Foreign Collusion, Naked Shorting (Counterfeiting) & Money Laundering — All Illicit Wealth
Steven Cohen’s Hedge Fund Being Investigated For Insider Trading: Report
Matthew Goldstein and Svea Herbst, 18 March 2010
The question on the minds of investors, managers and lawyers inside and outside the hedge fund industry today is, who’s next? Continue reading “Article: Steven Cohen’s Hedge Fund Being Investigated For Insider Trading: Report”
SEABRIDGE GOLD (AMEX:SA)… DID YOU KNOW THIS? Dreams of Gold vs Reality of Share Prices
Citron Research, 10 March 2010
Seabridge’s explicitly advertised and promoted investment premise is that it is a “call option” on the future price of gold. Citron believes this premise is utterly false. Aside from all the background noise about stock promotions, Seabridge investors invest in the stock because they hope it will rise in value as the price of gold rises. As the company has told them, it is a levered play on gold. Continue reading “Article: SEABRIDGE GOLD (AMEX:SA)… DID YOU KNOW THIS? Dreams of Gold vs Reality of Share Prices”
LARRY FINK’S $12 TRILLION SHADOW
SUZANNA ANDREWS, 02 March 2010
Though few Americans know his name, Larry Fink may be the most powerful man in the post-bailout economy. His giant BlackRock money-management firm controls or monitors more than $12 trillion worldwide—including the balance sheets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the toxic A.I.G. and Bear Stearns assets taken over by the U.S. government last year. How did Fink rebound from a humiliating failure to become the financial fulcrum of Washington and Wall Street? Through a series of interviews, the author probes his role in the crisis, his unique risk-assessment system, and the growing concern he inspires. Continue reading “Article: LARRY FINK’S $12 TRILLION SHADOW”
Mark Mitchell
DeepCapture, 18 February 2010
You don’t hear much about it, but the March 2007 bankruptcy of a company called New Century Financial was arguably one of the most important events leading up to the financial crisis that nearly caused a second Great Depression.
It was the demise of New Century, then the nation’s second largest mortgage lender, that triggered the collapse of the market for collateralized debt obligations. And it was the collapse in the value of collateralized debt obligations (a majority of which contained New Century mortgages) that hobbled a number of big financial firms. Once hobbled, the likes of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were ripe targets for unscrupulous hedge fund managers who amplified their problems by spreading exaggerated rumors while bombarding them with illegal naked short selling.
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, 17 February 2010
On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.
AtriCure, Inc. to Pay U.S. $3.76 Million to Resolve Medicare Fraud Allegations
Biospace, 03 February 2010
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Atricure Inc., a medical device manufacturer, has agreed to pay the United States $3.76 million to resolve civil claims in connection with the alleged promotion of its surgical ablation devices, the Justice Department announced today. Surgical ablation devices use focused energy to create controlled lesions or scar tissue on a patient’s heart or other organs.
“This settlement reflects our commitment to enforce the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and protect Medicare from the improper marketing practices of Atricure and other medical device manufacturers,” said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. “We will continue to work with our partners at the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General’s Office and the FDA Office of Chief Counsel to preserve the integrity of our public health programs.”
Continue reading “Article: AtriCure, Inc. to Pay U.S. $3.76 Million to Resolve Medicare Fraud Allegations”
German cabinet extends ban on naked short selling
Sam Edmonds, 02 February 2010
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet has approved a draft law widening the government’s recent temporary ban on the short sale of certain types of shares – a practice known as naked short-selling. Continue reading “Article: German cabinet extends ban on naked short selling”
Testimony Concerning the State of the Financial Crisis
Mary L. Schapiro
SEC, 14 January 2010
I believe the work of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) is essential to helping policymakers and the public better understand the causes of the recent financial crisis and build a better regulatory structure. Indeed, just over seventy-five years ago, a similar Congressional committee was tasked with investigating the causes of the stock market crash of 1929. The hearings of that committee led by Ferdinand Pecora uncovered widespread fraud and abuse on Wall Street, including self-dealing and market manipulation among investment banks and their securities affiliates. The public airing of this abuse galvanized support for legislation that created the Securities and Exchange Commission in July 1934. Based on lessons learned from the Pecora investigation, Congress passed laws premised on the need to protect investors by requiring disclosure of material information and outlawing deceptive practices in the sale of securities.
