In the end, Jon Corzine was little more than an unsupervised rogue trader.

His disproportionately reckless $6.3 billion bet on the credit quality of a few European nations bankrupted MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF) over the course of three dramatic days after the short-term credit markets quickly lost confidence in him and his firm. His gamble will cost MF's shareholders and creditors billions of dollars and, virtually overnight, put the careers of MF's almost 3,000 employees in jeopardy.

MF Global now has the distinction of being one of the largest bankruptcies in American corporate history, with almost $40 billion in liabilities. There is also the matter of the hundreds of millions of dollars of customers' money that regulators have reported to be missing from the firm's coffers.

In any case, it's incredible how little Corzine and his associates learned from the collapses of Bear Stearns Cos., Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and American International Group Inc. three years ago. And it now seems very hard to believe that just a few months ago Corzine was considered the front-runner to be the next U.S. Treasury secretary.

It didn't have to be this way. The tragic element of Corzine's MF Global is that Monday's bankruptcy filing could have easily been avoided if Corzine's ego and ambition had been held in check by someone -- anyone -- willing to stand up to the former New Jersey governor, senator and senior partner at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)

David Fuller's view Corzine appears to have shown a total disregard for the employees and clients of MF Global, especially as he could have placed similar if smaller bets privately with his own capital, if it was just about money rather than ego.

Here is a different but equally good column on Corzine, also from Bloomberg:

Corzine Forgot Lessons of Long-Term Capital: Roger Lowenstein