Note the Rolling Stone's 'business news' liar Matt Taibbi even defended Bear Stearns own crime bosses who themselves lied about Bear Stearns shares being 'naked shorted' rather than facing the fact that their own mismanagement had caused the collapse of the firm and its stock shares price - NOT 'naked short selling'.Note also further down that ex SEC Chairman Christopher Cox himself lied own the sec.gov 'investor education' website in 2008 about Bear Stearns' as well as Goldman Sachs' and Fanie Mae's and Freddie Mac's shares, among so many other presumably well capitalized mortgage and financial 'companies',
being the victims of some unidentified 'naked short seller'! In effect Matt Taibbi is own the very side of those he claims were 'naked shorted' to cover up their own mismanagement and fraud.
Rolling Stone Reports that Naked Short Selling Killed Bear Stearns ...
www.democraticunderground.com › Discuss
2 Oct 2009 – And Taibbi goes beyond speculation to state, as an obvious fact, that illegal naked short selling helped bring Bear Stearns to its knees.......Note that Lehman Brothers' and Bear Stearns' 'management' colluded with SEC in lieing about their shares being 'naked shorted' rather than accepting that any audit at the time would have exposed that their money laundering cows had run dry NOT because of so-called 'naked shorting' but because Lehman Brothers' and Bear Stearns' 'management' were concealing their own robbing and looting of financial assetts from the very financial companies that they were entrusted with managing !And that's why first insiders and then too late ordinairy 'investors' sold or dumped their shares in mass in 2008.
Note that Bear Stearns has never had to take responsibility for making fraudulent claims about their shares
having been 'naked shorted' by some unknown entity and this recent court settlement only further demonstates that their 'naked short selling' victim claim was a fraud just as Patrick Byrne's claim that Overstock.com shares were 'naked shorted' is a fraud and Taser Stun Gun Corp's claim of shares being 'naked shorted' is a fraud and James Dale Davidson's claims that Genemax and Endovasc biotech pump and dump frauds were really victims of 'naked shorting' when their shares were pumped up by fraudulent internet promotions and then dumped by insiders with offshoire accounts but alsao those who held Charles Schwab accounts and were also the major 'market makers' of the worthless shares being peddaled and then lieingly claiming it was 'naked short selling'.James Dale Davidson even began a litigation against Charles Schwab itsaelf when in fact they were both colluding to manipulate the share price and both profit from selling it worthless shares.Matt Taibbi and Rolling Stones are aiding and abetting stock fraud by promoting the unsubstantiated 'naked short selling' claim and helping the worst trash on 'Wall Street' which is to say the insiders with their NON-Wall Street' offshore accounts that operate more sleazily and efficiently than ever now that they are wired to the internet.
I can imagine how confusing the term 'naked shorting' or 'naked short selling', (that Matt Taibbi erroneously blames on entities such as Goldman Sachs,Penson 'market makers',etc.,et.al. rather than focusing upon their real crimes),must be for anyone who hasn't been a part of and beneficiary of the fraudulant claim or a victim of a 'public company' ,(at first only penny stocks),that has claimed that their generally unaudited and often unregistered shares were simply 'naked shorted' whenever insiders to the fraud have pumped up the share price with lies that induce the public to buy and then 'dump' or sell their shares in mass until the shares or worth penniesor fractions of pennies and the insider criminals have used those shares to sponge up the dollars investors were tricked into buying them with and the insiders now hold those dollars in their own,
most often,offshore accounts.Coincidentally it is most often people with Washington,D.C. and SEC or Securities Exchange Commission connections including members of the CIA and millionaires or billionaires, including well connected right wing foreigners,particulary Israelis,who are the beneficiaries of these frauds the U.S.government and SEC pretends not to notice or be able to do anything about.While this 'pump and dump' activity and major fraud and theft of the American stock investing public has gone on for decades, it was only in 2002,post 9/11 coincidentally, that CIA connected National Tapayers Union and Agora Inc. founder, James Dale Davidson,friend to Steve Forbes and the UK's elite aging scumbag the Lord William Rees-Mogg,,et.al.,created a website, now long disappeared, NAANSS or National Association Against Naked Short Selling,at www.nakedshortselling.com to erroneously claim Genemax and Endovasc biotech frauds that ripped me off were really victims of 'naked short selling' rather than insider dumping of shares into the market.At that time, only penny stock scam companies clñaimed to be victims of 'naked short selling by brokers like Charles Schwab who were also part of and beneficiaries of the fraud as well.But later the major
'business' jou7rnals such as Forbes.com,Bloomberg,Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and even Al Jazeera and Murdoch's Times of London began spreading the rumor and in the end the SEC itself lied about Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac,Bear Sterrns,AIG,Bank of America,UBS,etc. and EVEN Goldman Sachs shares themselves being 'naked shorted' by unknown and or unnamed persons or entitiesEven before 2008 SEC Chair and criminal Christopher Cox was appearing on Bloomberg,etc., videos decrying 'naked short selling' but not naming a single person or entity involved !
Occupy Wall Street: The 'Squidding' of Goldman, Sachs | Matt Taibbi ...
www.rollingstone.com/.../occupy-wall-street-the-squidding-of-goldm...Cached
3 Dec 2011 – I almost shed tears of pride this morning when I read this hilarious passage in the Daily News: Earlier Monday, about 300 protesters in squid ...Anyone who put their heart and soul into the Occupy Wall Street Movement should be heartbroken to know that scum like Rolling Stone's 'business news' liar and fraud would deign to claim he is a supporter
or to realize as above,they gave him and his lies any credibility whatsoever.Simply saying one doesn't like Goldman Sachs while aiding and abetting the far right stock fraud money launderer Patrick Byrne is less than honest.Note more lies here below claiming that the Jon Huntsman Jr. and far right ex Mormon Senator Bob Bennett supporter,Patrick Byrner is 'left wing' for 'supporting' OWS !
