After returning from a 10-year hiatus from Wall Street, Jon Corzine stepped into the Chairman and CEO role at MF Global as the conquering hero, hellbent on creating a new Goldman-like trading giant. Just 17 months ago the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs returned to the bank business with a bold plan to throw out the risk-averse strategy set in place by former chief Bernard Dan and turn the business into an investment bank. Suffice it to say, Corzine's aggressive bets -- including a whopping $6.3bnexposure to European government debt -- left the firm teetering on the brink. With a bankruptcy filing this morning, Corzine's MF Global has officially gone over the edge. MF’s trouble started when Corzine, who racked up $600mn for himself during his glory days at Goldman, went back to his old playbook and and tried to improve sagging profits with aggressive trades using the firm’s own capital. Some market observers have pegged the firm’s leverage ratio at 40-to-1, a level that tops both Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns before they collapsed. [NY Post, 10/30/11]