Foreign Collusion, Naked Shorting (Counterfeiting) & Money Laundering — All Illicit Wealth
SEC to limit Fannie, Freddie short sales
Aaron Smith
CNN, 16 July 2008
The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued an emergency order to bolster investor protections against so-called ‘naked’ short selling of mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
How “naked” short selling happens
Reuters, 16 July 2008
U.S. securities regulators issued an emergency rule on Tuesday to limit certain types of short selling in major financial firms, including Fannie Mae FNM.N and Freddie Mac FRE.N.
SEC Moves to Curb Short-Selling
Kara Scannell and Jenny Strasburg
The Wall Street Journal, 16 July 2008
The Securities and Exchange Commission took unprecedented action against short sellers on Tuesday, acting on a widespread concern that negative bets against bank and brokerage stocks might be exacerbating the financial sector’s woes.
In a dramatic emergency order, the SEC said it would immediately move to curb improper short selling in the stocks of struggling mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as those of 17 financial firms, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.,…
SEC Discovers That Unbridled Naked Short Selling Might Actually Be, Er, Not So Good….
Bob O’Brien
Sanity Check via Wayback, 15 July 2008
What we are seeing is the US markets relentlessly melting down, as even the bulge bracket firms, and the “too big to fail” entities, are victimized by unbridled, unconstrained naked short selling. Exactly as used to be the case in the 1920’s. Exactly in the manner that resulted in the SEC being formed, and the uptick rule (discarded just a few short months back as an anachronism), and requirements for timely clearing and delivery. All of which the SEC has basically ignored, very deliberately.
SEC Enhances Investor Protections Against Naked Short Selling
15 July 2008
The Securities and Exchange Commission today issued an emergency order to enhance investor protections against “naked” short selling in the securities of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and primary dealers at commercial and investment banks.
Bud Burrell Comments on Amendments to Regulation SHO
SEC, 13 July 2008
“August 1973 I started on Wall Street in Block Trading for Bache. Worked in all Major firms through the years.Traveled all over the world.
From $6 Billion per day Fails to deliver is now Over $13 1/2 billion per day.
There is More Naked Short shares in the market than there is Outstanding Shares.
We have allowed our Clearing systems to be Gamed, to the point where they are able to manipulate markets.”
Bryan Burrough
Vanity Fair, 30 June 2008
On Monday, March 10, the rumor started: Bear Stearns was having liquidity problems. In fact, the maverick investment bank had around $18 billion in cash reserves. But soon the speculation created its own reality, and the race was on to keep Bear’s crisis from ravaging Wall Street. With the blow-by-blow from insiders, Bryan Burrough follows the players—Bear’s stunned executives, trigger-happy reporters at CNBC, a nervous Fed, a shadowy group of short-sellers—in what some believe was the greatest financial scandal in history.
Patrick Byrne Covers Up Ownership of ‘Deep Capture’ Smear Site
Gary Weiss
gary-weiss.com, 19 June 2008
A couple of months ago I described how Overstock.com’s terminally wacky CEO Patrick Byrne has thrown caution (and any lingering sanity) to the winds and was openly sponsoring attacks on journalists and other critics, on a smear site that he owned and was operated on Overstock servers, “Deep Capture.”
This was a change from Byrne’s previous tactic of claiming that smears and attacks were by people who just coincidentally happened to be his employees. The word for this is “astroturfing,” and it is a particularly sleazy method of concealing corporate (and sometimes government) involvement in dirty tricks campaigns.
MarketWatch cited by RGB Communications via Wayback, May 28, 2008
Today the legal consortium of The O’Quinn Law Firm and Christian Smith & Jewell, both of Houston, Texas and Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, LLP of Atlanta, Georgia filed a Complaint in the State Court of Fulton County, Georgia on behalf of certain shareholders of TASER International Inc. (“TASER”) against eight of the largest Wall Street firms, including Bank of America Securities LLC, Bear Stearns Securities Corp., Credit Suisse USA Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc., Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc., UBS Securities LLC.
File No. S7-08-08: Comments on Proposed Naked Short Selling Anti-Fraud Rule, 10b-21
Dr. Robert J. Shapiro
19 May 2008
I am Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, the chairman of Sonecon, LLC, an economic analysis and advisory firm in Washington, D.C. I am also currently a Senior Fellow of the Georgetown University School of Business, Director of the NDN Project on Globalization and a Fellow of the Progressive Policy Institute. From 1998 to 2001, I was the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. Prior to that, I was the Vice President and co-founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, Vice President of the Progressive Foundation, and Legislative Director and Economic Counsel for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I have advised numerous public officials, including President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Vice President Al Gore, and Senators Joseph Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Evan Bayh, as well as many large U.S. and foreign corporations and financial institutions. I hold a Ph.D. and M.A. from Harvard University, as well as a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an A.B. from the University of Chicago. I also have been a fellow of Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Brookings Institution, and I have conducted extensive research and analysis involving U.S. financial markets.
PDF (6 pages): File No. S7-08-08: Comments on Proposed Naked Short Selling Anti-Fraud Rule, 10b-21
Ellen Brown
Global Research, 14 May 2008
The mother of all insider trades was pulled off in 1815, when London financier Nathan Rothschild led British investors to believe that the Duke of Wellington had lost to Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. In a matter of hours, British government bond prices plummeted. Rothschild, who had advance information, then swiftly bought up the entire market in government bonds, acquiring a dominant holding in England’s debt for pennies on the pound. Over the course of the nineteenth century, N. M. Rothschild would become the biggest bank in the world, and the five brothers would come to control most of the foreign-loan business of Europe. “Let me issue and control a nation’s money,” Rothschild boasted in 1838, “and I care not who writes its laws.”
The ‘Phantom Shares’ Menace
John W. Welborn
Securities & Exchange, 24 April 2008
In 1985, the National Association of Securities Dealers (nasd) commissioned Irving M. Pollack, a securities law expert and former Securities and Exchange commissioner, to conduct a comprehensive review of short selling in nasdaq securities. The nasd sought to determine what, if any, additional short selling regulation was needed for the nasdaq market. The result was the now-famous “Pollack Study,” which described the short selling landscape of the day and made important recommendations regarding the disclosure, reporting, and settlement of short sales.
PDF (10 pages): The ‘Phantom Shares’ Menace
The Naked Truth: Short Selling must be Banned
Terry McCrann
The Australian via Wayback, 5 April 2008
I refer to real – or so-called “naked” – short selling. So-called “covered” short selling is an altogether both simpler and more complex matter.
“Covered” short selling goes to the sort of volatility and transparency and possible malpractice issues that have battered a range of stocks over the past six months or so. It also goes to the fiduciary duties and practices of fund managers and trustees.
But there is no inherent reason to ban “covered” selling. And indeed the Corporations Act does not.
It arguably isn’t even short selling. More a contractual matter between the seller and the person from whom the seller has borrowed the stock. But with significant and reasonable disclosure issues for the ASX as the market.
SEC, CFTC Build Ties; Naked Short Selling
Melissa Klein Aguilar
ComplianceWeek, 17 March 2008
Leaders of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have pledged to build a stronger working relationship between their two agencies, in the face of ever-more blurry lines between securities, commodities, and futures.
SEC Proposes Teeth for Short-Selling Rules
Judith A. Burns
The Wall Street Journal, 5 March 2008
Securities regulators voted 3-0 to propose a rule intended to crack down on lingering abuses involving so-called naked short sales and failures to deliver shares that have been used in such sales.
THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?