Patrick Byrne » Leftwing Nutjob
leftwingnutjob.net/tag/patrick-byrne/
25 Nov 2011 – I will also be playing a recent interview Cenk Uygur from Young Turks did with Patrick Byrne the CEO of Overstock.com, who supports the OWS ...Patrick Byrne's Latest Con Game: Occupy Wall Street - Seeking Alpha
seekingalpha.com/.../307650-patrick-byrne-s-latest-con-game-occup...Cached
Patrick Byrne's Latest Con Game: Occupy Wall Street. November 14, 2011 by: Gary Weiss | includes: OSTK. As I pointed out recently in a Street.com column, ...Obviously right wing 'nut job',Rolling Stones' 'journalist' Matt Taibbi,is helping his fellow right wing nut job Geico billionaire Jack Byrne's son Patrick running Overstock.con and speculating and manipulating shares with his own offshore hedge fund,to con anyone silly enough to don a 'killer squid' clown suit and pretend they relly care or wish to put a stop to financial criminals such as Barack Obama's biggest backers,Goldman Sachs much less see their closet backers such as Patrick Byrne in jail with his father's inheritence forfeited to pay former middle class American investors he defrauded.
Note the corrupt ex Businessweek writer Gary Weiss,one of Byrne's biggest critics,is a con man himself who is closely connected to Israeli Sam Antar who stole mega millions with his family in penny stock fraud Crazy Eddie's in the 1980's and laundered the money in Israel among other places.They in turn have both been involved with another convicted Jewish stock criminal named Barry Mankow who converted to Chrisstianity just to use that religion to defraud more suckers including hids own parishioners in San Diego recently.Their interest in frauds like Patrick Byrne's Ovberstock.com is simply to buy shares, with money they should have paid to those who they defrauded previously,in scams like Overstock.con and simply short - NOT 'naked short' - them.
They should ALL be in jail with Rolling Stone 'reporter' there to keep them company.
I'm not a fan of Daily Kos whose founders have been involved with promoting and profiting from worthless penny stock as well,whichg probably indicates a CIA connection.However in the case of
Matt Taibbi's buddy Patrick 'I've been naked shorted' Byrne,well I guess it takes one to know one and Daily Kos got this right.:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/17/815783/-Media-is-terrified-of-Patrick-Byrne-Overstock-com-rsquo-s-anti-privacy-activities
Patrick Byrne's Facebook spying and far right connections....
Sometimes, as a journalist, blogger, or what have you, you come across a story you think has real meat on the bone. Such was my thinking when I saw that Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, had been mining Facebook to create some type of "enemies list."The list included business writers, bloggers, as well as the children and families of said writers and bloggers....
This, coming from Byrne, who is already under investigation by the SEC for the second time in recent memory, was an original supporter of the Swiftboaters against John Kerry, poured millions into a losing voucher educational system in Utah (calling Utahans idiots afterward), and has been attacking journalists for years would make one believe there's some type of story there. Think about it - the nefarious CEO of an online retailer is using Facebook to invade people's privacy. You'd think this would be of some interest to someone. Somwhere.
Thus far, however, from the mainstream media, there has been only crickets. Here's what the MSM has put out on Byrne in the past few days. From the Tampa Tribune:
(Note Patrick Byrne's internet dity tricks agent is a Mr.Judd Bagely who used to work for W Bush brother,Jeb Bush,when he was Governor of Florida.)
The May 6 Stock Crash Revisited "Over My 21 Years on Wall Street ... www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25454.htm
15 May 2010 – The May 6 Stock Crash Revisited ... and 3M (it lost 21 percent at its worst point), the New York Stock Exchange pauses trading momentarily and ...
Below is Matt Taibbi's,( infamous for his juvenile and speciesist comparison of the Goildman Sachs' Zionist mafia gang as 'vampire squid'),latest 'gonzo report' ,or fraudulent pack of lies,on the supposed massive 'naked short selling' conspiracy that isn't.Note his Rolling Stone disinfo piece even features a photo of the Salt Lake City office of known right wing stock fraudster and money launderer Patrick Byrne as the poster child company portayed unendingly by Byrne himself as a victim of 'naked short selling'.:
Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling' by Matt Taibbi May 15, 5:39 PM
AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks.
Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.
I contacted Morgan Lewis, the firm that represents Goldman in this matter, earlier today, but they haven’t commented as of yet. I wonder if the poor lawyer who FUBARred this thing has already had his organs harvested; his panic is almost palpable in the air. It is both terrible and hilarious to contemplate. The bank has spent a fortune in legal fees trying to keep this material out of the public eye, and here one of their own lawyers goes and dumps it out on the street.
The lawsuit between Overstock and the banks concerned a phenomenon called naked short-selling, a kind of high-finance counterfeiting that, especially prior to the introduction of new regulations in 2008, short-sellers could use to artificially depress the value of the stocks they’ve bet against. The subject of naked short-selling is a) highly technical, and b) very controversial on Wall Street, with many pundits in the financial press for years treating the phenomenon as the stuff of myths and conspiracy theories............
Look Who's NOT On Patrick Byrne's List Of Journalists
So does Matt Taibbi really believe all the blue chip stock shares listed as victims of 'naked short selling by ex SEC Chair Christopher Cox in 2008 when their stock prices plummeted,(including shares of Taibbi's own main 'naked short seller' suspect Goldman Sachs), sending untold billions to offshore accounts, were really 'victims of 'NAKED SHORTING' !? He hasn't even acknowledged the massive penny stock frauds such his pal Patrick Byrne's Overstock.com and hundreds of others including Taser stun gun stock fraud that also claimed to be victims of 'naked short selling',etc., etc.,were really just illegal pumps and dumps the U.S.SEC has protected,sending untold hundreds of billions of American formerly middle class monies to offshore accounts of international criminals wioth Washington,DC connections !And Byrne sponsored many fraudulent 'stop naked short selling' and penny stock promotion websites including the scammy thesanitycheck.com that Bud Burrell lied and threatened mny life from !I thought they were trying to sell me Geico insurance......
Here is title and quote from Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi's latest lie about the mythical 'naked short selling'
conspiracy that gives the word conspiracy a bad name because the conspiracy is that of the very stock con artists such as his hero Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com and offshore hedge fund infamy who are lying about its existence to divert attention from their own insider stock manipulation of penny stocks and the dividend paying NovaStar Financial that was a smaller version of what happened to Fannie M,ae and Freddie Mac share price collapse ! Had Novastsar or NFI actually been nakled shortedwhich all the criminals who make the claim define as 'share counterfeiting',then some shareholders would have come forth with the complaint that they had not received their dividends before the stock ponzi scheme collapsed.
This did not happen and thus Matt Tabbi's hero lied along with all his other anonymous and not so anonymous stocki manipulators who posted their lies and NFI promotions on Yahoo's NFI message board over the years. There are plenty of ways to manipulate a stock,particularly for insiders who hold most of the shares,but 'naked shorting' is not generally one of them.
