Tag Archives: byrne

Fake News Reporter Preps Hit Piece On Powell, Byrne

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Update [3.41 pm, Jan 27 IST]:
I added another tidbit to my comments at DC on Jo Becker’s forthcoming hit piece on Byrne and Powell for exposing Dominion Voting Systems’ fraud:

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/new-york-times-begs-court-to-dismiss-project-veritas-defamation-lawsuit/

The link goes to an article demonstrating the abysmal incompetence and bad faith of major reporters today. The NYT was hit by a defamation lawsuit after it claimed that its video was unsourced, when there were multiple witnesses that the Times just couldn’t be bothered to track down. Then, the Times admitted that its own take on Project Veritas was based on what it read on Wikipedia….

ORIGINAL POST

Over at  Deep Capture, Patrick Byrne, former Overstock CEO and crusader against Wall Street and election fraud, has published an email from Jo Becker, a NY Times reporter asking for Byrne’s comment on a piece she is writing about his funding of Sidney Powell to the tune of $500,000 to research Dominion Voting Systems for fraud during the 2020 presidential election, a story she has heard from some unnamed source, she says:

“I have been told and am preparing to report that you gave the lawyer Sidney Powell $500,000 to investigate Dominion and the role it’s voting machines may have played, allowing her to continue to pursue this line of inquiry.”

As I blogged earlier, one of the most important things that digital warriors can do is to provide the  background of the pressitutes and hacks that pass for the 4th estate these days.

Jo Becker, with three Pulitzer Prizes under her belt, is clearly a mouth-piece for elite narrative-shaping, because, these days prestigious prizes are awarded mainly to those inclined to play that role.

My comments at Deep Capture summarize what a little research into her history found:

Patrick,

She couldn’t be bothered to research this story so she went with an obviously incorrect tip, if there really was a tip. She couldn’t be bothered to check her grammar, so she added an apostrophe incorrectly to a possessive pronoun.

Any NYT reporter who uses anonymous sources [“have been told”] to prepare media reports to help Dominion in its retaliatory lawsuit against Powell and Guiliani for over a billion dollars, is likely an asset of some kind and not playing fair.

That’s just an educated guess for now, but I would urge the digital warriors on this blog to check into it.
People have been asking what they can do. Well, here it is.

Delve into Jo Becker’s past reporting, any connections to the financial cabal, or even to Coomer himself, proof of Mockingbird status, ties to Dem financiers or hacks, affairs with Coomer’s lawyers, business irregularities, court filings, and the rest of her history. Give these propaganda outlets a taste of the medicine they dish out to others.

Particularly look for her stories covering Trump, RussiaCollusion, and any BFF status with Obama and Hillary associates.

This will extract a price from reporters…and the people behind them… for intimidating anyone who exposes cabal corruption.”

OK guys, got some background.
Becker is a 3x Pulitzer winning reporter, who left the WashPo for NYT.
WashPo is even more of a Mockingbird outlet than any other paper.
So that is strike one.
Strike two. She has an extensive background in negative reporting on Trump, including pushing Russian collusion stuff.
Strike three. Her husband Serge Kovaleski, also of WashPo, now at NYT, is the son of Fred K. who was a CIA spy. Kovaleski goes back decades in interaction with Trump. He is the guy with the disability who was allegedly mocked by Trump. I would say what I dug up in just one minute is already looking bad for her objectivity in writing about Dominion.

[I know I did not put hyphens in some places, but that is because my keyboard isn’t working right not because I cannot be bothered.]

 

  1. More on ”reporter” Jo Becker and her direct ties to HILARY ROSEN AND KEN MEHLMAN, whose interests evidently guide her reporting.

    Becker’s Pulitzer Prize was not given because her gay marriage book was great: it’s been trashed even by the Guardian, from the left, as a kind of rewrite of the history of marriage equality to give credit only to “rich, white” guys….

    What the Guardian should have said is that CREDIT WAS ONLY GIVEN TO DEMOCRAT ACTIVISTS.
    In other words, those kinds of prizes go to those who promote the CABAL NARRATIVE.

    Becker’s book promoted Chad Griffen, who ended up heading HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN, a very important part of the Democrat power base.

    Becker’s promotion of Griffen and Human Rights Campaign ties directly to HRC’s HILARY ROSEN, one of the most powerful women in politics, Democrat political strategist, lobbyist, CNN analyst, Trump hater, and handler of Hillary, Feinstein, and other swamp critters on the left.

    ON HILARY ROSEN’S TDS
    https://dldnews.com/two-elephants-in-the-room/

    “Hilary Rosen thinks that media will bitterly regret the day they have started treating Trump as a “normal politician.”

