Bud Burrell - Front and Center

Pro-Naked Short Selling Journalists Begin To Jump Ship!

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:58:00 GMT

From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell

With the release of the CNBC CYA piece yesterday on Anthony Elgindy, the convicted felon, the exodus of his journalist supporters and apologists stage left has not only continued, but expanded. For over 10 years, this coterie of killer clowns has relentlessly attacked victims of illegal short selling manipulation with every slander imaginable. Then, in a single one hour piece, their world came crashing down, along with their co-conspirators at the regulatory agencies who made hay by attacking criminals and the defenseless in the name of hanging the easiest low hanging scalps from their belt.

The CNBC segment of the “American Greed” series, titled “Mad Max on Wall Street” was laughable in its defense of many of Elgindy’s supporters. While it attacked Elgindy personally, it left out little bites like his prior conviction for felony insurance fraud in Dallas before he appeared in San Diego.

Elgindy was a former pump and dump broker for the notorious Blinder, Robinson (known in the trade by the not so affectionate name “Blind ‘em and Rob ‘em”) in Denver, before he moved on to another bucket shop where the commissions were greater in Dallas. When he saw both these firms go under to regulatory and criminal findings, he astutely morphed himself into a short seller, one who postured himself as being only concerned with outing criminal pump and dump stocks like he had previously lived off of.

He opened a site called Anthony@investigations, on the Silicon Investor Board, which he morphed into Anthony@Pacific as he gained more traction and subscribers to his shorting service. He and his cohort would hit some 4000 companies, pretty much without discrimination, wrecking more than 2200. Many deserved such attention, but as many more did not. When Elgindy put his pack of wild dogs on a small company, they would be unable to find the resouces to defend themselves.

Milberg, Weiss would sue for the companies’ D&O Insurance policies if they had any, the SEC would be “tipped” about the fraud at the company (whether it existed or not), paid bashers would bury message boards with slanders of everything about the companies, legitimate business opportunities of the target companies would be eviscerated by wholesale attacks on the potential business partners, the SEC would open investigations on the company, its management, its financiers, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. By involving an FBI agent and his friends, Elgindy would gain access to insider information that could be used in an adversarial way against the companies. This last decision had more to do with the 11 year sentence to prison he received than anything else he did.

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US Passes Tipping Point on USG Expenditure and Obligations Versus Potential Tax Revenues from All Sources.

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:07:00 GMT

From “Front and Center”, By Bud Burrell

Today, the National Inflation Association made the momentous announcement of the US having passed a critical “Tipping Point”, that being the level at which if 100% of all income were taxed from payers, it would not cover the expenditures of the US Government. If you can’t understand what this means, then as a citizen, you damned well better learn. We have gone over the edge of a precipice that can’t be easily recovered. The futures of our currency and of the currencies of the World are in acute jeopardy that would predict the probability of an unprecedented collapse of our global economy. This collapse comes at a time when, as never before in American history, our national system of government and laws are imploding.

I was asked today what solutions I could see for the future and what could the individual do to protect themselves against the potential collapse. First, I don’t see a solution for the individual. All we can do is reduce the size of Government and the level of our expenditures and taxation immediately. The option is the seizure of our country’s financial assets, the decimation of our real estate markets both residential and commercial, the liquidation of our insurance industry, and worse.

Absent draconian changes in our way of life, I can see nothing to repair the institutional damage already done, and which is being magnified every day. Jobs creation was a hope a year ago, but I doubt it would be of any value now. Busting the energy paradigm with a new source of plentiful and cheap energy could be on the wish list, but it better happen soon. Fanciful pleadings that we trust our Government to correct, and to re-adjust are folly. We need action now, not a year from now, not in 2012, but now.

The hardest part of the question with the functions of our Government is to determine what isn’t broken beyond repair. Maybe the only elements of our national model that aren’t completely broken are the military and the local police functions.

