Author Archives: Lila

Insights From the Bears

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I had a conversation recently with some insiders in the financial industry, of a rather bearish persuasion. So bearish that they’re interested in leaving the United States.

Which is how I’ve felt for about five-six years.

The conversation yielded interesting tidbits.  Some of them confirm my own thinking; others contradict it. The contradictory parts interested me the most, of course. I tend to pay more attention to people who think differently from me than to people who agree, perhaps because of some diffidence about my own judgment….Unfortunately, my own instincts have turned out to be more accurate than I’ve been able to believe.

Anyway, here’s what I came away with from what I consider honest and reliable professional money managers:

1. China is overvalued greatly. By around 50%-60% or more (not the first time I’ve heard this, of course).

2. Jim Rogers knows commodities, but doesn’t know gold as well (this was new to me).

3. Marc Faber has one of the best reputations as an investor among insiders (well-known to me). His newsletter is worth the money.

(Full disclosure: I don’t subscribe to Mr. Faber’s newsletter, work for him or receive any kind of compensation for this statement. I’m passing it along as well-founded opinion that might help readers struggling to find reliable guidance in the welter of news….)

4. Gold bars sold by some firms have tungsten underneath, so be careful from whom you buy. James Turk is a reliable person to buy gold from. (Full disclosure: I don’t use Mr. Turk’s services nor have I been paid by anyone to make this assertion).

6. A lotof Several money-managers think there may be no gold at Fort Knox – or very little – not just confirmed “conspiracists” – among whom I am proud to number myself. (Correction, Nov. 13: “No gold” doesn’t have to mean the absence of physical gold. Gold could be present physically, but it could owed to other entities, like a house that is technically in your name, but is really owned by all your creditors).

7. Rogers was more the driving force behind Quantum’s success than Soros.

8. There will be no secession. Americans aren’t up to it. The cognitive dissonance between perceived reality and “real” reality is too great for most people to grasp the extent of the corruption in the system. Any hope of rebellion rests with “red-necks” (apologies for using a racist term – I  use it ironically here), not with yuppies.

9.  The Indian market is riddled with fraud and hype. Jim Rogers thinks the Indian market is a scam. (I wouldn’t use that harsh a word, but I worry about hype and corruption in it too).

10. Brazil’s Fortaleza area, which has been attracting a lot of investor interest, has great beaches and weather…as well as slums, crime, and deadbeats of all kinds. Recommended for investing, not for living.

11. Argentine property laws are not as safe as US property laws (despite Kelo) – at least, at the level where it concerns the ordinary joe. Aggressive, organized squatting is a problem in rural areas.

12. The ongoing investigation of insider trading (eg., Galleon) is not just a one-day wonder, but might bite harder than expected.

Swine Flu Cover-Up

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From Dr. Mercola, via Lew Rockwell:

In fact, worldwide, according to CDC and WHO data, far fewer people have died form H1N1 than any seasonal flu in the past.

Dr. Mercola also points out the following:

“Insurance companies in Australia would not insure doctors who gave the vaccine because it was a fast tracked vaccine and therefore experimental. They felt that the danger of complications was far too high to risk insuring the doctors. Unlike doctors in America, they did not have a special law that Congress would pass to insulate them from liability should severe complications arise from the vaccine.

It is also of special interest to note that tens of millions of babies were vaccinated with the Hepatitis B vaccine (providing no protection to the babies) only to learn later that it is linked to a 310% increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis. One has to ask — What else do they not know about this vaccine? …….

…Now we are being told that this new fast tracked, poorly tested vaccine is very safe and effective. The results of the testing on this vaccine were reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.39 It is instructive to learn that the tests for safety and to assess complications lasted only 7 days after the vaccine, an incredibly short period of follow-up. Gullian Barre paralysis can occur even months after a vaccine as can seizures, behavioral problems and neurodevelopmental disorders in children. It is interesting to note that the authors of the safety study for our swine flu vaccine were all employees of the maker of the vaccine CSL Biotherapeutics and eight held equity interest in the company. This admission is part of the disclosure policy of the New England Journal of Medicine.”

