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Oct
14
Written by:
bobo
10/14/2008 1:10 AM
The below article appeared today, and spells out in rather succinct terms that which the whole of the NY financial media apparently can't piece together. Huh. If only someone had run a full page ad in the Washington Post, or something, to make it even clearer. Doh! That's right. We did. And yet the smarmy NY media continues to try to argue that this is all about bad sub-prime loans, or the normal functioning of a market. I don't expect that to change....
They didn’t get it: Signs of looming financial disaster ignored
By THEODORE J. COHEN
When I was 11 years old, my mother brought home a mongrel puppy. Mickey, as we named him, was not my father’s favorite addition to the household, and he said he’d only allow the pup to stay if I took care of his every need. That Mickey had frequent “accidents” on my bedroom rug did not help the situation. And despite my efforts to walk him frequently, it soon became apparent that his days in the Cohen household were numbered.
Finally, after yet another accident in the bedroom, my mother gently but firmly took his face and rubbed his nose in the mess. Mickey “got it!” From that day on, there was no question when he wanted to go out. Even my dad came to love the old dog, which is saying a lot!
Based on what has transpired over the last two months in the financial markets, it’s pretty obvious that Mickey was smarter than the financial media, Congress, and the SEC put together! They just didn’t “get it!” This is decidedly not a case of hindsight being 20-20. On the contrary, all the signs pointing to the coming of the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression were out there for all to see as early as 2005, if not sooner.
There is no end to the number of people who rubbed the “noses” of the media, Congress and the SEC in the mess that blew up this September. The “mess” began with the implosion of the subprime mortgage market. But it led directly to the rapid demise of Bear Stearns as a result of aggressive shortselling of its stock, including naked short-selling, by other market participants as rumors of the company’s demise spread rapidly on Wall Street.
On Feb. 8, 2005, for example, the National Coalition Against Naked Shorting (NCANS) published an open letter to President Bush that stated in part: “ ‘Naked’ short shares have, in effect, been counterfeited. They are as different from normal short shares as fake money is from real money. The ability to print counterfeit shares at will allows a hedge fund to destroy a company’s value over time by creating an artificial (and fraudulent) supply of stock. If this were cash, computers, or jewelry, the perpetrators would be behind bars. Yet apparently the rules are different for Wall Street — the SEC, the NYSE, and the NASDAQ exact no meaningful penalties, thereby allowing the practice to continue.”
In November 2005, Patrick Byrne, president of Overstock.com, stated that, “Continued abusive short-selling practices pose strong potential for a systemic Wall Street meltdown that will undermine our capital system and our economic strength.” That same month, he predicted that, “We’re going to see something that’s going to make the stock market crash of 1929 look like a tea party.”
The financial media treated him as a something out of a circus freak show! Watch and listen to the interviews conducted with Byrne by so-called “financial journalists” on Fox, Bloomberg, and CNBC Closing Bell (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIH w7C73s3E).
Congress had its head in the sand, as well. Letters to my congressman and senators in the matter of naked short selling, if answered at all over the last two years, merely promised to keep my views in mind. Frankly, I doubt if anyone on any of their staffs even understood the issue.
And the SEC? A recent article published in The New York Sun places the blame squarely on the SEC for the current crisis in the financial markets. According to former SEC official Lee Pickard, the SEC, in 2004, “...allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets and remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults.”
There you have it ... the financial media, Congress, and the SEC: dumb, dumber, and dumbest. They just didn’t get it. Somewhere, Mickey is chasing a ball and having the last laugh. He got the message when his nose was pushed in it!
THEODORE J. COHEN
Ph.D., Middletown, is a research scientist.
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Remember Gradient? This was the firm that accused Patrick of being every sort of liar, cheat, scumbag, lowlife, etc. etc. When he sued them, along with Rocker Partners (now Copper River), they began a multi-year campaign of mud-slinging, and used every dirty trick in the book to stall, waffle, avoid discovery, and generally dodge the coming bullet of a day in court.
In their counter suit, they leveled every ugly claim they could manage, making Patrick and the directors of Overstock seem like a den of thieves.
Well guess what?
They lied.