Below is Matt Taibbi's fisrt major naked short selling lie that should have caused Rolling Stone to dismiss him as a credible 'business' journalist.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-10-05/wall_street/29983393_1_penson-day-trader-clearing-firms
Matt Taibbi Falls For A Naked Short Selling Hoax Video
|October 05, 2009
Matt Taibbi’s journey down the rabbit hole of naked short selling is getting weirder and weirder.
Today he posted a video allegedly showing a “day trader” shorting tens of billions of shares of a stock with a float of only 5.5 billion shares. The trader allegedly executes his trades through the clearinghouse Penson.
"If you don’t need to actually find the stock before you sell it, there’s no real brake on speculative naked short-selling," Taibbi writes. "If a clearing firm will give you a locate no matter how big your request is, there is no real barrier out there to stop this kind of activity."
Today he posted a video allegedly showing a “day trader” shorting tens of billions of shares of a stock with a float of only 5.5 billion shares. The trader allegedly executes his trades through the clearinghouse Penson.
"If you don’t need to actually find the stock before you sell it, there’s no real brake on speculative naked short-selling," Taibbi writes. "If a clearing firm will give you a locate no matter how big your request is, there is no real barrier out there to stop this kind of activity."
Here's the video.
Sorry. But there’s no way this trade is real.
Update I: We heard from Penson. They say it isn't their trading system.
Update II: This is ridiculous. The video doesn't even show what Taibbi says it does.
Original post:
There are plenty of things wrong with this video, and with the conclusion Taibbi draws. Clearing firms will not execute orders without regard to the size of the order, there are real brakes on speculative naked short selling, and real barriers exist to stop "this kind of activity."
Too Speedy. The first thing that rings false the speed with which the trade is executed. The trader apparently manages to short billions of shares in mere seconds. Penson may be a popular and efficient clearinghouse but there is no way they are that fast. There's just no way to have instant execution of a trade of this size.
“It takes minutes to a half-hour for a request to come back from Penson,” a trader who clears through the firm tells us.
Too Big Of A Trade. You cannot sell tens of billions shares without someone wanting and able to buy those billions of shares. This trade involves placing a sell order for more than the total volume of all US equity markets combined for any single trading day.
This is from the NAANSS naked short selling lie founder James Dale Davidson himself who has always as founder of the CIA connected Agora Inc. and the Beltway billionaire's tax dodging club called National Taxpayes Union,had close ties to the highest and most corrupt levels of U.S.government from George Herbert Walker Bush in the 1980's to Bill Clinton,who he funded then accused of killing Vince Foster.The website it was taken from was his own Vantage Point penny stock promotion site that was part of the Agora Inc miriad junk penny stock promotion sites that come and go over night.The quote from Vantage Point below is from around 2003 or 2004 and Davidson's reference to ''some bozo whose screen name translates to "crazy dog" recently posted an outrageous slander of me: "Does Davidson, as founder of National Taxpayers Union, ever pay taxes on fraud pump-dumps he"s orchestrated using "naked shorting" as a subterfuge to mask his fraud?" '',is a reference to me.It casn be found on this site with as part of one of my many internet posts about the fraudulant 'naked short selling claim from the early 1987''s before Patrick Byrne's NCANS or National Coalition Against Naked Shorting' ever asppeared.I presume Matt Taibbi would claim that the obvious illegal but SEC protected penny stock pumps and dumps Genemax and Circle Holdings were really 'victims oif naked short selling' just as is hero Geico insurance billionaire's son Patrick Byrne would. :Sorry. But there’s no way this trade is real.
Update I: We heard from Penson. They say it isn't their trading system.
Update II: This is ridiculous. The video doesn't even show what Taibbi says it does.
Original post:
There are plenty of things wrong with this video, and with the conclusion Taibbi draws. Clearing firms will not execute orders without regard to the size of the order, there are real brakes on speculative naked short selling, and real barriers exist to stop "this kind of activity."
Too Speedy. The first thing that rings false the speed with which the trade is executed. The trader apparently manages to short billions of shares in mere seconds. Penson may be a popular and efficient clearinghouse but there is no way they are that fast. There's just no way to have instant execution of a trade of this size.
“It takes minutes to a half-hour for a request to come back from Penson,” a trader who clears through the firm tells us.
Too Big Of A Trade. You cannot sell tens of billions shares without someone wanting and able to buy those billions of shares. This trade involves placing a sell order for more than the total volume of all US equity markets combined for any single trading day.
http://yhwh.web.officelive.com/documents/tony.html
Yahoo protects stock mafia , death threats: reader comment from Tony Ryals
Posted on: October 13, 2005, 9:53 PM PDT
James Dale Davidson in his own words about his 'naked short' securities frauds and penny stock pump and dump activity.Although to promote a stock for purpose of dumping shares is illegal,the SEC looks the other way.I am the 'crazy dog' of his obsessions and was posting on ragingbull.com as did others to warn about his anti-naked short fraud 'NAANSS' used to divert attention of naive investors from the act that it was him dumping shares and not brokers 'naked shorting'.Mr.Davidson was founder of Agora Publications that has touted numerous questionable penny stocks over years years and has numerous websites and mail fraud scams.Agora even promoted CIA invested penny stock Ionatron that CIA insiders dumped :
http://www.vantagepoint-ia.com/Secure/IssueArchive/html%20ve&
Lies, Lies, Lies: Stalkers Meet the Stock Market
It is hard to imagine a retiree or a housewife with time on her hands suddenly deciding to make a hobby of posting anonymous slanders on the GeneMax thread. But one can read dozens of embittered messages there complaining of everything but the real problem. For example, some bozo whose screen name translates to "crazy dog" recently posted an outrageous slander of me: "Does Davidson, as founder of National Taxpayers Union, ever pay taxes on fraud pump-dumps he"s orchestrated using "naked shorting" as a subterfuge to mask his fraud?" In one sentence he manages to falsely imply that I have engaged in a whole range of felonies. I don"t know whether to feel flattered that the naked short sellers find me so formidable an opponent that they would stoop to anonymous smears, or to hire a bodyguard.
In any event, I would hope that Mr. "crazy dog" is well paid for his pains. With the possible exception of a few demented people I"ve crossed paths with, I can"t imagine anyone other than stalkers and major parishioners of naked short selling being so obsessed with me. And what humanitarian motive could explain the smears they pour down on GeneMax - a company that if it can raise sufficient funding may possibly help cure cancer? Go figure.
