I just happened to notice this ranking of the most popular corruption sites and thought I’d post it as more evidence that the campaign against naked short selling isn’t some marginal “freak” show, as some of the financial blogs have tried to claim it is. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Media
Den Of Thieves: Hedge-Hogs Go Into SAC-Remote Mode
Update: Deep Capture indicates that they have some emails proving insider trading, so any attempts to delete files/emails by SAC and other firms might not be any good, since the files just happen to implicate said firms in…insider trading.
Ah, the web we weave…etc. etc.
Terry Buhl at Hedge Fund-Implode.com reports that residents of hedgefund land are going into SAC-remote mode:
“Funds like Blue Ridge, Greenlight, Third Point, Glenview, and Maverick are cutting back on any contact with King Stevie. When we asked major players such as Jim Chanos and others if they’ve been pinging Stevie about a trade lately, you’ll get a very defensive `no.’ Why? Because word on the street is they all think FBI special agent BJ Kang, who is now dogging Stevie, has the goods to deliver the hammer soon in the form of an indictment or arrest for insider trading.
Extra measures are being taken to hire data-miners to comb through any and all emails firms and their trading consultants ever sent to anyone at SAC in an attempt to erase them from internet memory. According to traders we talked with, they are even going as far as getting out of trades that might look similar to any of Stevie’s. So it looks like running due diligence on your `SAC risk’ to prove to your investors that you’re clean – like Larry Robbins of Glenview capital just did – is the new `killing it’.”
My Comment:
Just to recap.
*Steven Cohen is the multibillionaire chief of legendary hedge-fund SAC, which sits at the top of the heap among funds. Cohen, famously reclusive, is said to have had only one bad year of trading.
Now he´s having a bad time from the FBI investigation of the insider-trading case against New York-based hedge-fund Galleon Group, which is proving to have teeth in it.
SAC has a history of elbows-and-knees-style trading practices, according to this 2003 Business Week article.
*The head of Galleon (which once managed $7 billion in assets), Sri Lanka-born Raj Rajaratnam was arrested, along with five others, on October 16 in a $17 million dollar insider-trading case brought by federal prosecutors and the FBI.
(The numbers vary: it´s $20.8 million, according to a later WSJ report, and $25 million in a NY Daily report)
*The case was unusual in that FBI agent B. J. Kang used wire-tapping for the investigation (normally used only in drug-related cases).
*The Galleon arrests were quickly followed by other arrests of traders, lawyers and hedge-fund managers on November 5, including one Zvi Goffer, who, as the brains of the insider network, was referred to as “the octopussy.” This brought the total number of arrests in the case to 14 (Correction on 12/29: I read 20 elsewhere) and added another $20 million to the fraud, already the biggest in Wall Street history since the days of Ivan Boeksy in the 1980s.
*On December 16, Steven Cohen´s ex-wife Patricia accused him of hiding millions from her and of insider trading in a 1986 merger when Cohen was a young trader at now-defunct broker, Gruntal.
*Indicted on December 17 (December 15, according to one source) by a Federal grand jury on multiple criminal counts of insider trading and securities fraud, Rajaratnam pleaded not guilty. Many of the charges against him carry upto 20 year prison sentences. The trial is expected to take place in the summer of 2010.
*The broker Gruntal has an interesting history, in that it seems to be the place where several of the biggest names on Wall Street (aka some of the most crooked players) crossed paths:
Bernie Madoff, Ezra Merkel (Madoff fund associate), Ivan Boesky (infamous 1980s trader), Michael Milken (junk bond innovator), Carl Icahn (famed and feared corporate raider), Steven Feinberg, ,…and yes, Steven Cohen:
From Deep Capture:
“Another of Madoff’s most important “feeders” was J. Ezra Merkin, who managed the Ariel Fund, which seems to have been designed specifically to raise money for Madoff’s fraudulent investment business. In this regard, the New York attorney general has described “Merkin’s deceit, recklessness, and breaches of fiduciary duty…”
While Merkin was “deceitfully” feeding the Madoff Ponzi, he was also a co-owner, along with Steve Feinberg, of Cerberus Capital Management, a fund named after the mythological three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell.
Previously, Feinberg was a top trader for Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert. After Drexel, Mr. Feinberg moved (on Milken’s recommendation) to a brokerage called Gruntal & Company.”
Gruntal owed its existence to the generous junk bond finance that its parent company, the Home Group, received from Michael Milken. Its options department was founded by Carl Icahn, who later became a “prominent” billionaire owing to the junk bond finance that he received from Michael Milken.