Intellectual Self-Defense for Libertarians

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I posted this at Lew Rockwell last week:

“There are two ways to approach the world.

In one, the popular one now, you try to control the bad actors. You create laws to trip them up before hand, or round them up after. You rely on regulations and regulators.

Nothing wrong with that, except that we already have lots of regulators and it didn’t help.

Why?

The reason is so obvious you question the intelligence of anyone who can’t see it. It’s simple. People willing and able to scam the system are going to be willing and able to game the regulations too.

In a fight between regulators and scammers, my money’s on the scammers. They’re usually richer and nastier.

In the second approach, you don’t overlook the bad actors. You hope they get what they have coming to them. But you don’t rely on laws or lawyers because you’re old enough to have figured out that bit about the bad actors being bigger and nastier than the good ones.

So what do you do?

You focus on getting out of the way of the bad guys. You limit the damage they can do to you. And most of all, you figure out how to avoid them in the first place.

Here are five warnings I wish I’d heeded more:

1. Be careful whom you deal with

Don’t lie down with a dog and you won’t get up with fleas. Delousing yourself is much harder than not getting loused up in the first place.

But delousing is what we do a lot of these days. It’s practically the only thing going on in the economy now. Right now there are people all over the country delousing the SEC.. and the Congress… and the banks…and the hedge-funds. There’s even a global delousing effort going on. The fumigators are at work. Pest control is in full force and the exterminators are crawling over the baseboards in the cellar. There’s an international delousing effort at the BIS, with headquarters at Switzerland and local shops all over the world.

A Bug Czar has been crowned and fleas have been declared insecta non grata.
There – that should do it, eh? Any bug with a classical education should figure it out.

Which is another way of saying none of this will work. Or if it works, it won’t work the way you want it to.

The fact is, lice and ticks are at home on a dog. It’s R & R for them. Holiday Inn, Bed & Breakfast, and a luxury spa combined. Get them to leave? Good luck. Much better, don’t take your dog to bed in the first place. Much better, if you have a dog, let him drool in the kennel, not on your pillow.

The short version of all that is we do jack-ass things and then wonder who’s braying.

I say jack-ass with no disrespect. Some say that those who get conned “deserve what they get.”
That is the New Testament of the confidence man and the Sunday sermon of the predator.
As financial doctrine, it occasionally makes sense. As moral insight, it’s almost always junk. Very often victims are only weak, naive, or ignorant. The kind of people who wouldn’t know malice if they saw it in the dollar-bin with a white tag tied to its toe. They’re people who follow the rules, thinking other people follow them too. They’re honorable, so they believe in the honor of their fellow man.

Now, not only is being honorable not wrong, it’s the way things should be. But doves should learn not to coo at snakes, and beautiful souls have to wise up to what goes on in the rest of the world… or expect an ugly life.

So, rule number one. Research the people you plan to make your associates. And don’t dismiss your research. When you find out your prospective partner filed for bankruptcy six times in the last ten years, don’t tell yourself it will be different this time, because it won’t. One bankruptcy is a financial failure. Three is a losing streak. Six is a career decision. Follow your gut instinct.

If your boss conducts business with a wink and a leer, don’t pass it off as southern charm. He’s not Dagwood Bumstead looking for a lump of emotional candy. He’s a creep, and you’re a pawn in his narcissistic chess game. Ask for a transfer about two minutes after that. If you’re out of a job, so be it. There’s no guarantee you won’t be out of one, if you put up with it.

2. Never stop learning

Ignorance kills, as a lawyer friend of mine likes to say. Don’t be ignorant. Learn as much as you can about as many things as you can. Do your research. Know what you’re dealing with. With the internet, it’s much easier. You can do a google search on anything or anyone. You can go into google news archives and find newspaper articles and information from as far back as the 1980s.
So start reading.

Project Gutenberg has thousands of classic books online. PubMed allows you to access medical journals. LexisNexis will allow you to research law. Edgar will show you company filings. You can search houses for sale on Realtor.com and look up where a house is on Google Earth. You can go to WhoIs to find out about domain names and IP address. You can find out how well a website is doing by looking up Technorati or Alexa rankings. The Way Back Machine lets you look up old magazine articles, even when they’ve been pulled off the current site. Some sites like Zabasearch collect people’s information and put it all in one spot. That’s free information. If you pay, you can get much more.