The Electronic Counterfeiter"s Worst Nightmare:
Circle Group Holdings Rallies 30,000%
The worst nightmare of naked short sellers is that the companies they attack should survive and actually succeed. When that happens, as recently occurred in the case of Circle Group Holdings Inc. (CXN: AMEX), the counterfeiters are obliged to enter the market and buy the duly authorized shares of the capital stock of the company they have sold. CXN rose by nearly 30,000%, from 3 cents to almost $9, as naked short sellers were obliged to buy and deliver shares they counterfeited prior to CXN"s move to the AMEX.
When you think of what happened in the case of Circle Group Holdings, you can see why the malicious charges leveled against me by anonymous smear-mongers on Web sites are ridiculous. If their assertions that I was orchestrating naked short selling were correct, I would hardly have become one of the leading critics of the practice. Nor would I continue to champion the causes of the companies I had "sent under" by allegedly selling wave after wave of electronically counterfeited stock.
And as the example of CXN demonstrates, the damage done to the share prices of companies targeted for destruction by electronic counterfeiters is also a measure of their upside potential - for everyone but the counterfeiters.
Of course, even the most virulent rantings of Mr. "crazy dog" are unlikely to carry much weight with thinking people. To orchestrate more effective smears, the electronic counterfeiters needed a more apparently credible platform. An Internet site called our-street. com emerged to fill the market arising from naked short sellers for seemingly trustworthy smears of small-cap companies that threaten to succeed.
Thus for one reason or another, our-street. com and its marquee character, who writes under the pseudonym Nick Tracy, stepped up to service this market. Our-street immediately began hurling accusations about securities violations left and right. I first became aware of Nick Tracy and his tendentious exposés when someone sent me a copy of an hysterical attack he did on ChampionLyte Products (CPLY: OTCBB) , a company in which I and a group of investors took a portfolio interest as it attempted to restructure its balance sheet and realize the potential of its low-carb sports drink.
James Davidson,Vantage Point
...........
As I mentioned above,the Yahoo NFI 'message' or stock promotion board was used by Patrick Byrne's NCANS mafia to manipulate the share price of that fraudulant dividend paying ponzi scheme and that for the very reason all shares received their dividends until the scheme collapsed the claim by Patrick Byrne and his anonymous ally Bobo O'Brien or ncansd3 on the NFI Yahoo message board,who I always believed to be James Dale Davidson,basically admits as much in the post below of 06/02/05.
FROM YAHOO NFI BOARD JUNE 2 2005 IN WHICH 'ncansd3' or 'BOB O'BRIEN' HINTS OF JAMES DALE DAVIDSON CONNECTION FOR FIRST TIME:
Re: Send, or not? Comment, or copy? RVA
by: ncansd3
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 06/02/05 12:02 am
Msg: 310727 of 333497
I would add that copies of emails in which Mr. Eisinger cites very granular banking info regarding NCANS deposits are available if they wish to email me.
What is actually funniest to me is that through all of this, the reporter hasn't considered that he might have found a guy who contributes to NCANS and has used his cash to help the cause - but is someone different than me. Someone who actually has been very helpful with things like procuring anonymous cell phones and the like, but is no more Bob O'Brien than the Granny he went to terrorize. Oh well, I'm sure it will all make great theater, and the attorneys are likely to have a ball with it. Like I said in the beginning - they require a Bob O'Brien at all costs, and it really doesn't matter much whether he is the genuine article or not at the end of the day.
And I'm not telling - not going to do it. Kind of pisses everyone off, I can tell. Sorry guys. But I'm quite sure you have the right guy - keep on keeping on - he sounds like a bad 'un to me. Very mysterious. I was told a sandwich shop was involved. One shudders to think what goes on there. And a boat. I think it's named the James Davidson. It is all unclear at present. Or maybe the sandwiches are subs - those are marine sounding.
Actually, I do kind of wish it was me. Not that it isn't. Or is. Or may be. Or not.
But what I do know is that violating federal laws is a no no last time I checked - and if what they discovered was a big donor to the cause - I hope it was worth someone going to jail over. That's what happens when you violate federal law, I think - I haven't done any federal lawbreaking, so couldn't tell you.
So what do we have at the end of all of this? People who can easily be shown to do anything it takes to get their way, regardless of the law, and who aren't bright enough to get that they are holding nothing. Capital N. Nada. Which they will ultimately find out, as do most who have nothing, over time. In the meanwhile, I think maybe this will be a good mechanism to launch the fiction book - it's about a corrupt, criminally linked hedge fund who sets out to crush a company as part of its serial killing mechanism, who uses the press to do its dirty work and considers itself above the law due to its political contacts, and decides to go after a guy that creates a website that exposes their scheme and creates considerable difficulty for them. I even have a corrupt reporter or two in it. Sort of wrote itself. I think it's a good read. Fast, and believe it or not, has a few similarities to real life.
Have to figure out how to get it out there. I suspect now is the time.
Oh well, good night all. Thanks for all the FBI and WSJ complaints - they will follow up, and they don't just poo poo this sort of thing when it involves attorney trust accounts and feloniously obtained bank records.
We shall see what the day brings.
Posted as a reply to: Msg 310685 by rvac106
...........................
It's obvious that Rolling Stone's 'finanancial journalist',Matt Taibbi, is, like ex Wall Street and Columbia School of Journaslism 'journalist',Mark Mitchell,a disinfo agent for Geico billionaire son Patrick Byrne who has his own offshore hedge fund used to manipulate shares of his own 'company',Overstock.com, as well as other worthless penny stocks he and his criminal gang pump and dump and then blame the collapse of their share prices on - what else ? - 'naked short selling ! In calling Matt Taibbi on his corrupt association with Patrick Byrne, who has used part of the money from his stock frauds to bribe politicians such as ex Utah Republican Senator Bob Bennett as well as ex Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. who was also briefly Barack Obama's,, aka Barry Soetoro's, ex U.S.Ambassador to China ,it is interesting to note that he has never defended Goldman Sachs for also being,according to ex SEC criminals Christopher Cox and David H Kotz,also a victim of so-called 'naked short selling' !