Our Courts are a disaster, our legal system is corrupted beyond imagination, and our Government is almost incompetent at every level.

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CNBC's "American Greed" Wednesday, March 10, 2 Hrs On Anthony Elgindy.

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:13:00 GMT

--From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell--

I was informed this evening that the CNBC Series “American Greed” will air a 2 hour special on the notorious short seller and convicted felon Amir “Anthony” Elgindy. Elgindy was the operator of the most notorious criminal short selling syndicate of the last decade, known by several names, including “Anthony@Pacific”, etc. After being arrested in early 2002, and being released on bail, Elgindy was caught trying to fly from New York’s Islip Airport back to San Diego, in possession of $40,000 in cash, and more in precious jewelry, along with phony passports with different names on them from his own.

While Elgindy was operating, he attacked thousands of companies, 2200 plus, with impunity and aggressive arrogance. Working with lawyers specializing in suits for Directors and Officers liability insurance, paid bashers, pay for play journalists, NASD (now FINRA) boiler room broker-dealers, PIPES financiers, bloggers and hedge funds short sellers to destroy and preferably bankrupt his target companies.

His syndicate eventually grew to over 650 members, including many of the biggest hedge funds, law firms and more, all in turn supported by the SEC, FINRA, and other regulators. His activities attracted the partnerships of Milberg, Weiss, then the most successful law firm in the country, on both of the US Coasts, the SEC, FINRA, the DOJ, and many more, including firms specializing in producing negative research reports on companies his syndicate had targeted for short selling raids.

The tactics he employed were classic manipulation. Most frequently his network would “tip off” him to a potential company to be targeted, particularly where there was sufficient market capitalization to make it very, very profitable to rip them off. He would generally establish his position, then go out with his alert to his subscribers describing what he thought the shorting opportunity was, with them acting in concert with him to simply overload the market with supply of stock, thereby driving the Company’s stock into the ground. With their stock suppressed, financing became irrationally expensive and dilutive. More often than not, the companies would have to throw in the towel, selling out at an enormous discount, deregistering or bankrupting.

Elgindy loved to see his targets bankrupt. He knew from some of the more arcane rules of FASB’s GAAP accounting that if a short seller’s target deregistered or bankrupted, they didn’t have to cover their short sale. That made the proceeds of their short sale tax free, since there would be no revenue recognition event.

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Harry Markopolos, Whistleblower on Madoff, Rocks Mainstream Media, Opening Book Tour For "No One Would Listen"

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:53:00 GMT

--From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell--

This week, Certified Fraud Examiner Harry Markopolos announced the release of his new book, “No One Would Listen”, about the complete stonewall he hit with US Government Regulators including the SEC and FINRA. He told his story in his typical low key and very professional manner, making his message all the more devastating.

I am sure that SEC, FINRA and other officials to whom he reported his findings on the scope of the Madoff fraud felt footfalls on their graves.

Starting with CNBC, and then going to Matt Lauer, CNN and FOX News, he recounted his story of his discovery of the Madoff fraud, which had been ongoing for many years, when he examined the claimed performance of Madoff’s split strike price conversion strategy, and his quick realization that he claimed performance that would have simply been impossible to produce. He recited the sequence of events that led him to conclude within 30 minutes that Madoff was a fraud. It is where it went from there that no one except people who had faced similar risks could imagine.

I come from an extensive derivative background and I have known everything about the history of conversions and reverse conversions for decades, literally. Like Mr. Markopolos, I had a serious math background, which had been the foundation of my move into the derivatives industry well over 33 years ago. I maintained many of my relationships in the industry as I moved into other areas later in my career, but I found myself drawn back into the space by the short selling scandal.

I knew what I had found in the illegal short selling manipulation scandal, enormous fraud involving all forms of organized crime globally. What Markopolos did was to confirm that his research led him down the very same rabbit holes, to the same slimy criminals. Slimy is not the right word though, slick and ruthless are better.