Mind you, I find data sites downright creepy, especially when they’re online, and especially when they’re centralized and can be accessed with a key-stroke. If people have paid for their sins, why not let them start fresh? There may be a recording angel, but surely he lives farther north than DC.

On the other hand, just because the technology is already out there, it pays to keep up with what’s being done with it. Because if it’s out there, your business partner… or your employer… or your enemies ….or your friends.. probably know about it already. They might even have mined it for information to deploy against you. Shouldn’t you be prepared?

3. Limit what people know about you. Many of us from small towns grew up around trustworthy people. Our friends and our neighbors knew everything about us, and we didn’t mind, because no one was malicious enough to hurt anyone else.

The big world isn’t so nice. People who have things to hide themselves will be only too anxious to find something on you, attack being the best form of defense in their minds. If they can’t find anything wrong, they’ll hit you with whatever else they can, even a silly thing you said casually. They’ll dig out what your crazy cousin did fifteen years ago. Or perhaps you saved your husband’s latest rant about his mother online. Don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning to find it in the New Yorker.

So, keep things to yourself, even among close friends and relatives.

That’s a hard one for me. I’m a verbal person. I write, I talk, even if it’s only to myself. Leave me next to a blank wall and I’ll strike up a conversation. And it will be two-way.

Fortunately, most people are unlikely to hurt you. But occasionally you’ll run into a psychopath who will. And if you work in politics, the media, or in business, psychopathy is practically the norm.

So keep track of what’s being written about you on the net with Google alerts. Write to sites that aggregate information and ask for your name to be removed from their lists. You might have to repeat that every year . Put yourself on the national do-not-call list so that your telephone number’s out of the reach of marketers.

And then limit the information you give out, even to your lawyer.
It’s taken me half a lifetime to figure out that any questionnaire shoved under my nose doesn’t automatically deserve to be filled in. Leave things blank unless you’re told it’s mandatory to fill it in. Or become creative. Develop fictitious personalities, throw-away mail addresses, exotic, non-existent addresses. Use another name when doing business. Avoid registering products or filling out questionaires in your own name. Use fake birth-dates and vary them according to a system that you, and only you, know. Change your passwords every few weeks, using a system to keep track. Write them down broken up in alternate pages in a notebook, without anything to signify what the numbers mean. If the book is lost, no one will be able to make use of the information. Neither will you, of course, but losing a little time is better than losing your savings.

Hacking email, spying on private business, blackmailing and outing people, it’s all fair game these days. Attacking the privacy of public figures has become a national pastime – witness the Letterman case. But it’s not just public life. Private business is a circus of outing and shaming too. Corporations spy on and threaten each other, as well as their employees. Employees write tell-all books.

We live in a spy state, where every half-wit believes it’s his divine right to nose into anything, no matter how little it’s his business. So, these days not only is it wise to keep your own secrets, you might be wise to keep other people’s secrets.

But what should you do if inspite of that, you become a target of an attack on your privacy?
Often, nothing, unfortunately.

I’ll give you the example of an aunt of mine who didn’t want anyone to know she was sick, in case it would prejudice employers against hiring her. A colleague not only hacked her email but forwarded details about her illness to dozens of people. A frail, sensitive woman, her health broke down under the stress.

I’ll give you the advice I gave her. Say your piece once in private, and say it once in public. Then forget about it. Move on. You’re not the first person to have been screwed over and you won’t be the last. Innocent people are constantly being ruined by the powerful and the unscrupulous. That’s the ugly truth of our system. Reputations are often lost, unjustly. Our salvation is to worry less about our reputations and more about our consciences.
What we do where no one can see and none can retaliate is the test of who we are.

As for what others think, the world is a large place. Move far away, if you need to. As for the system, stop trying to reform it. It’s beyond reform.

4. Learn to say no

Telling someone no doesn’t come naturally. We’re trained to go through life being agreeable. In fact, learning to say no might be the hardest thing you learn. But it might also be the most important, and once you learn it, it can become good sport.