Below is one email communication from Agora Inc. murder suspect,(in the case of his 'friend' Rey Rivera whose name he used on one of his and Agora Inc.'s many scam penny stock promotion mailings called the Rebound Report.Unfortuneatly Rey Rivera didn't 'rebound' from his 14 foot fall off Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore in 2005 than did the worthless stocks that were promoted in the Rebound Report.While the main stream media tried to make Rey Rivera look crazy and suicidal,(contrary to statements by Rivera's wife, brother and friends), by emphasizing that just before his death he was researching and asking question about Masons at the local Masonic Lodge in Baltimore,no one,particularly the SEC or local police,thought to ask the Lodge whether any of its members had any connection to Agora Inc or might be involved with stocks promoted by them.Paradoxical that Utah SEC attorney, Karen Martinez,who helped fellow Utah SEC attorney Brent Baker remove all charges against James Dale Davidson for illegal pumps and dumps of Endovasc and Genemax was later called upon to comment on the 'mysterious' death of REY RIVERA WHEN BY HER OWN AND BRENT BAKER'S REFUSAL TO PROSECUTE AND CLOSE AGORA INC.,BALTIMORE,SHE WAS IN GREAT PART RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF REY RIVERA WHO WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED THERE AND 'FALLEN' TO HIS DEATH IN BALTIMORE IF THEY HAD CLOSED IT DOWN !
Note also Rey Rivera's death occured a year after Porter Stansberry wrote me an angry letter about my 'tirade' against James Dale Davidson and asked me to come to Agora Inc. Baltimore office so he could 'prove' to me he was not running a fraud !
Man found dead at Belvedere worked at company that had SEC ...
washingtonexaminer.com/.../man-found-dead-belvedere-worked-co...
1 Jun 2006 – Man found dead at Belvedere worked at company that had SEC complaint ... The company that employed Rey Rivera, whose body was found in an empty ... A complaint filed by the SEC obtained by The Examiner charged that ... Karen Martinez, one of the SEC attorneys who filed the complaint against ...From: "Porter Stansberry"
To: Tony Ryals
Subject: Jim Davidson
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 20:06:22 -0600
Tony --
A friend recently emailed me a copy of your online tirade against JD. I don't know what he did to you...though I can imagine...
But, your presumption that I am an associate of Jim's is entirely false. It is true that Jim was a founder of Agora in the late 1970s. But he quickly sold the majority of his interest to Bill Bonner. Jim has no ownership stake in Agora and Agora no longer publishes his newsletter. While Jim used to be an editor, he was never a colleague of mine; we worked in totally separate divisions, which were owned and managed as completely separate business units. In fact, since I have been part of Agora (1996) I've never worked on any project or had any involvement whatsoever in of Jim's publications or business ventures.
Frankly, I have serious doubts about his integrity and honesty and I was glad when Agora decided to stop publishing his newsletter.
If you would like to know more about Agora (which is a large holding company with many operating groups, one of which I control) or more about the SEC case I am involved with (which has nothing to do with short selling or pumping and dumping) I would be happy to meet with you in my office in Baltimore.
Regards,
Porter
Porter,
Which 'online tirade' re Davidson ? There's more than one and no end in sight.Also weren't you and William Bonner at this right wing 'FreedomFest' with Davidson as recently as 2004 and wasn't John Berthould of Davidson's Naional Taxpayers Union in attendence as the pr claims ? When did you decide to distance yourself from Davidson ? And why did Agora Inc. and Bill Bonner allow Davidson to promote himself as the founder all these years if it weren't so? AND IF SO WHY DOES BONNER THEN ALLEGE HE WAS THE FOUNDER ?Sounds like just more Agora Inc.fraud to me combined with a fraudulent cover up.
Also I noted your stansberryresearch was claiming,or greatly insinuating,Lard Patrick Byrne's Overstock.con was a victim of 'naked shorting',just as,coincidentally,the ncans.net fraud website did. I believe James,'skkkum of the world',Dale Davidson is behind NCANS as well..At least I think any number of plagiarism experts would agree with me that it is more than a coincidence that NCANS has so much in common with NAANSS that the acronym alone can't be coincidence.Not to mention the similarities to the fraud that 'you are being naked shorted so buy certs to protect yourself ' modus operendi to the fraud.
You and he may not have been taken to task by the SEC for 'naked shorting,after all Brent Baker now has a cozy job with Byrne and Overstock.con,but you should have been.It was not only the fly-by-night fraud internet sight of NAANSS that promoted the supposed 'anti-naked short selling' scam but Agora Inc.did as well,at least through James Dale Davidson's 'Vantage Point' cyberfraud website.
I guess you know Davidson even has some Daubai related activities and I suspect he has a relation to Bellador Group of Dubai and Kuala Lumpur.But Amenni is what I am interested in and anything you might know about that would be of interest.No wonder Lard Byrne is paranoid about being connected with terrorists and 'al qaeda'.Too funny if it weren't so sick and sad.And just how much was Agora Inc. involved with touting of Ionatron for George 'WMD' Tenet and that little elite pump and dump used scam salemen dept.of the CIA ? I'm not saying all in the CIA are bad but he was if he uses it for illegal pump and dump ops and should be outed.Frauds like that are why we as a country are in so much trouble right now.
You see I knew nothing about stocks or even internet when I was hooked up to this mess,never heard of NTU or Davidson either,thank gawd.And I was only drawn into Davidson 'you're being naked shorted buy a cert' fraud because I sincerely believed in a Stanford patent and its medicinal potential.Stanford has recently taken the patent back and Endovasc or skkkum like DAVIDSON CAN NO LONGER USE IT FOR FRAUD, but Stanford and Heeschen and Cooke still,in my opinion,have some explaining to do for allowing the university to get mixed up in what was obviously an illegal pump and dump and quite possibly an international money laundering scam.
Doesn't Agoracom advertise in the Washington Post occasionally where the ncans.net letter appeared on February 8 coincidentally ? Do you think this would not have been investigated had the authors ',both 'Bob O'Brien' and Lard Patrick Byrne not had Beltway connections ? Very weird,my country has become the new Mexico in terms of political corruption thanks to scum like James DALE DAVIDSON,et.al. who parasitize it.In terms of bloody murderers, we compete quite well with the worst of them.
So to sum,Bill Bonner and Agora Inc. does have a National Taxpayers Union connection by way of both James Dale Davidson and John Berthoud.And although for some reason Davidson is never mentioned on the NTU website he and you and Bill Bonner were with Berthoud at the Las Vegas far right 'freedomfest'of 2004,correct ? So you were all getting along fine and dandy up till then.What went wrong ? Why doesn't the eloquent Bill Bonner do an article on that and explain himself and his involvement,past and present, with James Dale Davidson ?
