. Brodsky, Jack Somebody, Leo Melamed, and some of the treasurers behind me that you are going to hear from in just a second. We are here to discuss something that we feel very strongly about
{No one is interested in how you people FEEL. All we want to hear about is the objective reality of WHERE THE FLIPPING MONEY IS. Take your sentiments and stow them, sailor.} and that is the importance of Chicago’s financial marketplace, not just to the city, but to the world.
{Not for long, hon. Musical interlude:}Click Here to Listen. Trust me. Heh. (The video's owner prevents external embedding)
I am especially pleased to host Mayor Daley, a long-time friend.
{Uh, that doesn’t help your credibility, Terry.}I’d like to thank the mayor for arranging today’s press conference and the round table that we had.
{SMOOCH!}We had a very informative round table discussion with some of the top financial service industry leaders.
{FANTASTIC! Does that mean you found the stolen customer seg funds?}We discussed a whole host of challenges and opportunities facing the financial community, from regulatory issues to global expansion.
{Did you discuss the challenge of going down the list of MF’s counterparties and calling them and asking if they had the money? It’s really quite simple, you know.}It’s wonderful to have a mayor who values the vital role of the economy played in Chicago’s financial services community.
{Oh, SMACK! Duffy is referring to Daley, but the current mayor is Rahm Emanuel. Duffy just backhanded Emanuel bigtime.}It’s worth pointing out that there are some segments of our financial market that provided a place of shelter for the most damaging parts of the economic crisis.
{Provided. PAST TENSE.}Futures and options markets are chief among them.
{WERE chief among them.}They function flawlessly, providing liquidity, transparency and central counterparty clearing services that continue to work throughout the crisis.
{Uh, I know several thousand MF customers who would have just a TINY nit to pick with that statement, Terry.}No customer has ever lost a penny as the result of a clearing member default at CME Group.
{Okay. Now you’re just shamelessly lying.}And that includes the Great Depression up through the most recent economic failure. Even though CME Group and our fellow exchanges are headquartered in Chicago, our businesses are truly global.
{Yeah, you have screwed people all over the planet. Your mother must be so proud.}We continue to dramatically expand our businesses as a consequence of distributing our products worldwide.
{Let me guess – you’re bullish Greece, right?}At CME alone, we now serve customers in more than 85 countries.
{Is “serve” the new jive-talk street slang for what goes on in prison showers?}We serve them through the CME Globex, the most distributed electronic trading platform in the world.
{“Serve.” I get it.}We are standing here today at the nerve center of this global operation.
{Ooooh. Ahhhh.}What you see around you is the new state-of-the-art global command center from which CME Globex operates around the clock to serve our clients.
{Wow! Look at all of those flat screen monitors! It’s like Star Trek, or Dr. Evil's Lair, or something.}Roughly 60% of our employees are involved in technology supporting this operation.
{The other 40% are “auditors”. Snorf.}In fact, we have invested more than 1.5 Billion dollars over the past several years, much of that deployed right here in Chicago.
{Wow. Looks like you’re going to have to sell all of that off to make the MF customers whole, Terry. But hey, at least you’ll be able to afford it!}To give you a sense of the scale, last year we traded 2.6 billion contracts, representing an underlying value of more than $800 trillion dollars.
{Uh, I would expect those numbers to be just a TAD lower next year.}And since we are the guarantor of every transaction that happens in our markets, we have to guarantee the performance of each and every one of these contracts, which means facilitating the transfer of $800 trillion dollars of risk.
{So, why didn’t you guarantee the MF customers? Why did you lock them out of their accounts and destroy the entire system, you idiot? Why did it take you a week to even begin the transfers?}To do this, we hold more than $100 billion dollars of collateral to support the transactions that are being done in our markets.
{Apparently not, Terry. Apparently MF did not have the full collateral posted, which is why the MF customers were DOUBLE MARGINED when their positions FINALLY transferred. Do you ACTUALLY believe your own bee-ess?}And twice a day we move between six and ten billion dollars of funds to and from market participants, much of that banking activity happening right here in Chicago.
{Yeah, where the hell IS Harris Bank in all of this?}Indeed, Chicago has become a catalyst in the transformation of the global financial marketplace.
{You got that right, Bub. You are going to take the entire thing down.}In fact, Chicago has reaffirmed its leadership with a new set of trading entrepreneurs now involved in hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, arcades and technology companies, many of whom were at the round table earlier this morning.
{Reaffirmed its leadership? You FAILED. You failed epically, totally and catastrophically. You FAILED in your fiduciary duty to audit and enforce the common sense rules with Corzine and MF – but then, I reckon it was pretty tough to execute an audit of MF whilst you were on your knees under Corzine’s desk trying to buy that sweet Deputy Treasury Secretary gig, right? You FAILED to protect the MF customers before the collapse. You FAILED to do your job and keep the MF customers liquid after the collapse. It’s over, Terry. You and your boys just hung yourselves with your own $1500 neckties. No one is buying your sleazy, lawyered-up, a$$-kissing spin. Say goodnight, Gracie.}
