Impossible. Impossible in that "funds" do not "move".
This headline from a Bloomberg article that follows up on the situation between MF Global and their banker JP Morgan. The article is mostly out of paradigm in that it reports these matters in a way that misses the basic abstract nature of our banking system.
But the Bloomberg people are not the only ones who can't get a handle on these systems, here from the article is an excerpt from a Congressional inquiry report, trying to explain these events:
“Over the course of that week, MF Global (MFGLQ)’s financial position deteriorated, but the firm represented to its regulators and self-regulatory organizations that its customers’ segregated funds were safe,” said the memo, written by Financial Services Committee staff and sent to lawmakers.I bring attention to this government report's use of the word "segregated"; like somehow the system consists of a big vault room with different physical deposit boxes that are "segregated". This is absurd.
Hat tip to Naked Capitalism where Yves has covered this Bloomberg story but Yves has in a way been misled by the context here and has written that the customer accounts had been "raided". Nobody is "raiding" anything here. The system is just a big "spreadsheet", as Warren Mosler often describes it, that keeps track of double entry accounting transactions, and depository institutions are entrusted to operate the system conservatively and with integrity.
Our banking system is not best understood by watching a Harry Potter movie and the goblins that run the Gringott's Bank in those fictional stories by J.K. Rowling. Here's a picture of Harry and friends who have just come out of a "segregated" account that looks like it has been "raided" and the "funds" have been "moved":
This is an image from a children's movie and does not in any way represent the real world of modern banking, our system is all on computer based integrated information systems these days; which keep track of double entry, offsetting accounting transactions.
Garbage in, garbage out.