Speaking for myself, I’ve come to relish saying no to pests. And the nay-saying that gives me the greatest pleasure of all is nay-saying to internet marketers. It’s not that I’m ever rude to one. I never hang up. My malice is much deeper. I let them prattle on, even asking polite questions. Then I stop them courteously and ask them why they think they have the right to call me on a weekend and waste half-an-hour selling me something I didn’t ask for. Occasionally, when they’re especially pushy, my toying becomes cruel. I turn the tables on them. Instead of selling me things, they find themselves signing petitions or supporting causes or accepting market analysis or invitations to baby showers or anything else at hand.

Can I call you, I ask. Tonight? Tomorrow? I press them to reply. Can you buy two? Now? Pretty soon, they’re begging to hang up.

Try it and see. It’s balm in gilead.

I advise you to use this technique on rude or uncooperative colleagues too. Give them a taste of their own medicine, and do it generously. Let their cup run over. You will get something better than love. You’ll get respect.

5. Learn how to retaliate

Despite all the myths propagated about forgiveness, I’ve learned that submitting meekly to injustice usually breeds weakness, resentment, and ill- health. There’s nothing that drives up your self-respect as much as socking it back to bullies. I’m not advising being unduly aggressive. Try a friendly approach as long as you can. But when that doesn’t work, time to get tough. Throw some metaphoric crockery. Thumb your nose and thumb it publicly. Turn on the spotlight and watch the cockroaches run.

In other cases, all you may need to do is wait. Time has a knack of delivering even the biggest fish to a patient angler…and when that moment comes, don’t flinch. Yank that line and watch your target flop and wriggle on the sand.

Watch with a smile. Defy the received wisdom and develop a healthy conscience about revenge. It’s highly moral. Only our wimpy but violent age derides its feline nobility.

The uncomfortable truth is the New Testament is meant for people on the same moral level of development….for family.. and for friends. But in the big, dirty world, the Old Testament works much better.

Gandhi said an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind. I say an eye for an eye, and after the first blind man, everyone else’s eyesight gets better in a hurry.

Become a moral vigilante. Why waste time going through the system if you can get better results outside of it? Use the law to warn, to shame, to threaten. But don’t labor under the delusion that a court case always helps. Your enemy will pour his time and money into creating mushroom clouds of paper. He’ll drown you in verbiage and “accidentally-on-purposes.” He’ll postpone and prevaricate and petition. He’ll appeal and block and delay…. and hide behind a fog of corporate black ink like an injured squid.

Instead, if you’re obliged by professional ethics to speak up, consider other channels of actions besides the court. Try mediation or arbitration. Perhaps you’re better off complaining to the Better Business Bureau. Or posting on a consumer forum.

Monetary compensation is often not the best justice either. It can make you look like an extortionist. Try going public. Give the bully a taste of his own medicine. Post the hacker’s private information on a website. Put him on the run. That might not make you rich, but the moral satisfaction is tremendous.

Of course, it could also be dangerous. You risk violating the law yourself. In that case, you might be best off to leave your job. Maybe even leave town. Leave the thugs to the mercies of the universe. It sometimes does a better job of retribution than it’s given credit for. Villains do not always go to jail. And if the skeptics are right, they might never go to hell. But they often get dragged into divorce court, which is a good deal worse, from all accounts.

And meanwhile, there are all those other ways the wicked verily get their reward.
Envious rivals cut their throats; the tax man cometh, and the SEC with him; and then cometh old age, failing libido, dead-beat in-laws and brain-dead grandchildren. The inheritance get squandered and the sycophants and courtiers vanish with the money. The trash-mouth gets acid reflux, the glutton gets dyspepsia and the aging lecher ends up alone, romancing his own hairless skull and wrinkled hide.

Then at the end comes the greatest punishment of all for persisting in evil deeds. You stare into the mirror and evil stares back at you, looking not so much devilish as hollow and bewildered, less like a fiend from hell and more like a Goldman CEO at a Congressional hearing.

Hannah Arendt taught us about the banality of evil. It was left to our age to practice the evil of banality. Habit, laziness, gullibility, ignorance, vanity, greed, fear, cowardice, bravado. We are duped not by heroic evil, but by humdrum vice.