When Icahn left Gruntal, he was replaced by a Milken crony named Ron Aizer, who proceeded, on the recommendation of Milken, to hire two traders.
The first trader hired by Aizer was, according to a reliable source, investigated by the SEC for trading on inside information that he received from Milken’s operation at Drexel Burnham Lambert. This trader is now a “prominent” billionaire and the manager of a well-known hedge fund. The second trader hired by Aizer is now also a “prominent” hedge fund manager, though he is not quite a billionaire. Both of these traders play important roles in the story of Dendreon. Carl Icahn, the founder of Gruntal’s options department, has a cameo role, too.”
There is more, of course, much more to the story, and many more names, including Michael Steinhardt, Marc Rich who was pardoned by Clinton for tax evasion and dealing with Iran against US law, and many others, but that would make this post far too long, so I will send you instead to this page.…and this...for now.
(Of course, we could ask why hedge-funds with an edge get to be prosecuted, while governments with the biggest edge of all don´t – but there, we won´t spoil the fun).
Sad SAC: Reuters Spikes Hedge Story On Complaints From Steve Cohen
Via Finalternatives:
“Reuters opted against running a story about alleged insider-trading on the part of SAC Capital Advisors founder Steven Cohen after Cohen himself complained about the news agency’s coverage, a journalism blog reports.
Cohen repeatedly called Devin Wenig, CEO of Thompson Reuters Markets Division and the second-in-command at Reuters parent Thomson Reuters, according to Talking Biz News. The hedge fund boss reportedly complained that the story, which the University of North Carolina blog reports would have been an “incremental” advance in the story of alleged insider-trading more than 20 years ago, was part of a pattern of persecution on the part of Reuters.
Wenig forwarded Cohen’s complaints to Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger, who in turn referred the story to editors. Those editors debated the story, written by Matthew Goldstein, before deciding to kill it after three days.
“We make decisions on whether or not to run stories purely on journalistic grounds,” a Reuters spokesman told Talking Biz News.
Goldstein was the first reporter to cite the unsealed court documents that include explosive allegations against SAC and former SAC portfolio manager Ping Jiang. Cohen’s ex-wife, Patricia, last week sued him for $300 million, accusing him of insider-trading, perjury and hiding assets from her and from the authorities.”
My Comment
Looks like more confirmation of the Deep Capture thesis – that major newspapers are bending over backwards…and forwards….for the big hedge funds.
I notice that Hedge World has picked this story up….as well it should, it’s a big one… and very kindly links this blog, as well as the ever-alert zerohedge – the only MSM-touted blog I truly dig, mainly because I dig the characters on it.
Earlier, I blogged that Steven Cohen was also having problems with a militant ex-missus, who has gone public with allegations that he perjured himself, hid money from the government (here we are on Stevie’s side), and did other sorts of naughty things, like insider trading, that reclusive billionaires really shouldn’t do, not if they want to stay either reclusive or billionaires.
We have much more sympathy for Mr. Cohen, of course, than we do for the self-important twits and petty tyrants who fly their bylines at major newspapers with little respect for the body politic. At least, we understand simple greed. But the weedy vanity of the pen-pushing mob needs to be exposed for what it is.
Now comes Mr. Goldstein, who clearly suffers from the delusion that his job is to break important stories, no matter how exalted the net worth of the subjects. That didn’t sit well with his boss, and now the dirty laundry is out in the open.
Meanwhile, as if irate Sith ladies and spiked stories weren’t enough, there’s also a forced oral sex- cross-dressing- cum- sexual-harassment suit coming back from the past to haunt Sad SAC.
Who knew you could have so much fun without getting naked (shorted)?
Ilana Mercer On Subverting Natural Law
“Oblivious to the cameras – or perhaps for them – Amanda Knox, 22, and Raffaele Sollecito, 25, exchanged a slow, sensual kiss in full view of world media. Not far from where the two kissed lay the body of Meredith Kercher, the English girl with whom Knox had shared student accommodation in Perugia, Italy. Her throat slit, Meredith had expired in slow agony.”
I´m sure that opening, from a piece by the always incisive Ilana Mercer, got your attention.
Mercer writes here about an American “media mafia” baying in full-throated support of the murderous Amanda, as an innocent abroad, caught in the toils of Italy´s provincial justice system.
Now, we can always be counted on to get interested in anything at which media mobs bay…and this case proves to be interesting on other counts as well.