Yup. They don't call it lying, of course. Even as they settle with Overstock, it's more that they were "mistaken" when they issued countless reports smearing every aspect of the company's management, accounting, business practices, and ethics.
Several articles have come out, yet nobody in the financial press can apparently bring themselves to point out the glaringly obvious - when Gradient said all those nasty things, none of the them were true, meaning that Overstock's claims were.
Even as CNBC proffered countless opportunities for the Gradient defenders to mount a full on smear campaign, it was all lies.
Ya don't hear CNBC having Patrick on to comment about it, do you? Isn't that odd? I mean, they give hundreds of hours to Herb and Gradient's attack dogs, offering up absurd free speech arguments for slandering the company with false info, but when Gradient admits it was, uh, mistaken, not a peep. How unexpected.
Here's a relatively balanced article describing the settlement. Note, however, that it can't help but repeat the ugly allegations made by Gradient, even as it reports that, well, those SIXTY or so reports on OSTK were false and misleading. Hey, ya think maybe the ugly allegations might be false, too? Nah. Best to just give them as much play as possible.
How's this for a deadpan beauty: "Utah-based Overstock sued Gradient and New York hedge fund Rocker Partners LP, now known as Copper River Management, in August 2005 in a California state court, alleging they “orchestrated a wide-scale predatory campaign of knowingly distributing false, and covertly biased, written reports about Overstock in order to disparage Overstock and enrich themselves.”
And the other shoe: "Gradient admitted that it had issued mistaken reports about Overstock, wrongly concluding that some of its directors were not independent. It said that it has reviewed and improved its internal communication processes."
Mistaken. No doubt due to "lousy internal communication processes." "Hey, Don, Herb and Dave are on the line, and want you to punch up the parts in the latest where you conclude that the company's a Ponzi scheme designed to cheat widows and orphans out of their cash. They want it more negative. Can you get the word nazi, heroin addict, or cannibal, anywhere in the hatchet job?" Yesssss. I can just imagine that internal communication process review. Musta been a doozy. Darned communication process.
Reading the sparse coverage, it seems more as though Gradient said, oops, er, maybe when we called everyone liars, scumbags, cheats, etc. we got it kinda, uh, a little out of focus, fuzzy, really. But you can bet the rest of our coverage and reports are accurate. Yessireeee. Those SIXTY reports were atypical of the rest of our fine work. We are not just a slander shop for hedge fund predators, engaged to bash whatever the target du jour is. Not at all. The quality of our work speaks for itself.
Ya gotta love it. Wonder whether Rocker and Cohodes are booking flights to the Caymans in preparation for their day in court? Nah. They too have indicated time and time again that they are innocent as the driven snow, and eagerly await their opportunity to clear their good names in court.
Might want to take their passports anyway. Just in case, in the almost inestimably remote chance, that Patrick called this one right as well.
BTW, remember the directors who resigned over his "nutty crusade" against these fine folks? Doesn't it sort of make you ask yourself what kind of director would resign because the CEO is defending his shareholders? Now that we are seeing his predictions come true, and his charges against his detractors holding up, doesn't that sort of seem like it was a pressure tactic by guys who were in bed with hedge funds? I mean, I'm probably wrong, but you have to admit it looks, well, a bit dodgy now, don't it?
And meanwhile, the markets continue to selectively filter the news to reflect Wall Street's version of reality.
Patrick was recently on CNN, and did a good interview you might want to check out.
And veteran commentator Bud Burrell is back to blogging here, after a sojourn. You should check out his latest. It's a good one.
Copyright ©2008 Bob O'Brien
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17 comment(s) so far...
Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat?
I just wish we could play a collection of TV interviews of the slime balls and what they said on a special segment of CNBC hosted by the aspiring cool dude Joe Kernan. We could have clips from the stuttering, incoherent Roddy Boyd, the picture of vagrancy and unkempt, Gary Weiss, smarmy Jeff Matthews, The infamous "I am a coward" Herbie Greenberg, capped off by the SEC report thrower Jim Cramer. David " I am not Compromised" Faber could be the host. There isn't a zoo big enough to hold all these subhumans. If I were Rocker I'd be on the jet also, and God willing there would be a insurrection at his destination. Karma is a bitch.
