Weekly Wrap: Jon Corzine, World Bank nomination

Kai Ryssdal Mar 23, 2012

The week on Wall Street and beyond with New York Bureau Chief Heidi Moore and Cardiff Garcia of FT Alphaville.

On the news that Jon Corzine apparently authorized the transfer of $200 million in customer funds last year:

Heidi Moore: Yeah, all those former titles and he’s a current perjurer, because he testified to Congress that he had no idea where this money went. And it’s very important — you know, customer money on Wall Street is supposed to stay separate from the firm’s own money. And he mingled them, which is a huge crime; it might even be fraud. And then he apparently lied to Congress about it, according to this new memo. It’s really enormous, and very disappointing.

On the World Bank nomination of Dartmouth’s Jim Yong Kim:

Cardiff Garcia: It’s not mutually exclusive to say that he’s a very qualified candidate, and he really does seem to be. And also that the selection process is still a little bit flawed and it does give an advantage to whoever the Americans pick — he’s very likely going to be the next World Bank president. The second thing I’d say is it’s very difficult to anticipate in advance how good somebody’s going to be at this job, only because there are so many variables that go into judging. It’s hard to tell right now…there’s a lot of metrics involved.

For more analysis, listen to the audio above.

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