The greatest and best defense we have against the charlatans and knaves who brought our society to its knees is not the law.

It is self-knowledge and discipline.”

Buffett Bets Big On US Economy

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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway fund has pumped $34 billion into Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation, the USA’s second largest railroad.

“Berkshire’s $34 billion investment in BNSF is a huge bet on that company, CEO Matt Rose and his team, and the railroad industry,” Buffett said in a statement.

“Most important of all, however, it’s an all-in wager on the economic future of the United States. I love these bets,” he said.”

More at AP.

IMF Sells Gold to India (Updated)

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Update 2 (Nov 3): The only other explanation I can think of is that the Indian government is privy to information indicating that the demise of the dollar is much closer at hand than is being given out..

Update 1:

OK. As you know, I’ve found this Indian purchase a bit puzzling.  I have a bunch of questions:

*Why didn’t the Indian government make a big purchase earlier this year, at $900, rather than now, at the top?

*What, if any, is the connection between this and the Fisk report a few weeks ago about the Gulf Arabs moving out of the dollar, which  a lot of people found odd, despite the reputation of the reporter? The report bumped up the price of gold.

Now, here’s Chuck Butler of Everbank, via The Daily Reckoning:

“I told you yesterday that I thought it would be a “wash” for the dollar and the gold price… But that was before I learned that the Reserve Bank of India paid for their $6.7 billion dollars worth of gold with… SDRs.”

(Note:Reuters reports that the sale was in dollars – which would be dollar negative).

What does this mean? That, over the whole past 15 -20 years of “globalization” while the US Govt. inflated its money and sold its treasuries and fake derivatives all over the world in return for real work and real savings, who were the buyers?

Countries like India, where large parts of the middle-class stored its savings in dollars. Now those dollars are seen as so unsound that the IMF (which is the new locus of Anglo-European global domination) won’t accept them for payment of gold.

That means the Indian government has to give up its SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) in exchange.

Now the resurgent IMF is where the globalists are exerting their power and not in the G20 (which was supposed to augment the power of developing nations when it was established in 1999).

As I blogged earlier, the Financial Stability Board is the new regulatory agency that will coordinate with the IMF, but it includes the G20  and also Spain and the European Commission and is headed by ex-Goldmanite, Mario Draghi and it’s housed at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. So that is a double hit to any representation India will have in the forum.

India sold gold at the bottom in the 1990s;  and is now buying it at the top nearly 20 years later – thus selling part of the gains of these past years. At least, so it seems to me. To me this smacks of neocolonialism.

And now, it becomes easier to understand why the center-liberal establishment media is interested in co-opting the anger against Goldman and channeling it into various subplots of the financial crisis (naked short selling, the bail-outs etc.etc).

I see this as an elaborate feint to divert world attention from the reprise of Anglo American and European colonization over the last two decades – accomplished, with a  “black” president in charge.

Here’s a piece on IMF sales of gold in 1999. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/imf-sells-gold-to-hep-debt-of-poorest-nations-1090154.html

Notice how similar the language is – they’re doing it to increase funding to the poorest countries, etc. etc.

In the news, Bloomberg reports:

“The International Monetary Fund sold 200 metric tons of gold to the Reserve Bank of India for about $6.7 billion, its first such sale in nine years.

The transaction, equivalent to 8 percent of global annual mine production, involved daily sales from Oct. 19-30 at market prices and is in the process of being settled, the IMF said in a statement yesterday. The average price to India, the biggest consumer, was about $1,045 an ounce, an IMF official said on a conference call. Gold for immediate delivery gained 0.2 percent.”

My Comment:

Interesting. The Indian government doesn’t buy gold at the bottom (2000) but now, when it’s at all time highs (shades of the British government selling gold at the bottom).
Now, the Indian central bank is reputed to be very savvy, as are Indian gold buyers. Most commentators expect gold to consolidate, if not correct, before pushing on. It would make sense for the Indian government to wait and buy it on dips.

This is a good move for the IMF. But for the Indian government, which managed to steer the banking system past the whirlpool of unwinding derivatives, I wonder if this move is astute.

