On Thursday, former MF Global Chief Executive Jon Corzine went before the House Committee on Agriculture to plead his case as to why the derivatives broker is missing up to $1.2 billion in customer funds.

As expected, Corzine read from a prepared testimony, noting that he “does not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date.”

Michael Roseman, MF Global’s chief risk officer who departed the company in March of 2011 at Corzine’s behest, had raised concerns over the firm’s levered bet on European sovereign debt, signaling that Corzine had complete understanding of the matter.

In the early afternoon, Corzine read a prepared statement for the investigative committee saying the plight of investors “weighs on my mind every day.” He then went over a brief history of his tenure at MF Global and his hope to turn it into an investment bank over a three to five year period.

Corzine stated that he believed short term repo-to-maturity trades related to Belgium, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal were fiscally prudent investments.

End users and traders have carried a negative attitude towards Corzine since the collapse of MF Global. It has changed the way people do business – especially in Chicago.

“My take is this: the foundation of the futures industry is being tested in the worst possible way,” Kevin Ferry, chief market strategist at Cronus Futures Management, told Markets Media.

“Regulatory arbitrage and for-profit public exchanges are all in the mix; get this ‘wrong’ and the game ends,” continued Ferry. “The shockwaves are already rippling. It will get worse…you cannot hedge 260 billion in US government supply in the TLT ETF.”