For one thing, I have a long-standing interest, nourished by the late William Roughhead, in true crime….but this go round, it´s not the murder itself that strikes me, but this passage in Mercer´s piece:
“In American (positive) law, procedural violations can get evidence of guilt – a bloodied knife or a smoking gun – barred from being presented at trial. More often than not, such procedural defaults are used to suppress immutable physical facts, thus serving to subvert the spirit of the (natural) law and justice.”
Mercer, I suppose, means that sometimes technical details of “how” trip up the more important objective of the law..which, she says, is to do justice. I´m tempted to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes to her (that it´s not the business of the law to do justice..however one construes that), but I´ll pass….
Instead, I´ll ask another question:
By distinguishing between procedural niceties of law and the ends of justice they ought to serve, isn´t Ms Mercer making a rather good argument for the use of extra-legal methods in conducting war….
And wouldn´t that allow for some tactics I am sure she´d condemn ,if they were taken up by one of her most frequent targets, Islamic terrorists?
Five-Minute Guide To Propaganda On The Web
I´m noticing some hilarious (to me) propaganda efforts on the web. Unfortunately, newbie media watchers are liable to be misled quite easily by them.
Here, I offer a quick and handy guide to spotting a propaganda effort, especially one emanating from Wall Street.
1. Predominance of name-calling. Does the writer offer arguments or name-calling? A few ripe names here and there are one thing. But if a piece is entirely devoid of reasoning and simply includes a list of epithets, such as, freak, weird, bizarre, crazy, loon, circus, tin-foil hat..it´s propaganda.
2. False Equivalence. Your man is caught committing an axe murder to which he ´fesses up on tape. He´s also an embezzler, a pathological liar, and kicks his dog. Their guy is an upstanding citizen on all counts, successful, philanthropic, intellectual, but he likes to party .. and got into a couple of fights once. No equivalence.
Trying to make false equivalences is the hall-mark of propaganda. A kid´s theft of a five dollar trinket is not the same offense as the monumental thieving that got us into this financial crisis. Anyone who makes these kinds of equivalences isn´t smart enough or honest enough to be trusted.
3. Talking points. When you hear the same set phrases tripping off the lips of everyone – then it´s propaganda. This doesn´t mean that a catchy phrase can´t be repeated quite innocuously. I´m also not talking about people who stay on message and keep repeating some thing to get it through to the public. I am talking about spinning things by choosing certain phrases. I´m talking about guilt by association. Say, you don´t have reason or evidence on your side. What do you do? You take a picture of Ted Bundy (or Hitler, or any one else), and then try to associate your enemy with that person.
4. Same old, same old. Watch out for the same faces showing up all over again. Propaganda is usually spun by a few favorites and any sidekicks and newbies whom they can con into joining their team. When you´re worried about someone´s honesty, try google. Go back and read the stuff they wrote. See when they wrote it. Do they have a consistent philosophy (changing your mind on a subject is a different thing). Do they have understandable positions..and a coherent intellectual frame work?
5. Separate the name-calling from the facts. Because some supposedly authoritative figure calls something a conspiracy, lies, or anything else doesn´t make it so. We´ve just seen from climate-gate how biased the peer review process is. Well, wiki is manipulated too. And some blogs, including this one, can show you hard evidence that publishing and the media are pretty much manipulated as well.
6. Look at the person´s record. There are a lot of late-comers to the scene claiming credit for things they didn´t discover, happen upon, or explain first. Revisionist history is all over the place. Look to see if the person credits sources – including opponents, enemies, people on the opposite side of the political spectrum, and obscure sources. That´s the hall mark of intellectual honesty. If they aren´t intellectually honest, they´re unlikely to be honest in other ways. If they repeatedly misattribute and twist history (remember, partial truths are the worst lies), watch out.
7. Look at the level of emotion and reason. Emotion..even passion..is good. But emotion without the ability to retract, qualify, substantiate, source, question, analyze, synthesize, and accurately assess, is pointless, dangerous and a possible sign of propaganda, or, at least, sound and fury minus substance. How polite is the person if contradicted? Do they answer criticism? (I´m talking about legitimate criticism, not flaming or obstructionism).
8. Beware of accusations whose significance you can´t assess. Do you know enough about business, accounting, law, and history to judge which mistake is serious and which isn´t? If you don´t, consult people who do. Don´t consult one person. Talk to several experts and get a feel for the issue.
9. Beware of innuendo that lacks relevance. Having a drunk-driving violation doesn´t disqualify you from discussing subsidies for the auto industry. Someone´s hairstyle, body type, love life, and hobbies are irrelevant. Anyone who harps on the personal stuff doesn´t have a case….unless the personal stuff is inextricable from their public professions. Even so, be wary of it.