Look at the peculiar facts, as reported in the New York TimesWall Street Journal)

“In the last one year, China has increased its gold holdings, by weight, by 75.69%, Russia by 18.78%, the Philippines by 18.50% and Mexico by 108.91%.
Compared with this, India’s central bank did not add anything to its gold reserves in the last one year, according to Bloomberg data.

(Lila: Why not? Why buy gold at record prices when the government was unwilling to buy when it was trading much lower, only this year?)

In fact, the share of gold in India’s total reserves has dwindled over the decade.

In March 1994, the share of gold in the total reserves of the country was 20.86%; by the end of June 2009, gold constituted only 3.7% of the total reserves.”

Even the IMF expressed surprise, as Breitbart.com notes:

“A senior IMF official said that the IMF was “lucky” in selling the 200 tonnes to India for roughly 1,045 dollars an ounce, compared with 850 dollars an ounce in April 2008.”

(Lila: In other words, over the whole period of globalization, India sold it’s gold and bought US treasury…dollars…just what the US government was desperate to get rid off, so it wouldn’t drive inflation at home…)

Again, India sold gold cheap and bought it back at its height. Does that sound like savvy behavior from a country renowned for well trained economists and smart gold buyers?

A former governor of the Indian central bank (Reserve Bank of India), Bimal Jalan, said it was to help the IMF meet its funding needs for loans to the poorest countries, for which it had looked to India and China.

As an aside, in an earlier post, I speculated that the report (by Robert Fisk, a very respected source) about Gulf Arabs moving out of the petrodollar – which was promptly denied – might have been a rumor circulated to bump up the price of gold to help IMF gold sales….maybe, I wasn’t so far off, after all.

I went back to an earlier post this year, in February, which quotes from a list in Richard Russell’s letter:
Note: The list looks inaccurate. I’ll go back and find why Russell’s numbers are so different from the World Gold Council figures below them). (Note: Russell is referring to tonnes of gold; the WGC figures are for dollar amounts. So the discrepancies we refer to at in the percentages).

The US has 8,135 tonnes….64.4% of reserves

Germany — 3,412… …64.4% of reserves
IMF — 3,217… … …(1)
France — 2,508… … …58.7%
Italy — 2,451… … …61.9%
Switzerland — 1,040… …23.8%
Japan — 765.2… …1.9% …(a potential gold-buyer)
China — 600.0… …0.9% …(should be a big buyer)*

A reader notes that this number is too low. I assume it’s a number from before China started buying off market. Compare with list below.

Russia — 495. 9… …2.2% …(is a buyer)
Taiwan — 422.2… …3.6% …(should be a buyer)
India — 357.7… …3.0% …(should be a buyer)
UK — 310.3… … …14.5% …(sold most of its gold at the low price)
Saudi Arabia — 143.0… …11.4% (should buy gold)
South Africa — 124.4… …9.0%
Australia — 79.8… … …6.3%

From Richard Russell, The Dow Theory Letters.

So there you have it. Among countries, Italy, France, Germany, and the US have the most gold. Switzerland has a third of what they have. The UK, South Africa, Australia, and Saudi Arabia are next with about  1/5th – 1/10th as much. Russia and Japan have only a small percent in gold. China and India have even less. What do  most Asians have? Debt (treasuries and dollars) from the US. Neo-colonialism anyone?

Correction:

CNBC has the following completely different list of top gold holding countries compiled by tradermark via Seeking Alpha, posted October 13, 2009.

(Note: Data is based on the World Gold Council’s September 2009 report and is converted to US short tons at a rate of 1 T = 1.102311 US tons. All monetary estimates are calculated at the rate of 1oz gold = $1042 US).

United States $298.4 N/A
Germany $125.0 69.2%
International Monetary Fund $118.0 N/A
Italy $89.9 66.6%
France $89.7 70.6%
China $38.7 1.9%
Switzerland $38.2 29.1%
Japan $28.1 2.3%
Netherlands $22.5 59.6%
Russia $20.9 4.3%
European Central Bank $18.4 18.8%
Taiwan $15.5 3.9%
Portugal $14.0 90.9%
India $13.1 4.0%
Venezuela $13.1 36.1%

The Devious Web (Correction)…

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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…

DTCC Conflicts Of Interest Include Ties With Penson, Goldman

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More digging about Penson turns up a number of ties with regulators (this is probably par for the course, and not surprising). Penson Worldwide’s board of directors includes one David Kelly, who until 2000 was President of the National Securities Clearing Corporation, as well as Vice Chairman of DTCC.
More on DTCC here at Financial Wire, May 11, 2004
cited at Deep Capture.