I was made more than a bit uncomfortable when he began to describe how a French nobleman had exposed him to contacts in Europe who warned him that Madoff was involved with serious organized crime, from the Red Mafiya, to the Columbian Drug Cartels, the Israeli Mob, and more. They didn’t hesitate to warn him that if he persisted, he would be at real personal physical risk, along with his family. I was told the same thing as I became more visible, and I was advised to go public as my only form of protection.

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The Coming War Over The Efficient Allocation Of Scarce, Depleting Resources Worldwide.

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:02:00 GMT

--From “Front and Center”, by C. Austin Burrell--

The last century has seen the global population push past 6 Billion almost without notice or concern. With no focus of leaders of the World on population concerns except from China, current growth rates of population will push global population of the World towards 12 Billion by the year 2050. This projection could give or take a few percentage points absent a global war or other natural disaster that might materially alter the final number.

What sort of World will we live in if this isn’t prevented? Clean water is already becoming a global crisis. Along with this shortage of clean water for consumption and irrigation, there is growing crisis of arable land suitable for production of grains and other vegetable staples, one that increases in severity every single year. 60% of the top soil of the Central Midwestern United States has been depleted by improper and inefficient use and irrigation. The Imperial and Central Valleys of California are being converted to Mesopotamian Desert acreage faster than the conversion of the ancient fertile crescent that once existed between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq.

The Sierra Club wrote a book over 20 years ago titled “Cadillac Desert” about the gross mismanagement of water resources in the fourteen Western States of the US that now reads like prophesy.

What other shortages are extant or projected?

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Glenn Beck Documentary The Revolutionary Holocaust Live Free Or Die Review

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:06:00 GMT

--From “Front and Center”, by C. Austin Burrell--

A week ago Friday, Glenn Beck produced his first documentary, and it was technically and professionally outstanding. It recorded over 4 Million viewers, the largest number ever recorded for a Cable documentary in a traditional News time slot. This documentary was intended to show the monstrous human price of the liberal secular progressive movement in the 20^th Century, stimulated by the works of Marx and Engels. It was a staggering dismissal of the true control motives of liberal secular progressives in the forms of the revolutions and Governments produced by Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro and Che and the 200 Million plus lives they took in unprecedented wholesale murder to achieve their political objectives.

The first effective point made in the presentation was that the word liberal was co-opted by leftist radicals, in that the people who led our revolution were self described liberals in their time. Conversely, the progressive movement that came out of the socialist thinking of Marx and Engels needed credibility, and they took this word to their breast to legitimize their existence.

In fact, as Beck demonstrated, beginning with Marx, progressives were racist savages.The true story of the agendas of hard left liberal secular progressives was demonstrated by Trotsky (who lived in Brooklyn under the name of Leon Bronstein before returning to Russia) in the Russian Communist Revolution of 1917. Some 40,000 active Communists successfully mounted a revolution that took over a country of 100 Million people, and stretched across 8 time zones. How they did that is its own story, but what they did after they seized control is the true story.

First under Lenin, and then under the brutal dictator Stalin, the Communists initiated programs of mass annihilation of anyone who stood in their way, beginning with the slaughter of the White Russians, which essentially wiped them out as a racial segment. The concentration on the annihilation of White Russians extended into foreign countries, with Stalin ordering the assassination of White Russians who had escaped his net, the last of which was in 1952. He bragged of the slaughter of 20 million White Russians later in his rule.

Next was Stalin’s collectivization of Russian farms, with a particularly savage focus on the bread basket State of the Ukraine, with its incredibly productive independent grain farmers, the “Kulaks”. In the year of 1932, to accelerate the collective farming plan, Stalin simply chose starve to death 10 Million Ukrainians to death in an unprecedented slaughter to that date, so vicious it was given a name, the “Holomador”.