By rtway on
10/14/2008 12:07 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat?
In this mess with corruption everywhere, there are still a few good guys who can't be intimidated. Kudos to those people who get fired because they aren't "team players". Thanks to all who have seen the truth and written letters and supported the efforts of to clean up the market for our kids. Here are OSTK's Board of Directors who didn't get intimidated:
Dr. Patrick M. Byrne
Allison H. Abraham
Clay Corbus
Joseph J. Tabacco, Jr.
James V. Joyce
By ashtrays in the air on
10/14/2008 12:07 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
how about the names of the directors who abandoned patrick when he was trying to investigate toxic trades in his company. we want to know. we want to avoid doing business with them.
By thankful for you good guys on
10/14/2008 7:57 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
The only solution is to reverse ALL failed trades.
The books on what was sold to who and never delivered exist somewhere the trades that never delivered must be reversed for the same amount of money as the sale was made for NOT current market value.
It is the only way to restore value,confidence, and integrity to the stock market.
It will also reverse the effects of the naked bombs [ CDO's .bond delivery failure's, and stock delivery failure's] onto the creaters of this disaster.
P.S. good to see your back Bud , and my so prolific...
By bbhindyou on
10/15/2008 8:07 AM
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Nocera makes Roddy look like a nun..
It is now approaching a category 5.. all the regular whores are parading their wares on the street.
These guys are on life-support.. drooling. Old habits are hard to change.
By The spin is in on
10/15/2008 9:59 AM
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Is there More to the Story?
I wonder if maybe, just maybe, the little angels from Gradient turned over information, perhaps recently discovered phone logs, emails, documents and such (that were accidentally misplaced during the discovery phase of the litigation), and/or agreed to testify about certain matters at trial IF requested by those mean old lawyers for big bad Overstock.com?
I mean, I know it sounds crazy but, surely those choirboys from Gradient had something to trade in exchange for being released from that nasty little California matter? Would Dr. Byrne accept a cash payment in settlement--in an amount the Gradient boys could afford? Perhaps, but it has not been his way so far. Dr. Byrne appears to be more interested in justice than a few pennies.
Call me crazy, I know they were innocent and all that, but should there not be more to the story?
By Jeremiah 9:24 on
10/15/2008 1:56 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
Did I dream this or did I read somewhere that Rocker closed his Copper River Operation last week down sighting rampant redemptions and market volatility (margin calls). I could see where they would want to do this so there wouldn't be any money in the kitty and these conditions would give them cover plus a lot of their investors know the score. Will there be anything left to sue....
By searrows on
10/15/2008 1:56 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
Well well well. It seems that Deutschebank was naked short selling like mad.
http://www.deepcapture.com/deutsche-bank-sold-massive-amounts-of-phantom-stock/
By bobo on
10/15/2008 1:58 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
RIN 3235-AK06 “Naked” Short Selling Antifraud Rule
AGENCY: Securities and Exchange Commission.
ACTION: Final rule.
SUMMARY: The Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) is adopting an antifraud rule under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) to address fails to deliver securities that have been associated with “naked” short selling. The rule will further evidence the liability of short sellers, including broker-dealers acting for their own accounts, who deceive specified persons about their intention or ability to deliver securities in time for settlement (including persons that deceive their broker-dealer about their locate source or ownership of shares) and that fail to deliver securities by settlement date.
DATES: Effective Date: October 17, 2008.
http://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2008/34-58774.pdf
all very timely
By Sean on
10/15/2008 8:47 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
These new rules are such crap. I mean, really. They remind me of the gun laws proposed against "semi-automatic" weapons. Huh. I thought shooting people was already pretty damned illegal. Were they not stopped by all the laws against assault and murder? Do we need yet another law against certaint types of guns, as that'll stop 'em when murder didn't?
This is what happens when bureaucrats want to appear to be doing something, and yet don't actually do anything. For instance - there are already federal laws requiring delivery at T+3. So why do we need SHO to tell us that once you ignore that law, you really need to pay attention to SHO's requirement to deliver at T+13? It's stupid. Rape is illegal, but if you are going to rape, you really have to stop doing it after a couple of weeks, because then it is really super duper illegal!