10. Get to know the history of the players and the issues. Often, the same set of opponents go at each other over years. Don´t show up in year 10 and hope to figure out what´s going on.
11. Research the subject yourself, reading both sides (and any other side, as well). Talk to professionals and experts, but also talk to people on the outside. Sometimes, as with Wall Street, professionals can´t see something because they´re steeped in the ideology of their job.
12. Ethnic and religious solidarity, professional ideology, provincialism, racism, gender bias, nationalism, imperialism…it´s taboo to check for these. I do. When the advocates of a position all look a like, I ask myelf why. It´s not automatic that they´re therefore biased, but it could well be that they all see things the same way because they have in common the same life experience. Someone might use lofty arguments, but the real reason he picks on Greenspan, and not someone else, is because Greenspan is Jewish. And conversely, a Jewish person might pick on someone because he´s Catholic, and not for the reason he professes in public. This might be unconscious. Or it could be quite self-conscious but hidden under disingenous professions of transparence.
No one, especially not people in power, should be believed to be “above” this sort of bias. Major print, TV and online media are part of that power.
13. Money.
This, of course, should be number one on the list. Is the person being paid to say what they´re saying. If so, how much, by whom, and with what degree of disclosure. If they´re upfront, it might not be a problem. After all university professors are paid..but not all of them take positions in politics that have anything to do with their universities´positions. Also, there are many dishonest shills, friends, networks, and fellow travelers, who don´t get paid but still churn out reliable propaganda or PR on behalf of their favorite cause or person. I don´t mean that one should discount the testimony of friendly networks. Not at all. But if a groupie or fellow traveler can´t show evidence and reasoning for their support, then their statement is no more than a testimonial.
Ultimately, all this boils down to one thing. Skip the emotion and invective, and look for the evidence and logic. And don´t be intimidated by celebrity, “authoritative” sources, the popularity of a position or anything else.
Example: A journalist attacks naked short-selling. The industry defends itself by saying short selling is a good thing. Duh.
No one´s objecting to short selling..so why the strawman? Maybe because an attack on short selling would be easier to knock down than one on naked short selling?
Example: Critics of anthropogenic global warming are often criticized for attacking global warming, or climate change. But AGW is not any of these things. And critics aren´t usually denying the existence of anthropogenic global warming. What they´re objecting to is the claim that AGW is large enough to be a problem and the idea that, if so, there´s something human beings could do about it in the way of policies and economic interventions. That´s an entirely different kettle of fish. But climatistas won´t ever spell that out..
Open Letter To The Secretary-General Of UN
Wednesday, December 9th 2009, 2:07 AM EST
Co2sceptic (Site Admin)
Dear Secretary-General,
Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.
Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.
We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.
Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:
Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;
Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;
Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate…”
For the rest of the post and the complete list of signatories, see Climate realists.
Hedge-Fund Pays Naked Shorting Critic Byrne $5 Million
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.
The Devious Web (Correction)…
I notice that Gary Weiss commented on Patrick Byrne’ post on this blog, describing the post as a sample of obsessive behavior about naked short selling.
I have nothing to say to that, except that people who’ve had to battle a number of foes can sometimes become what’s called hypervigilant. I’ve certainly had the experience.
But that’s not my point here. I bring up the post only because Weiss writes like someone who’d never come across me before, duly (and snarkily) noting the “obscurity” of this blog. Well and good. No offense taken. We like our obscurity…it keeps us meek. And we’re told the meek will inherit the earth…or at least, what’s left of it after our oligarchs finish raping it.
However, I bring this up not to air any wound to my amour propre but because Judd Bagley, the main reporter at award-winning business blog Deep Capture, has accused Weiss of using sock puppets on wiki, and has posted screen shots to prove it. [It’s not germane to this tale that too uses sock-puppets].
One of Weiss’s alleged sock-puppets on wiki, says , goes by the name, MantanMoreland (other names used there and elsewhere include Samiharris – at wiki – and Tom Sykes – at Daily Kos and other places).
Now, it so happens that when I was trying to get rid of my web-stalker, Tony R, I ran into someone called Mantanmoreland on the message boards that he haunted. Was this Weiss? Or was it someone else? You judge.
Correction: I have crossed out the section below where I have incorrectly identified Tony R as someone by the name of Villasenor, whose postings/m.o. seemed similar to me on many counts. He has denied it (see comment section). My post resumes after the crossed out section.
Interestingly, Ry__s also claims he is not Ry__s.
[However, V doesn’t deny that – like R__s he uses multiple aliases, some very similar, frequents the same message boards, and attacks similar things].