    ON BECKER’S BOOK
    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chrisgeidner/the-new-book-about-the-marriage-equality-movement

    “But Becker’s reliance on the AFER (and, later, HRC) team — primarily lawyers Olson and Boies, staffers Griffin and Adam Umhoefer, and consultants [HILARY] ROSEN and KEN MEHLMAN]— is ultimately the book’s downfall. Almost any contextualizing of the case is done by people with a vested and open interest in advancing the narrative that Griffin, with Olson’s help, rescued a cause that Becker claims “had largely languished in obscurity.”

    Correction:

    Correction:

    I lumped Ken Mehlman in with Rosen as a DEM operative, but in fact he is a gay Republican…one time chair of the RNC, whose position at HRC misled me. A RINO most likely, as he seems to be very active in Green investments. He is chief of Environmental Social governance at KKR, one of the largest private equity firms in the world. We know that private equity is heavily invested in Dominion Voting systems…and I would guess Mehlman has a hand in investments at KKR…and they are likely invested in Dominion as well. Must find a concrete link for that.

Felix Salmon Gets It Right On Short-Selling

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Felix Salmon gets it right about short-selling this time round, at Seeking Alpha: (December 31):

“It’s not just short-sellers, either: most financial professionals are essentially parasitical on people who genuinely add value in the real world. Old-fashioned lending is important, and I’d say that stock markets in general also count as a positive financial innovation, since they make it vastly easier for companies to raise equity capital. But in my ideal world, people working for real companies like Kodak would make more money, in general, than people working for more parasitical financial-services companies. The fact that it’s the other way around worries me. While finance may or may not be good at the efficient allocation of capital, it seems to be positively bad when it comes to the efficient allocation of the labor of intelligent and perspicacious individuals.” Continue reading →

Hedge-Fund Pays Naked Shorting Critic Byrne $5 Million

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Copper River Partners (formerly Rocker Partners), the short-selling hedge-fund of David Rocker and Marc Cohodes, and associated entities have settled a case brought against them in 2005 by Patrick Byrne, CEO of embattled internet retailer Overstock, according to  The Register.

Note: The suit doesn´t charge naked shorting, but defamation and illegal collusion with research analysts.

Copper River worked with a research firm, Gradient Analytics, that  employed well-known financial journalist Herb Greenberg, one of the central figures in the story of the “capture” (corruption) of Wall Street journalists by speculators. Hedge funds stand accused of engaging in illegal collusion with journalists to drive down stock-prices of companies.

Last year, Gradient settled for a figure between $1.5-$2 million and issued an apology. Now comes this further vindication.

Despite the relatively trivial amount won in the Rocker case, $5 million, it´s noteworthy that the settlement does all the things victory in an actual court trial does, without the risk of losing on a technicality.

It also underscores something I´ve been suggesting for a while.

That public interest blogging and journalism alone isn´t enough.

It´s necessary to actually sue or inflict damage of some kind to score victories in these things.

Unfortunately, that´s usually not worth doing for people who aren´t wealthy.  Vicariously, however, we “little people” can at least relish the spectacle of the behemoths of finance getting it in the rump.

And this case  could prove to be a model for similar lawsuits by other embattled companies.

Still to come is Overstock´s suit against 12 prime broker-dealers (including Goldman Sachs), which will go to trial in late 2010. The suit charges an illegal stock market manipulation scheme.

Also in the works, the SEC, which dropped its investigation of Gradient in 2007, has now turned its sights on Byrne. Given Byrne´s  charge of regulatory and media capture, there are some who see this as retaliatory.

Taibbi’s Penson Video..(Correction)

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Correction:
(10/12/09, Monday)

I should have said “allegedly faked” video. I stand corrected. No weasel words, Mr. Byrne (see Byrne’s comment below).

I often post stories on which I have no comment or opinion one way or other, because I haven’t followed them, but think readers might like to. In my last several posts, in fact, I defended Deepcapture’s, Taibbi’s, and Zerohedge’s work, in spite of occasional alleged or real errors.

But the reason I linked to Wenzel’s blog is because Wenzel’s post is pretty funnily written, and I don’t follow Taibbi, except occasionally. I didn’t like his attacks on David Griffin, where he exposed himself as somewhat ignorant. Taibbi also doesn’t attribute people (apparently others have that complaint too). But arrogance and ignorance in one area don’t equate to being incorrect in another.

I’ll add a separate post with the rather long back and forth between Taibbi and his various critics and defenders. I went by Penson’s dismissal of the video, but I’ve since noted that Penson has some history that is troubling and tends to makes its dismissal less credible.

So what else might be construed as “weasel-worded” in my recent blogging?

Perhaps my rather neutral approach to the Byrne vs. Weiss feud, still going strong. Well, I’m neutral about it – who stalked whom, etc. etc. – because I don’t know the ins and outs of it. I had my own experience of being harassed, and can barely keep up with the details of that, let alone someone else’s stalking experience.