Same apparently goes with fraud. Selling stock you neither own nor borrowed is fraud if done to impact a stock price - and that is the only reason you would do it to the point where companies are on the SHO list. But apparently that obvious violation of 10B-5, which is basically ignored by the SEC, just needed clarification! See, if you do it, against federal law, now it is really REALLY super duper really fraud, not just obviously fraud like before.
They could stop this now by requiring a hard borrow, or a hard buy-in at T+3 with an additional penalty. Overnight it would be over except for the day traders. But no. Instead we are treated to dozens of pages explaining how Naked Short Selling isn't defined in Federal Securities Law. Duh, that's because it isn't permitted and violates a host of federal laws. It's only because the SEC pretends as though all those laws are more like suggestions that we have any discussion over it.
This will accomplish nothing, just as the ban on short selling didn't stop rampant delivery failures during that period. If the rules mean nothing, then it is hard to claim that some actually may.
By bobo on
10/15/2008 9:01 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
rules mean nothing without enforcement....it's like telling your kid to clean up their room, or else, and or else NEVER happens...the SEC will continue to put out meaningless rhetoric until after the eleection
By clearthinker on
10/16/2008 10:31 AM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
Bobo.
You say, "Selling stock you neither own nor borrowed is fraud if done to impact a stock price." Regardless of why this is done, it is fraud. If you don't own it or have a right to sell it, it isn't your to sell... period. Fraud. Why do we use the same weasel words used by the SEC?
T+3 and that's it. Then, mandatory buyins by the introducing broker. Too many words introduce too many interpretations.
By SteveM on
10/17/2008 8:16 AM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
This is the best analysis I have seen yet on the current financial crisis. What do you think Bobo #1 or #2.
Commentary On The Capital MarketsFriday, October 17. 2008
Posted by Karl Denninger at 06:46
(Page 1 of 281, totaling 561 entries) » next page
The Fraudacity Of American Finance
I just had to coin a new word.
Audacity + Fraud = Fraudacity.
John Mack yesterday in a CNBC interview said that the capital deployed by Treasury into the banks was going to rebuild their capital ratios - not be lent out. In other words, they intend to hoard it.
This means, bluntly, that not one nickel of benefit will be seen by Main Street, despite claims by Paulson, Bush and others that this bailout is necessary for "Main Street, not Wall Street."
Liars.
Never mind that Bloomberg is reporting that the so-called "executive compensation limits" that Paulson is touting mean little or nothing:
"Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Lloyd Blankfein, whose $70.3 million paycheck made him Wall Street's most highly compensated chief executive officer last year, could still earn tens of millions annually under the bank-rescue plan run by his former boss, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson."
Very nice. So the taxpayers hand out billions and the executives still rake it in.
Where is the accountability?
CNBC's Fast Money finally started talking about the outright fraud and lies last night. Dylan Ratigan was absolutely on fire about the fact that Paulson was in fact one of the executives lobbying hard for removal of leverage limits in 2004, just two years before he took the position at Treasury (and cashed out $500 million in Goldman Sachs stock tax free.)
I and a few others have been peppering the media with this, and finally, someone woke up to the fact that the very same people who made this mess now want we the taxpayers to pay for cleaning it up - after they ran off with all your money!
Never mind that its unlikely to work.
Nor does it stop there. AIG continues to draw on their "credit line" with The Fed. Inquiring minds want to know a few things here, chief among them being why suddenly is there $80 billion of hard money required in a business that is "fundamentally sound" in excess of cash flow, and where that requirement did not previously exist.
I'm suspicious as hell on this one guys, and my suspicion generally points in the direction of Lehman's Credit-Default Swaps.
The claim by the DTCC and ISDA is that the total "actual exposure" is somewhere in the area of $6-8 billion once all the contracts have netted out.
Let's examine this, because it leads to only two possibilities, both of which are extremely uncomfortable.
First, if the claims are correct: Then the entire CDS game is one gigantic high-finance version of "pick pocket."