I heard these stories from children of Ukrainians lucky enough to escape to the US, and from a second generation Ukrainian-Canadian whose father lived through this nightmare as a child. This was the same country whose nationals welcomed the arrival of German troops as liberator in World War II, only to be slaughtered again in horrific numbers, over 5 to 8 Million murdered.

In 1936, Stalin began the purges of the Russian military, killing without mercy, all but wiping out the officer corps of the Russian Army. In a little over 2 years, 5 million would die in Stalin’s attempt to “freshen” and “cleanse” the Communist revolution. When he was through, only one regimental commanding field grade officer was said to have survived. But he didn’t stop there.

Stalin was an equal opportunity monster, killing anyone who blinked at his political agenda and plans for a Soviet Socialist State. He slaughtered millions of Armenians, his own fellow Georgians, Turkestans, Poles, Kurds and millions more, some 60 Million all told before World War II started.

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Gradual and Silent Encroachments Abridging US Citizens' Personal Freedoms

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:18:00 GMT

-From “Front and Center”, by C. Austin Burrell-

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." James Madison, in his speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788.

Since this country’s very inception, there has been a steady attack on the individual freedoms as delineated in the Bill of Rights, and of our Constitution as a foundational document. This attack has accelerated in the 20^th Century, a period during which leftist radicals, greedy bankers, and revolutionary socialists have chipped away at the very core of our Constitution, to include wholesale infringements of the 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 9^th and 10^th Amendments, among others. The objective of these infringements has been to dramatically expand the power of our Federal Government, while reducing and limiting not only individual rights, but also the rights and privileges of States.

Beginning with the concepts of Marx and Engels, our Country moved on to establish in 1913 a central bank with total control of our currency and banking, set up as a private entity/enterprise owned and controlled now by the World’s banks and investment banks, and US only secondarily. They also chose 1913 to institute a personal income tax in individual US citizens, an act so unconstitutional, there is today no legal affirmation of its right to be exacted.

Generally, those favoring a more powerful central government and many socialist agendas have moved very gradually, expanding their powers with under-handed dealing and misdirection. A simple example is the institution of the Social Security program in the 1930’s. Originally, the tax was to be imposed only at a rate of 1% of income up to $1400, and participation was strictly voluntary. In these years, the life expectancy of an American averaged around 54 to 56 years, and this program did not begin to payout benefits until age 65, which most citizens did not make it to.

When instituted, politicians then in power denied any contingent risk in these numbers, just as they had discounted the real potential impact of a minimal personal income and estate tax in 1913. Everyone knows how both of these programs have worked out, exploding past any actuarial tables ever compiled at the times, always relentless in the failure of promises of future costs.

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Predator Pay-For-Play Journalists And Their Ilk: Who Pays And Who Benefits?

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:27:00 GMT

From “Front and Center”, by C. Austin Burrell I have watched the conduct of a figurative nest of journalists/bloggers/bashers/critics in a series of attacks on the targets of short raids many times over the past 15 years. The questions that never seem to be answered are the most basic? How do these parties pay their bills? Who is paid or not paid to the benefit of what organization, entity, or agency? If you think so many man hours could be devoted completely pro bono to analysis of mostly small companies balance sheets and management, I encourage you to look deeper.

I have watched the unrelenting attacks against companies who have dared to challenge these self-described vermin in the Courts. Without exception, the same attackers’ names appear repeatedly in such a consistent pattern that it cannot be a random occurrence. I have seen the work of internet sleuths tracking the patterns of relationships between these journalists and notorious market manipulators, including everyone from major hedge funds, to a community of professional journalists, unpaid web site and message board bloggers, compensated bashers, criminal rigged research organizations, and eventually to the federal agencies we depend on for oversight of our markets and the manipulators to regularly savage our assets.