(Lila : The DTCC is the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, not the Depository Trust Company, as indicated in the article)

“The Depository Trust Company (DTC) is a member of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, a limited-purpose trust company under New York State banking law and a registered clearing agency with the SEC. The depository supposedly brings efficiency to the securities industry by retaining custody of some 2 million securities issues, effectively “dematerializing” most of them so that they exist only as electronic files rather than as countless pieces of paper. The depository also provides the services necessary for the maintenance of the securities it has in “custody.”

The largely unregulated DTC has become something of a defacto Czar presiding over the entire U.S. markets system, wielding more day-to-day influence and control than the SEC, the NASD and NASDAQ combined. And, as the SEC’s June 4 ruling indicates, its monopoly over the electronic trading system appears even to be protected.

How entrenched is the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp.? It’s two preferred shareholders are the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD, a regulatory agency that also owns the NASDAQ (OTCBB: NDAQ) and the embattled American Stock Exchange! Regulators, regulate thyself?

In an era when corporate governance is the primary interest for the SEC and state regulators, the DTCC is hardly a role model. Its 21 directors represent a virtual litany of conflict:

They include Bradley Abelow, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS); Jonathan E. Beyman, Chief Information Officer, Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH); Frank J. Bisignano, Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Executive Vice President, Citigroup / Solomon Smith Barney’s Corporate Investment Bank (NYSE: C); Michael C. Bodson, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MWD); Gary Bullock, Global Head of Logistics, Infrastructure, UBS Investment Bank (NYSE: UBS); Stephen P. Casper, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Fischer Francis Trees & Watts, Inc.; Jill M. Considine,Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC);

Also, Paul F. Costello, President, Business Services Group, Wachovia Securities (NYSE: WB); John W. Cummings, Senior Vice President & Head of Global Technology & Services, Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER); Donald F. Donahue, Chief Operating Officer, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC); Norman Eaker, General Partner, Edward Jones; George Hrabovsky, President, Alliance Global Investors Service; Catherine R. Kinney, President and Co-Chief Operating Officer, New York Stock Exchange; Thomas J. McCrossan, Executive Vice President, State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT); Eileen K. Murray, Managing Director, Credit Suisse First Boston (NYSE: CSR); James P. Palermo, Vice Chairman, Mellon Financial Corporation (NYSE: MEL); Thomas J. Perna, Senior Executive Vice President, Financial Companies Services Sector of The Bank of New York (NYSE: BNY); Ronald Purpora, Chief Executive Officer, Garban LLC; Douglas Shulman, President, Regulatory Services and Operations, NASD; and Thompson M. Swayne, Executive Vice President, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).”

No More Muddle-Through Economy

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“I firmly believe we will see a double-dip recession within another 18 months (at the most). Stock markets drop on average about 40% in a recession. Adjust your portfolios accordingly.”

— John Mauldin, Thoughts from the Front Line (http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/pdf/mwo101609.pdf)

My Comment:

I find it pretty interesting that John Mauldin, who’s always argued that we’d “muddle through”  somehow (http://www.safehaven.com/article-9542.htm), has now changed his position in view of the facts (an admirable quality). In the latest edition of his very popular and always informative newsletter, Thoughts from the Front Line, he argues that things are much worse than he’d ever anticipated.

I find it even more interesting that Mauldin will be down in Uruguay, speaking to various groups and that he has a partner based in Uruguay. He writes:

“I will be going to South America at the end of next week, to Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Sao Paulo and Rio. I will be speaking in those cities and traveling with my new Latin American partner, Enrique Fynn of Fynn Capital (based in Uruguay).”

He’s not the only one. I’ve noted a number of libertarian (and other) financial advisors down here. A sign of the times.