Ted Butler - "An Unmitigated Disaster"

``The disaster is that for the first time in modern financial history, the main guarantee of the clearinghouse system has completely failed its most important constituent -- the customer base. The underlying promise to every participant in the futures market is that your money and open positions are safe from theft and default. This is the very glue that holds the future market together, namely, that all market participants can depend upon strict regulation and oversight to safeguard against fraud and theft. That's what has made the US organized futures exchange system the envy of the world. Until now.  For more than a week, almost all of the 50,000 commodity customers of MF Global are in limbo as to the access and status of their funds on deposit and open positions. This is unprecedented and beyond bad. For these 50,000 customers, it's the equivalent of discovering your bank just went out of business and there is no assurance all your funds will be returned. (In the interest of full disclosure, my background is in futures, having started as a commodity broker at Merrill Lynch some 40 years ago. But I have not traded futures for years and am no way personally involved in the MF Global mess; I'm strictly an outside observer and independent analyst). ''