John Corzine, no doubt enjoying the cachet of a former Goldman Sachs CEO, was brought in to turn MF Global into a trading powerhouse in 2010. Toward that goal, he relied on the playbook that worked so well at Goldman Sachs. But in the end, he couldn't recapture the magic. And MF Global now stands on the brink of failure. This is not the first time that blown-up trading efforts have personally hurt Corzine. Recall that one factor when he left Goldman Sachs in 1999 was a tough loss due to some bad trades for the fourth quarter of 1998, a rare misstep for the gilded bank. Reuters notes the view that outsized risk has led Corzine into calamity in other ways, citing his injury in a high-speed car accident; he was not wearing a seatbelt. If the fall of MF Global can be laid to any one decision, it would have to be the decision to move from a conservative agency broker-type firm to a proprietary trading firm. Corzine no doubt saw this sort of risk as the way to fortune, and he brought in lots of prop traders to transform the firm. According to Reuters, old hands mocked them as the "League of Extraordinary Trades." One has to question the controls that were put in place during this rush to prop profits. That the firm allowed itself to get stuck with such a huge position, apparently lightly hedged, of European sovereign debt does not suggest a disciplined culture. Some would suggest that a portrait of an undisciplined risk-taking firm is off the mark, but the end results cannot be denied. That said, it does not look like other U.S. firms are in similar position. MF Global may end up being the only U.S. victim of the European crisis.

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