The question “Quo Bene?” is older than our society. Thousands of years ago, corruption was cited that was tracked back to its sources by the simple method of looking first at who benefitted from the acts of corruption. This was true from Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, to modern times. The “contracts” between these parties track to not only involved cash considerations, but also to professional support, school access for related parties, legal partnerships, and more. Predation consumes assets as its cost of doing business, and those assets must come from some source.

Why haven’t those in charge asked these questions? Indeed, the SEC and FINRA have protected their related external supporting parties to this predation from any fair, open and balanced inquiry hundreds of times over the past decade. Why is this so?

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The US Attorney General's 5000 DOJ Indictments Targeting Financial Fraud and National Security

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:48:00 GMT

From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell

Last week, in a speech given in West Palm Beach, Attorney General Holder announced the pendency of 5000 indictments by the Department of Justice of individuals linked to financial institution fraud as part of an overall targeting of market manipulators and cheaters across the Board. His speech did not specify for the audience the type of targets the DOJ was focusing on, leaving open the most important questions about such an announcement. Who is being indicted by type, for what kind of specific misconduct?

I have devoted thousands of man hours over ten years to try and work with and within the legal system of the United States to get its principals to focus on the rape of the American investors stealing literally trillions of dollars, through conduct that could only be identified legally as sedition. Ten of thousands of securities issued by thousands of legal issuers have been manipulated, counterfeited, and stolen in virtually every form of security bought and sold in every market in the World. I pointed out to many of the responsible government oversight and regulatory officials that various tactics were being strategically employed to launder money for the purpose of stealing securities and evading taxes.

I broke this down into a single memo of eight bullet points for not only these parties but also for numerous journalists, lawyers, victims, government officials and more, with a uniform silence from them with only a handful of exceptions. The summation of this memo was that criminals both domestic and global were tactically manipulating all forms of assets, engaging in various forms of counterfeiting facilitated by vested public interests, in a huge global conspiracy lined inextricably to all forms of organized crime, again, done strategically to launder US assets into foreign accounts for the purpose of evading all forms of taxes, both legitimate and illegitimate.

The enormous size of the thefts here (in the Trillions of dollars) threatens US national security, and global stability. We have seen the dollar implode, retirement accounts savaged, and major institutions brought to their knees and worse, much worse in many cases. These thefts have been implicated in the destruction of investor confidence, and there is no form of security that has not been impacted, from stocks and bonds, currencies, physical and forward commodities, agencies, to commodities, and more. These same thefts could never have been executed except with the wholesale cooperation of not just hedge funds, and investment banks, but only with the implicit cooperation, support and protection of every form of financial service monopoly involved in trading, clearance and settlement of securities globally in all forms of assets along with the major international money center banks, a pliant press, and a corrupt research industry perforated by criminal interests who pay top price for the purchase or sale of research for securities they specialize in. Oversight provided by our US Government branches and agencies hasn’t been deficient, it has been non-existent, a canard by every perspective.

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The Origin Of Machine Politics, And What They Are Today.

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:07:00 GMT

From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell

“Machine” politics have not always been with us in this country, but rather, they are a product of the exclusionary practices directed at particular emigrant populations in the 1800’s. For those wanting a better understanding of how political machines came into existence in this country, there is probably no more succinct explanation than that contained in the third book in the now legendary Daniel Boorstin trilogy “The Americans”, The Democratic Experience, now over 35 years old. Boorstin had not only an extraordinary intellectual bandwidth , he had the ability to synthesize extremely complex topics in highly literate prose, including most certainly history and its patterns as well as any writer in US history. Hardly could anyone have sustained his own personal literary output to sync with the job he had and mastered as the Librarian of Congress.

History has been an interest of mine extending back to my childhood, raised in a Christian home where the Bible was seen as an historical document. One early influence on my reading was works done by the classists, including Homer, Ceasar, and more, to modern biography and history done by authors including Manchester, Anthony Cave Brown, Churchill, Joseph Campbell and more. Hardly any of these many authors would disagree with the assertion of Nietzsche that “The Past is Prologue”.

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