I also don’t know which of the two abuses of the market – “stock pumping and money laundering” (criticized by the Wall Street “captured” media) or “naked-shorting” (criticized by Byrne, Davidson “ “Bob O’Brien,” and many others, including Taibbi) – is the more momentous.

As a libertarian, I think naked-shorting is, but that’s only my opinion. Which is why I’ve been neutral. My sense is both abuses are real and extensive.

Likewise, I really don’t know enough about what the SEC’s investigation of Overstock is about. Could it be punitive?

Quite likely, given all we know about the SEC. But does that mean everything else the SEC does is incorrect? Unlikely.

Does that mean what Byrne wrote about “naked short selling” is incorrect? No.

Final point. I tend not to like shrill personal attacks.

That’s a deferral to civility and complexity, not weasel-wordedness.

ORIGINAL POST:

On Matt Taibbi getting suckered by a “faked” (quotes added for now) naked shorting video:

“Carney is a sharp guy, and he has Taibbi nailed on this one, but, I repeat, naked short selling, like a lot of Wall Street, is a very complex game. Carney in some of his other posts suggests there is nothing wrong with naked short-selling, he is off on that one. Some of it can be justified as simple market maker operations, but some of it is major league abuse by very clever insiders, which is the point Taibbi is taking, but doesn’t have the knowledge to back up properly.

Anyway, once you sit down an analyze the entire naked short selling thing, you realize that the bad naked short selling would go away if the SEC would stop issuing regulations that protect the bad guys. Basic common sense and commercial law would put an end to the bad naked short selling, real fast.

Bad naked short selling exists because there is a power source to manipulate, in this case the SEC, and the bad guys are running circles around the SEC.

What you want to understand naked short sales for yourself? Well pull up a chair, give yourself five hours and read this. It’s a great first step.

But, I tell you, it will be much more fun watching Taibbi attempt to pull the bayonet out of his brain.”

More by Robert Wenzel, at Economic Policy Journal.

Wiki Fudges Importance of Naked Short-Selling

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(Continued from previous post)

Many people (including this blogger) see naked short-selling as one of the central rackets used by Wall Street’s racketeers to pull off their heists. It’s a view with quite a few supporters in the industry, government, and major media. But you wouldn’t know it from the wiki entry on naked short selling.

In a piece earlier this piece, urging sharper treatment of Geithner during his hearing, an off-shore journalist Lucy Komisar pointed out that naked short-selling of US Treasury bonds artificially depresses the price of the bonds by increasing the number of shares. It’s in effect a theft from the portfolios of ordinary people who hold them, unaware that their brokers are lending them out and leaving them only with electronic IOUs.
In other words, they’re lending to their broker, rather than to the US government….

In fact, the most prominent critic of naked short-selling, Patrick Byrne, has this to say on his blog, Deep Capture:

“Notwithstanding thousands of articles such as the ones cited above, the current Wikipedia article on naked short selling insists that experts believe that it is not a problem. No mention is made of hearings, statements by economists and SEC Chairmen, emergency federal actions and emergency meetings of regulators from the G-20 to stop the world financial system from imploding, etc. ……… notwithstanding the thousands of articles such as the ones I cited above, the current Wikipedia page maintains that the mass media agrees that naked short selling is not a problem…”

— “The Hijacking of Social Media”

Byrne’s site has a useful video by Judd Bagley on naked short-selling:

Byrne is the CEO of Overstock, an online retailer of surplus and returned goods, which, he claims has been the victim of naked short-selling for many years. At one point, around 30% of Overstock’s float (shares held by the public and not institutional investors or insiders) consisted of fails (shares that did not deliver at settlement of the trade) and although fails can have many causes, naked short-selling is certainly the most important of them.

Note: Byrne claims that this isn’t the principal motivation for his campaign against the practice and points to his other philanthropic initiatives as proof. Major media business reporters, including Joe Nocera and Gary Weiss, have argued otherwise.

Note: Bagley has been accused of cyberstalking Weiss over Weiss’s alleged complicity in the social engineering of wikipedia.

Update: Note also that several experts have contradicted Byrne’s assessment of the effects of naked short selling on the price of the stocks he’s analyzed.

Still, whether Byrne is a hero or an out-of-control conspiracist is beside the point.

With the scale of criminality on Wall Street now, you’d have to be a hero and out-of-control to go after any of it successfully.

And conspiracy-mongering seems to be largely in the eye of the beholder.

Byrne deserves credit.

Update: To be fair to Byrne’s critics here is a criticism by one Sam Antar (a reformed felon who now consults on white collar crime) of Overstock’s accounting practices.

To be fair to Byrne, Antar’s original fraud was extensive and involved his whole family. Antal also admits to profiting from short positions in the companies he criticizes for fraud.