That is, you come to me for a CDS on Lehman. I charge you $100,000. Then I immediately go find someone who will sell me the same contract for $90,000. I have now "picked your pocket" to the tune of $10,000, and (theoretically anyway) I have no risk. This continues until the last sucker says "no mas!" on a cheaper price, at which point that particular chain of CDS come to a close, until the next buyer shows up.
If this is the essence of the CDS game then the entire scheme and the dealers' insistence on keeping these things off a public exchange is an artifice with intent to defraud. Why? Because by keeping bid/ask and O/I hidden these banks are able to continue to play this game of "steal from the guy you sell to by obscuring the price"; indeed, that is the essence of the trade! This market doesn't exist to make a market or to set a price for risk, it instead serves as nothing other than a high-finance looting operation with everyone putting in the maximum effort to obscure market facts so as to be able to maximally exploit the customer!
Why do I make this charge? Because there were allegedly $600 billion worth of contracts written on Lehman. If only 1% of that turns into real money needing to be paid out, and recovery on the bonds was literally under 10 cents, then the actual "notional at risk" was $540 billion. As a result we have almost none of the market being used either to insure actual bonds or to place bets on the firm's demise (or health) - essentially the entire CDS marketplace exists to do exactly one thing - steal from the buyers of this "protection"!
If I ran a place that was called a "Tavern" but 99% of the people who were there in fact came to deal cocaine, and only 1% of the people purchased drinks and food to be consumed in my "establishment" I'd be instantaneously raided and shut down by the cops, and with good reason. I would be operating a criminal enterprise - despite calling what I'm doing "serving food and adult beverages", in point of fact I was providing cover and concealment to a highly-illegal enterprise that was engaged in a prohibited activity. Ditto if my alleged "Tavern" was in fact cover for a bookmaking operation and again, 99% of my "activity" was in fact illegal sports betting while 1% was the sale of alcohol and food.
If the ISDA and DTCC claims are correct this is the fraud of the century and every bank and institution involved in it needs to come under immediate federal indictment.
The other possibility is more ominous - ISDA and DTCC are lying, and in fact there are hundreds of billions of dollars in real claims that need to be paid off next week.
The latter explanation happens to (inconveniently) fit with AIG suddenly needing $80 billion worth of actual money. See, AIG's derivatives desk is known to have written CDS on damn near anything or anyone in considerable size. It was a very profitable part of the operation while the music continued to play, but now it has imploded on them, as all overly-leveraged schemes eventually do.
If this explanation is correct then we have a whole different set of problems. In that case the obvious question is whether OTS was complicit in allowing a regulated institution's wholly-owned subsidiary with recourse to the parent to lever up to a degree that vastly exceeded any reasonable standard of prudence under banking and insurance regulations. The implication there is that we had willful and intentional refusal to enforce banking and insurance regulations on both a state and federal level, because AIG was in fact a regulated entity - this was no hedge fund!
The latter scenario also leads one to question whether the $80 billion drawn thus far is in fact going to pay off hedge funds who made bets on Lehman's collapse! If so then this is a further outrage, in that these firms bought these "swaps" from an entity that was insolvent at the outset of writing them, and the idea of the government stepping in to protect hedge funds from bets they made with a firm they knew didn't have the capital to pay is beyond outrageous, not to mention a raw fleecing of the taxpayer to cover the bets of an illegal and under capitalized casino that was enabled and powered by willfully-blind regulators!
Either way we've got a problem with the only real question being exactly who has been lying to whom, where we need to point the Federal Prosecutors, and from whom we should seek to disgorge the ill-gotten gains with Civil RICO (Racketeering) lawsuits.
There's more fraudacity to explore, but this should give the prosecutors plenty to start with.
Do you think we can find one or two somewhere in this country that aren't actually in bed with the fraudsters?