Would you and he like me to send you an article from Davidson and Agora Inc.s' Vantage Point 'as recently as 2004 where Davidson is frothing at the mouth about 'naked shorting',just as 'Bob O'Brien' of ncans.net now does coincidentally ? AND WHY PRAY TELL DID YOUR WEBSITE VERY RECENTLY INSINUATE THE PATRICK BYRNE'S OF, NCANS AND OVERSTOCK.CON WAS A VICTIM OF 'NAKED SHORTING' ?
Oh,one other thing of all the penny stocks Agora Inc.and agoracom have promoted over the years have any of your fine economic analysts there ever done a review of what these penny pump and dump scams have done for or to investors who were conned into 'going long' ? Too funny,the NATIONAL TAXPAYERS UNION' AND ON THE ONE HAND WISHES TO DO AWAY WITH OR 'PRIVITISE' SOCIAL SECURITY' AND YET COINCIDENTALLY HAS NO QUALMS ABOUT ALIGNING ITSELF WITH THE SLEEZIEST OF CORRUPT PENNY STOCK FRAUDSTERS OF WHICH ITS FOUNDER IS ONE,A BIG ONE.
Sincerely,
Tony Ryals
Below is from Agora Inc. and James Dale Davidson's now disappeared Vantage Point penny stock tout or promotion website and mail fraud operation from approximately 2003 or 2004.Note that although he also disappeared his NAANSS,(National Association Against Naked Short Selling),nakedshortselling.com website in 2005,at the same time Patrick Byrne opened his NCANS or National Coalition Against Naked Short Selling website,he is writing this before Patrick Byrne comes on the 'stop naked short selling' scene.
He is the one who began the lie as well as the known stock,gold and mortgage fraud operation Agora Inc of Baltimore with its CIA connections !
SEC LIES' says Agora Inc's James Dale Davidson
(Perhaps they do,but they do itr to protect scuim like James Dale Davidson who had all charges against him for his fraudulent promotions of Endovasc and Genemax removed from SEC Utah litigation.Coincidentally
Utah SEC attorney Brent Baker retired from the SEC shortly after he and SEC attorney Martinez
"It appears that the naked short-sellers who have counterfeited millions of GeneMax shares in an attempt to destroy the company have enlisted powerful help." James Dale Davidson
Dear Vantage Point Investor,
You may be as startled and upset as I am by the sudden collapse in the price of GeneMax (GMXX), which has tumbled in the last nine trading days. The question is, why? I can't pretend that I fully understand the answer. But I have a disturbing guess. It appears that the naked short-sellers who have counterfeited millions of GeneMax shares in an attempt to destroy the company have enlisted
powerful help.
In theory, the Securities and Exchange Commission is a regulatory body charged with maintaining the integrity of public securities markets in the United States. In reality, the SEC is like any other government agency. It responds to powerful entrenched interests. It abhors bad publicity, rewards its friends and punishes its critics.
Unhappily, the SEC also lies. I know because the SEC field office in Utah has lied about me. And I suspect that these lies are the culmination of a carefully laid plan to discredit GeneMax and punish the company for raising troublesome issues about naked short selling, which has also embarrassed the SEC.
If you have been a subscriber to Vantage Point for any length of
time, you are no doubt aware that I am a critic of "electronic counterfeiting," the process by which some investment banks, market makers and broker-dealers drive down the prices of Nasdaq Bulletin Board companies by selling unlimited quantities of shares they don't own. Since stock prices are determined by supply and demand,allowing unlimited counterfeiting of stock essentially guarantees that the stock becomes worthless.
Of course, a company whose shares are worthless won't last long. It is unable to raise money if its stock is worthless. All too often, such small companies are driven into oblivion by electronic counterfeiting. When we are slogging along with a weak economy, I consider it almost criminal negligence that the government would permit investment banks, market makers and broker-dealers to weaken the economy further by destroying small companies that could otherwise be a major fountain of growth.
Why would the government let this happen? I don't think it is necessarily a Grand Conspiracy with a capital "G." But the bad guys have managed to control most of the news about "electronic counterfeiting." And perversely, they also seem to have the regulators on their side.
I had a painful lesson in this reality at the beginning of this week when I learned to my astonishment that the Utah office of the SEC had tarnished my name by accusing me of failing to disclose an interest in two investments that I recommended in Vantage Point Investment Advisory. Their exact charge is as follows:
"Among the issuers promoted in this manner have been GeneMax Corp. and Endovasc Ltd., Inc. DAVIDSON is an officer, director and,indirectly, a substantial shareholder of these two issuers. Neither the soliciting e-mail nor the subsequent company report discloses DAVIDSON's relationship to the companies."
This is total rubbish. I deny any impropriety. Indeed, the charges are remote from the facts.
As you will know if you subscribed to Vantage Point last summer, I fully disclosed my role as a founder, director and officer of GeneMax when I recommended the company and its promising treatment for cancer. And I also disclosed a special relationship with Endovasc. I am not an officer or director of Endovasc. I have a few shares that I received in exchange for assigning my rights in what could be a valuable patent to the company.
To be sure that I wasn't missing something, I had my attorney review the record. He concluded that my disclosures are complete: "I spent this afternoon reviewing Agora marketing copy for Vantage Point and the newsletters and have verified that the charge that you failed to disclose your personal interest in GeneMax is completely false." Agora will be filing a motion to dismiss the SEC's baseless complaint.
I fail to see how anyone of good faith who reviewed the record could possibly construe it as the SEC apparently has. Although I can't prove it, I have concluded that the SEC, or at least some of its personnel, were more offended by my criticism of electronic counterfeiting than they are by the abuse itself -- which causes you and other investors hundreds of billions in losses. In fact, the costs of electronic counterfeiting are much higher than those entailed in the accounting scandals which have garnered so much attention. Nonetheless, instead of correcting these abuses, the SEC has gone out of its way to rope me into a doubtful complaint that they have developed against another Agora publication -- a product to which I have no connection other than a passive one as a minority shareholder in Agora.
