Barnhardt Capital Management Closes its Hedge Fund; implicates WH, Corzine [Truman North]

We've discussed this in the open threads and so forth over the last couple days, and Ace recently posted something tangential here, in case you would like to know more.

Ann Barnhardt, who is apparently an anti-Jihad crusader and blogger at Barnhardt.biz among other places, takes as her vocation the manager of a hedge fund. Citing her lack of faith in the market and specifically the uncertainty introduced by an increasingly-lawless government and regulatory regime, she has voluntarily closed her hedge fund, Barnhardt Capital Management, and gone out of business.

Her resignation (?) letter was posted on Zerohedge. A couple of choice excerpts:

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.

snip

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.

It's true. Corzine, Joe Biden's pal and Obama crony, as taken something like $600M of his client's money and spent it on... magic beans, I guess. Or hookers. Whatever.

But don't look now, Herman Cain hit on a white's woman!

Lookit, MF Global's mini-Madoff may or may not have destroyed the whole financial system. I would bet it didn't. But what it did was expose, yet again, that nothing happens on Wall Street that's stopped by federal regulators, unless there's a political motive behind it. Rule of law, we hardly knew ya. Madoff? Fine! MF? Totally cool! But when Client Number 9 starts to have some success in shutting down bad operations... They couldn't find Madoff's 50 billion, but they could trace one $5,000 transaction for a sweet hooker? Really, SEC? Really??

My takeaway from this dramatic and public resignation and withdrawl by one of Wall Street's big fish is this: Success and failure in the markets are no longer determined by anything resembling the free exchange of goods, services and information. Rather, they have become dominated by political actors using limited information and the heavy hand of the state.

While you and I may have absolutely no power to control this, those we send to Washington routinely do. Scott Brown's answer? Pass a law! Make sure he and his pals stop doing insider deals! We're supposed to believe we have to stop them before they kill again, but they're TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE when it comes to spending the money that isn't theirs!

Jesus. Even the Republicans on the Super-Clusterfuckommittee are looking at "revenue enhancement" to "solve" our problems. I'm not interested in giving these crooked schmucks more money; I'm interested in throwing them in jail and giving the next bunch less.

Additionally: Both Houses have agreed to hold hearings on the insider trading skullduggery; the House of Reps is investigating. Prepare yourself for the revelation that "mistakes were made. Move along. Nothing to see here." I'm chasing my Tums with Valu-Rite in giddy anticipation.

posted by Open Blogger at 09:07 AM

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