By thelimeyone on
10/17/2008 4:08 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
Steve M-in re: mandatory buy-ins by the introducing b/d that's easier said than done due to the NSCC's "allocation of shares received" policies as well as their "pre-netting" policies. "Buyer Bob" buys 100 shares of Acme and the seller fails to deliver that which he sold. On T+3 the NSCC gets delivery of 100 shares of Acme from some guy that was 90 days late in delivering. That 100 shares is unconscionably allowed to "cure" buyer Bob's delivery failure rendering it not a delivery failure. The trade involving the delivery failure of the guy that finally delivered 100 shares of Acme 90 days late may also have not been registered as an FTD because of the arrival of 100 shares of Acme this time 120 days late that arrived on his trade's settlement date. The "introducing b/d" you cited that should be doing a buy-in has no idea of these shenannigans. As far as the NSCC's "pre-netting" goes 97% of all of the share and cash transfers needed to be done at the end of the day are "pre-netted" out of existence. But so is the delivery status of any particular trade! The introducing b/d that took a commission as the purchaser's "agent" owes a fiduciary duty of care to make sure his client got delivery of what he paid for. The NSCC's "pre-netting" process extinguishes that duty of care as the introducing b/d has no clue that an FTD was involved. That duty of care should have been assumed by the NSCC by they will with 100% certainty plead to be "powerless" to buy in the delivery failures of their abusive "participants" even though as the "central counterparty" to that trade, the NSCC, is the official creditor of that debt. If they refuse to collect on that debt then they can't forward the shares to the b/d of the buyer. Through the process of "novation" the NSCC "discharges" the delivery obligations of its abusive "participant" and then refuses to "assume" them. But that's what a "CCP" does. It "discharges" the obligation and then "assumes" them. The NSCC has the power to "discharge" the delivery obligations of its bosses, the DTCC "participants",and then pleads "powerless" to "assume" and "execute on" these obligations by buying in the missing shares when its abusive "participant" refuses to deliver that which it sold. That 100 shares of Acme that arrived 90 days late should have been used to "cure" the delivery failure of that 90-day old trade but instead it went towards that fresh FTD of "Buyer Bob". But lo and behold that 90-day old FTD was already cured so they might as well apply it to Bob's purchase order. It's a Ponzi scheme wherein the fresh FTDs are extinguished by the delivery of long overdue deliveries. The question becomes is how old are these delivery cycles. Is their average age 60 days or 90 or 120? What ever happened to "settlement date" being T+3? If the NSCC claims to be "powerless" to buy in the delivery failures even though as the CCP they are the new surrogate creditor of that debt then there's nobody left to order the buy-in. That's why the Evans, Geczy, Musto and Reed research revealed that only one-eighth of 1% of even "mandated" buy-ins are ever executed. Why? Because the NSCC unconscionably claimed to be "powerless" to do so. Why? Because it was not in the "financial interests" of its boss the abusive DTCC participant that absolutely refused to deliver that which it sold. I wouldn't execute on my delivery obligations either if the new creditor, my employee, said I didn't have to.
By dr. d on
10/17/2008 4:10 PM
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Greatest DJIA Daily Point Gains & Losses
There is obviously Market Manipulation!!!
Talk about a climate ripe for taking advantage of volatility to make huge sums of money...in the past 30 days, the DJIA has set "all time" daily point gain & loss records.
Look at the spreadsheet posted on the DJIA home page.
5 of the top 8 daily "all time" gains and 7 of the top 8 daily "all time" losses were set in the past 30 days of trading.
http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/downloads/xlspages/high_low_lights.xls
By Pete Stevenson on
10/17/2008 4:07 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
What do you want to bet that part of the bailout winds up taking the NSS load off some big rich Wall Street banks so their businesses can resume vitality - after stealing trillions from folk who did nothing but play by a set of rules Wall Street scoffs at?
There's a reason nobody put money into the markets for two generations after the pecora hearings.
We need another pecora hearing. Gary Aguirre should be made a special prosecutor, and should be given carte blanche to investigate Wall Street's larceny. Instead, of course, a captive SEC will continue to pass watered down rules against practices that are already against federal law, and the next two generations' wealth will be transfered to Wall Stree via bailouts that don't work because they were never designed to work.
You are watching the theft of the nation's wealth by the wealthy few, in the last days of the Bush White House.
By bobo on
10/17/2008 6:06 PM
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Re: Did I Say I Was Innocent Of All Wrongdoing, and Call Patrick A Liar and A Cheat? UPDATE: NCANS & BYRNE SIGHTING IN PHILLY!!!
yes - a nice farewell kiss by the President
By clearthinker on
10/21/2008 3:06 PM
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