PDF (29 pages): Testimony Concerning the State of the Financial Crisis
Max Abelson
Observer, 13 January 2010
Last year, a 38-year-old named Judd Bagley found himself on Facebook, looking at the friend lists of reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Barron’s and Reuters, and of wildly important hedge fund managers like Dan Loeb and David Einhorn.
Eventually creating a fake account, one person led to another. These people were all friends, he saw, and their friends were friends, too. A new chapter of a crusade was born.
Former Merrill Lynch official settles Enron allegations
Nick Snow
OGJ, 11 January 2010
Daniel H. Bayly, Merrill Lynch & Co.’s (ML) former global head of investment banking, settled civil charges of aiding and abetting the Enron Corp. fraud, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced.
SEC said US District Court in Houston entered a final judgment on Dec. 31, 2009, ordering Bayly, who neither admitted nor denied SEC’s allegations, to pay $301,000 for deposit in the commission’s Enron Fair Fund and to not serve as an officer or director of a publicly traded company for 5 years. He also was enjoined from violating federal antifraud provisions and from aiding and abetting violations of the periodic reporting, books-and-records, and internal control provisions, SEC said.
These Defendants, acting in the course and scope of their employment by the United States of America as duly authorized Commissioners of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal agency, through their acts and omissions knowingly, consciously, wrongly, without compensation and without due process of law have effected a taking of property from each of the named Plaintiffs and all who are similarly situated.
PDF (18 Pages): CMKM Lawsuit Against the SEC 9 January 2010
New Evidence Raises Questions About Kingsford Capital – Links To TheStreet.com Inc., Others
Mark Mitchell
Market Rap, 7 January 2010
A blog published by the University of North Carolina School of Journalism reported recently that Steve Cohen of hedge fund SAC Capital managed to kill a story by Reuters reporter Matt Goldstein. It seems that Goldstein was going to shed some light on allegations that Cohen engaged in insider trading. Cohen didn’t like that, and got in touch with Goldstein’s superiors.
Credit Suisse Hit with $24 Billion Fraud Lawsuit
Toby Tobin
GoToby, 7 January 2010
January 6, 2010 – Credit Suisse Bank and real estate service firm Cushman & Wakefield defrauded developers and property owners at four luxury resorts; Ginn sur Mer (Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas), Lake Las Vegas, Tamarack (Tamarac/Donnelly, Idaho), and Yellowstone Club (Montana), according to a lawsuit filed Sunday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho. Plaintiffs, led by L.J. Gibson and Beau Blixseth seek $24 billion, including $16 billion in punitive damages.
This book is a non-fiction, painfully true account of an American whistle blower whose silencing was attempted by conflicted and vengeful bureaucrats. This work presents oversights within the regulatory Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), The U.S. Justice Department, and The Bureau of Prisons penal systems (BOP); as an innocent former US Marine and 60 year old grandfather is actually placed in high security solitary confinement for trying to warn the country of the impending financial crisis (now current, admitted, acknowledged, and publicized) and how it could have been prevented.
Credit Suisse Is Accused of Defrauding Investors in 4 Resorts
Jim Robbins
New York Times, 4 January 2010
Investors at four high-end resorts have filed a class-action lawsuit against Credit Suisse and the real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield, contending that they conspired to inflate the value of the properties so they could take them over.
The suit, outlined in an 84-page complaint filed Sunday in federal court in Boise, Idaho, details what it calls a sweeping loan-to-own scheme. Credit Suisse, according to the complaint, raked in huge fees on loans against the properties, which it syndicated and sold to hedge fund managers. If the resorts could not pay back the hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, based on the inflated values, Credit Suisse could either assume ownership as the agent for the creditors or sell the resorts.
THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?