Nor do I take it to be entirely a coincidence that while I have recommended more than 30 investments in Vantage Point over the past 16 months, my reputation is being tarred in respect to just two companies, GeneMax and Endovasc. These two companies have one thing in common, in addition to the fact that both have promising medical innovations that could ease much suffering and save many lives. Both have been at the forefront of legal action to combat the abuse of electronic counterfeiting of their shares. But these efforts have hardly earned them the friends they should. Rather than garnering applause, their efforts to confront the abuse of electronic counterfeiting of their shares has made both companies the focus of negative publicity.
In particular, one writer, Carol S. Remond, undertook to paint a negative picture of both companies, publishing what bordered on outright lies. For some reason known only to others, the SEC appears to have adopted Remond's text in defense of the electronic counterfeiters. In this respect, it is suggestive that the SEC apparently leaked its complaint about Agora to Remond, who cooperated by writing a story trumpeting the SEC's effort to discredit me and these good companies.
I wanted to write to you immediately when I got this startling news to tell you that I will not be cowed by these Machiavellian tactics. I will continue to raise important issues of investor protection that the SEC appears to wish to duck. I do so with faith that the truth will eventually triumph, the evil of electronic counterfeiting will be curtailed, and the integrity of public security markets restored.
Or to put it another way, if powerful people are so keen to discredit my criticism of electronic counterfeiting that they will orchestrate an entirely bogus charge of the kind carried on the wires against me this week, that itself indicates that more light needs to be shed on the shadowy activities they are trying to protect.
But, on to the status of your GeneMax holdings... Absolutely nothing about this company or its exciting immunotherapy development has changed and would warrant this share price decline. In fact, in an independent study commissioned by the company, it was determined that if GeneMax were funded as low as at $1.50 per share, and assuming that its products prove to work as well in
humans as they have in animals, the present value of the stock would be $420 per share, notwithstanding dilution. GeneMax remains a fundamentally sound company and a tremendous buying opportunity at these levels. I recommend that you increase your GeneMax shares, as well as those in Endovasc (EVSC.OB). And, may I reiterate, I am a shareholder in both companies.
And, if you are as concerned as I am about electronic counterfeiting and its effects on the dynamic young companies that must fuel our country's future growth (as well as your portfolio), I urge you to write your congressman. You can also register your concern with the National Association Against Naked Short Selling(http://www.nakedshortselling.com/),, which is taking up the fight for companies and investors alike.
Sincerely,
James Davidson
"Wall Street's 9/11": Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed? By Ellen Brown
8 September, 2009 — Global Research – Web of Debt
Although Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, September 15, 2008, it was actually “bombed” on September 11, when the biggest one-day drop in its stock and highest trading volume occurred before bankruptcy. Lehman CEO Richard Fuld maintained that the 158 year old bank was brought down by unsubstantiated rumors and illegal naked short selling. Although short selling (selling shares you don’t own) is legal, the short seller is required to have shares lined up to borrow and replace to cover the sale. Failure to buy the shares back in the next three trading days is called a “fail to deliver.” Christopher Cox, who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2008, said in a July 2009 article that naked short selling “can allow manipulators to force prices down far lower than would be possible in legitimate short-selling conditions.” By September 11, 2008, according to the SEC, as many as 32.8 million Lehman shares had been sold and not delivered – a 57-fold increase over the peak of the prior year. For a very large company like Lehman, with plenty of “float” (available shares for trading), this unprecedented number was highly suspicious and warranted serious investigation. But the SEC, which was criticized for failing to follow up even on tips that Bernie Madoff’s business was a ponzi scheme, has yet to announce the results of any investigation.........
http://williambowles.info/2009/09/09/wall-streets-911-did-lehman-brothers-fall-or-was-it-pushed-by-ellen-brown/
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http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2010/11/24/homes-of-the-rich-and-not-so-famous/
Homes of the rich not so famous
Gordon Brent PIerce has had a running battle with securities regulators, but through it all, he has lived large.
In 1993, the B.C. Securities Commission banned him from the B.C. securities market for 15 years for serious stock offences, but that didn’t end his stock career. He began promoting companies whose shares were quoted on the dreadful OTC Bulletin Board in the United States.
These companies inflated, them deflated, with alarming regularity. In July 2009, a California judge ordered him to repay $2 million, plus $900,000 in accrued interest, which he made in one of those deals, Lexington Resources Inc. That forced him to put his house on the market, which you can view here.
Even if he sells his house, he won’t necessarily be out of the woods. In June this year, the SEC filed another court action seeking to recover an additional $7.7 million in allegedly illegal profits that he made trading Lexington stock through his two private companies, Newport Capital Corp and Jenirob Company Ltd....
my reply:
David Baines, Below is the link from Yahoo’s Overstock.con message board that directed me here.The poster who posted the link to this article titles his message,’Anti-NSS,(Naked Short Selling),founder told to pay up and should be held in contempt’.Well you make no mention of Canadian penny stock scheisters Brent Pierce’s and Grant Atkins’ involvement with U.S.National Taxpayers Union founder James Dale Davidson in the founding of NAANSS or National Association Against Naked Short Selling – the lie that has gone(in English) around the world since National Taxpayers Union founder James Dale Davidson popularized the term with Atkins and Piecrce in 2002 and blamed the share price collapse of both University of British Columbia’s Genemax pump and dump as well as the Stanford University connected ‘biotech’ fraud Endovasc on so-called ‘naked short selling’. Since then Rupert Murdoch’s Times Of London as well as the Guardian have made claims or inferences thar even Northern Rock was a victim of ‘naked short selling’ a term that, until then, in 2007 I thought was not even in British or Australian stock slang ! And even the corrupt U.S.SEC and its Chairman Christopher Cox lied in 2008 on the SEC sec.gov website itself the Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac,even AIG and(ha)Goldman Sachs shares had been ‘naked shorted’ ! Spoiled Geico billionaire’s son Patrick Byrne of Overstock.con who hired ex Utah SEC attorney Brent Baker shortly after he and SEC attorney Karen Martinez removed all charges against against Agora Inc,Baker,Atkins and Davidson for touting Endovasc and Genemax;(while screaming they were being ‘naked shorted’),claims that it is a ‘Sith Lord’ that ‘naked shorted’ Genemax,Taser,Novastar Financial,Adnan Khasshoggi’s GenesisIntermedia,etc.,etc… Why have you never mentioned Brent Pierce’s involvement with James Dale Davidson and their and Grant Atkins naked short selling lie used to distract from their illegal pumps and dumps of U.S.penny stocks,particularly Genemax and Endovasc ?