Fair enough. I’ve added a correction. It makes no difference to my claim about R__ls or about Mantanmoreland, only it leaves me still in the dark who this person Ry__ls is.
Since the suit lists multiple aliases for him and some of these aliases resemble the multiple aliases that R___ls uses, their targets are similar, and their venues and forums often identical, it is an understandable error, if it’s one.
In any case, I will use R__ls name and strike through V’s, to avoid giving offense/slandering the wrong person….although it’s clear that neither of these two mind slandering other people.
I’ve no axe to grind in the matter.
To recap: V is a one-time stock-dealer who was fined by the NASD. He’s also a small-time racketeer (http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/09/27/blogger-credibility/e http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/ARIZONA/2005-06/1118951523) and a former groupie of securities fraudster, Amr Elgindy and his Anthony Pacific site. (http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=22945870). In whatever time is left over from that, he’s given to web stalking and harassing, for instance, of a (http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=15095618mber)
Just to be clear, I am agnostic about the merits of any of his claims about, who might be doing something illegal, for all I know. I mention this just to show that has a history of this sort of thing.
[With no cause at all, Tony R has also libeled Georgetown University professor, James Angel, because of a financial film he made that that didn’t conform to his ideas (as far as I recall the subject).
Anyway, I approached a number of of sites (such as, Indymedia, KYCNews, and the SEC complaints board) to have them remove Tony R’s libels and to find out how to make him desist. It turned out he was in Guatemala, so it would be hard for me to do anything legally about him. I was also told he was likely to just switch aliases and ratchet up the harassment, if I went after him. In fact, whenever I mentioned his most common alias name, Tony R, he would show up like lightning on this board and spam me (that’s why I’m not using his complete name).
Now here’s the interesting part. While I was trying to find out more about Ry__s, I came across an irate exchange between him (under one of his many aliases http://www.chillingeffects.org/uncat/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1748) and someone called Mantanmoreland. Note: it was on a message-board (not on wiki).
I wrote to Mantanmoreland (it was in February 2008), asking if he knew anything more about Tony R. and we went back and forth about it for some two weeks, exchanging around two dozen emails, most of which I still have. Those emails went under my name. In them I explained that I’d become the unwitting target of this Tony R, solely because I’d been hired to write a book with the president of a company that Tony R. was fixated about.
Here’s my question. Deep Capture says unequivocally that Mantanmoreland is Gary Weiss. Weiss denies it equally flatly. Now, I exchanged dozens of emails only a year ago with Mantanmoreland about a situation that he could hardly forget, since he had his gripe with Tony R too. But Weiss’ recent blog post seems to indicate that he has no idea who I am.
That leaves only one possibility. Either Weiss or Bagley is in error (to put it as mildly as possible)…
Which is it? And what would that mean? And does that have anything to do with the recent (thwarted) attempt to delete my wiki page?
Added: As a matter of fact, by assessing the various reactions to this post (who posted, where and on what forums), I clarified the answer to the above question to my satisfaction…
Rewriting of History Underway
Taibbi on the tea-parties, being sloppy with his facts again, all in the name of rhetoric:
“It’s amazing, literally amazing to me, that it wasn’t until Obama pushed through a package containing a massive public works package and significant homeowner aid that conservatives took to the streets. In other words, it wasn’t until taxes turned into construction jobs and mortgage relief that working and middle-class Americans decided to protest. I didn’t see anyone on the street when we forked over billions of dollars to help JP Morgan Chase buy Bear Stearns. And I didn’t see anyone on the street when Hank Paulson forked over $45 more billion to help Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch, a company run at the time by one of the world’s biggest assholes, John Thain. Moreover I didn’t see any street protests when the government agreed to soak up hundreds of billions in “troubled assets” from Citigroup, a company that just months later would lend out a jet furnished with pillows upholstered with Hermes scarves to former chief Sandy Weill so that he could vacation in Mexico over Christmas.”
My Comment:
Er, Matt. It was the Dems who rolled over for the bail-outs. It was the Republicans, the Southern Republicans, who stymied it first time round…until they had their arms twisted.
Before you got your consciousness raised on the subject several years late, it was right libertarians who were objecting most strongly to the financializing of the economy…..
The Penson video post wasn’t as big a deal as it was made out to be, to my mind. But this post and his debate on 9-11 with David Griffin (at Alternet) do betray some ignorance…
Update:
Louis Proyect has a review of “Dime’s Worth of Difference” (Cockburn and St. Clair) that has a precis that will disabuse anyone inclined to believe the Democrats are more people-friendly than the Republicans…
Taibbi’s Penson Video..(Correction)
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.”