Category: Publications

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Article: SEC Moves to Curb Short-Selling

Article - Media

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.,…

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Article: Naked Short Selling — Illegal but Hard to Prove

Article - Media, Publications

Naked Short Selling — Illegal but Hard to Prove

Gregg Greenberg, The Street, 16 July 2008

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — The Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox on Tuesday said the regulator planned to crack down on naked short-selling of Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac. Cox said in a testimony to the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday that the agency will require short-sellers to borrow shares of the two government-sponsored mortgage giants and broker dealers including Lehman Brothers (LEH) , Goldman Sachs (GS) – Get Report, Merrill Lynch (MER) and Morgan Stanley (MS) – Get Report before selling them. The new restrictions are called for under a temporary emergency order that expires in 30 days.

For a refresher on why this is a big deal, here you go.

The traditional method for making money in the stock market is to “buy low and sell high.” But there is another way to profit called “shorting,” where the trick is to “sell high and buy low.” There are strict rules when it comes to shorting stocks, however. One way they are broken is via naked shorting.

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Web: SEC Discovers That Unbridled Naked Short Selling Might Actually Be, Er, Not So Good….

Web

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.

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Article: SEC to limit shorting of Fannie, Freddie, brokers

Article - Media, Publications

SEC to limit shorting of Fannie, Freddie, brokers

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that it will try to limit so-called “naked” short selling of shares in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and big brokerage firms.

The SEC will issue an emergency order stating that all short sales of shares in these companies will be subject to a “pre-borrow” requirement, said Christopher Cox, chairman of the SEC. This will last for 30 days, he said. The SEC is also planning more rule-making focused on short selling in the broader market, Cox said.

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Testimony: Bud Burrell Comments on Amendments to Regulation SHO

Testimony

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.”

Read full testimony.

 

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Article: Bringing Down Bear Stearns

Article - Media

Bringing Down Bear Stearns

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.

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Web: Patrick Byrne Covers Up Ownership of ‘Deep Capture’ Smear Site

Web

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.

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Article: Lawsuit Filed Against Major Financial Institutions Alleging a Conspiracy to Engage in Illegal Naked Short Selling of TASER International Inc. and to Create, Loan and Sell Counterfeit Shares of TASER Stock

Article - Media

Lawsuit Filed Against Major Financial Institutions Alleging a Conspiracy to Engage in Illegal Naked Short Selling of TASER International Inc. and to Create, Loan and Sell Counterfeit Shares of TASER Stock

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.

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Testimony: Robert Shapiro’s Comments on Proposed Naked Short Selling Anti-Fraud Rule, 10b-21

Testimony

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

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Article: The Secret Bailout of J. P. Morgan: How Insider Trading Looted Bear Stearns and the American Taxpayer

Article - Media

The Secret Bailout of J. P. Morgan: How Insider Trading Looted Bear Stearns and the American Taxpayer

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.”

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Article: The ‘Phantom Shares’ Menace

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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

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Article: The Economics of Naked Short Selling — The Koch Brothers Approve!

Paper

The Economics of Naked Short Selling

Christopher Culp and J. B. Heaton

Despite the cries of alarm, we believe that naked short selling
is unlikely to have significant detrimental effects on capital markets.
In this article, we will first examine the relevant economics
and regulation, and then argue that, from an economic perspective,
naked shorting is little different from traditional shorting.

PDF (6 Pages): Paper Economics of Naked Short Selling

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Article: The Naked Truth: Short Selling must be Banned

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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.

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Article: SEC, CFTC Build Ties; Naked Short Selling

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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.

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