Note the link is to the Yahoo Overstock.com promotion or 'message' board.:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_O/threadview?m=tm&bn=24012&tid=196990&mid=196991&tof=3&rt=2&frt=2&off=1
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I found this website mirroring one of my posts re 'Yahoo mafia' on this website with link and more of my post below.;
http://yhwh.web.officelive.com/documents/tony.html
Yahoo protects stock mafia , death threats: reader comment from Tony Ryals
Posted on: October 13, 2005, 9:53 PM PDT
Yahoo protects stock mafia's death threats
The paradox for me is that I am an avid 'free speecher' but I draw the line at death threats and fraud.The example I site is http://www.ncans.net, whose only known address is a lap dance club called Cheetah Club in Las Vegas whose management has been convicted of bribing San Diego city council.
Carol Remond of Wall Street Journal brought this fact up of the only known address with 'Bob O'brien' of ncans.net and nfi.net in an email interview.
And it is the only known strip club to be investigated under the Patriot Act.And the fact that although it has a sectretive Wells Fargo account in San Diego,it placed an ad costing over $100,000 in the Washington Post on February 8 addressing Mr.W Bush about the 'dangers' of 'naked short selling' to investing SS funds in the stock market.What the SEC should have known and did but still did nothing about,as this sccam continues to go down,is that it was a tactic used by a group called 'NAANSS' IN 2002 TO MASK THE ILLEGAL DUMPING OF PENNY STOCK SHARES - INCLUDING FROM A CHARLES SCHWAB ACCOUNT OR ACCOUNTS,AS I PREVIOUSLY DOCUMENTED ON INDYBAY, AND ALSO,POSSIBLY TO LAUNDER MONEY !!! America,what has become of you ?
I have reason to believe 'Bob O'Brien' OF NCANS.NET,is either James Dale Davidson or working for him or with him.The only known address for this mafiosi fraud which may have a Beltway origen and thus is protected by Washington,D.C. insiders, is a lap dance club called Cheetah Club in Las Vegas.The Cheetah Club's management has been convicted of bribing San Diego city council.And it is the only known strip club to be investigated under the Patriot Act.As Jeff Matthews says on his bog site,'I'm not making this up'.The Davidson connection would go a long way to explaining his bravery in
addressing a fraudulent ad-letter to Bush in the Washington Post in this post 911 era without fear of a full scale investigation.As founder of National Taxpayers Union he would know Senator Bennett just as Patrick Byrne does,as well as Norquist who has been important in the NTU and Steve Forbes etc.His
co-author for many of his second rate books is the Lord Rees-Mogg formerly of the London Financial Times,So Rupert Murdoch connections too,to some extent. Both James Dale Davidson and the Lord Rees-Mogg played roles in creating the Clinton 'scandals' but that's another story.
Below are messages or threats against me that were taken from Yahoo's NFI and OSTK message boards and were reposted on offshorebusiness.com for the record just as I do again here.This also includes my email to Yahoo who removed my messages and deleted my email account all because I was warning others(and the SEC) a scam was going down by an organized criminal gang on Yahoo paid for in part by the spoiled Stanford educated son of Jack Byrne of Geico insurance fame,Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com. Together they put over $1 million into anti-John Edwards campaign propaganda and to fund Swift Boat Vets Againt Kerry........
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-09-29/wall_street/30065097_1_short-selling-goldman-sachs-staffer
Matt Taibbi Jumps Down The Naked Short Selling Rabbit Hole
|September 29, 2009
Can't say this is wildly surprising: Matt Taibbi, the Rolling Stone reporter famous for his takedown of Goldman Sachs (GS) is now joining the ranks of the naked short selling conspiracy theorists.
He writes:
Naked short-selling is a popular mythical beast promoted by the execs at those failed companies, as well as guys like Patrick Byrne at Overstock.com, but it's rubbish. It's really no different than regular old short-selling, which also happens to be villified by the media, and by executives at struggling companies.
What's really maddening about reintroducing it in the Lehman and Bear stories is that it essentially lets top executives there off the hook. It wasn't their extremely levered exposure to dodgy real estate--it was market manipulators that caused them to fail!
That's odd for Taibbi, right? Why is he advancing a theory that lets failed bankers off the hook? Ah, here's why. Because there's an anti-Goldman angle.
He writes:
Later on this week I have a story coming out in Rolling Stone that looks at the history of the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapses. The story ends up being more about naked short-selling and the role it played in those incidents than I had originally planned — when I first started looking at the story months ago, I had some other issues in mind, but it turns out that there’s no way to talk about Bear and Lehman without going into the weeds of naked short-selling, and to do that takes up a lot of magazine inches. So among other things, this issue takes up a lot of space in the upcoming story.
Naked short-selling is a kind of counterfeiting scheme in which short-sellers sell shares of stock they either don’t have or won’t deliver to the buyer. The piece gets into all of this, so I won’t repeat the full description in this space now. But as this week goes on I’m going to be putting up on this site information I had to leave out of the magazine article, as well as some more timely material that I’m only just getting now.
He goes onto write about how amazingly widespread it is, and how thoroughly "captured" reglators are on this subject.Naked short-selling is a popular mythical beast promoted by the execs at those failed companies, as well as guys like Patrick Byrne at Overstock.com, but it's rubbish. It's really no different than regular old short-selling, which also happens to be villified by the media, and by executives at struggling companies.
What's really maddening about reintroducing it in the Lehman and Bear stories is that it essentially lets top executives there off the hook. It wasn't their extremely levered exposure to dodgy real estate--it was market manipulators that caused them to fail!
That's odd for Taibbi, right? Why is he advancing a theory that lets failed bankers off the hook? Ah, here's why. Because there's an anti-Goldman angle.
Last Friday I got a call from a Senate staffer who said that Goldman had just been in his boss’s office, lobbying against restrictions on naked short-selling. The aide said Goldman had passed out a fact sheet about the issue that was so ridiculous that one of the other staffers immediately thought to send it to me. When I went to actually get the document, though, the aide had had a change of heart.
Which was weird, and I thought the matter had ended there. But the exact same situation then repeated itself with another congressional staffer, who then actually passed me Goldman’s fact sheet.
Now, the mere fact that two different congressional aides were so disgusted by Goldman’s performance that they both called me on the same day — and I don’t have a relationship with either of these people — tells you how nauseated they were.
Oh god, Goldman Sachs (GS) posted... a fact sheet! Pity the poor young Congressional staffers who were nauseated when they first realized that companies do actually lobby.