Tag: Bear Stearns

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Article: Bringing Down Bear Began as $1.7 Million of Options

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Bringing Down Bear Began as $1.7 Million of Options

Gary Matsumoto

Bloomberg cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 11 August 2008

On March 11, the day the Federal Reserve attempted to shore up confidence in the credit markets with a $200 billion lending program that for the first time monetized Wall Street’s devalued collateral, somebody else decided Bear Stearns Cos. was going to collapse.

In a gambit with such low odds of success that traders question its legitimacy, someone wagered $1.7 million that Bear Stearns shares would suffer an unprecedented decline within days. Options specialists are convinced that the buyer, or buyers, made a concerted effort to drive the fifth-biggest U.S. securities firm out of business and, in the process, reap a profit of more than $270 million.

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Article: Swatting an Imaginary Fly

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Swatting an Imaginary Fly

Thomas G. Donlan

Barrons, 28 July 2008

The stock market was a safer place last week and the financial system was somewhat less endangered. How do we know? The Securities and Exchange Commission ordained it.

“The SEC’s mission to protect investors, maintain orderly markets and promote capital formation is more important now than it has ever been,” Chairman Christopher Cox declared on July 15, as the commission took action to “stop unlawful manipulation through ‘naked’ short-selling that threatens the stability of financial institutions.”

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Notice: Public Statement by SEC Chairman Naked Short Selling Is One Problem a Slumping Market Shouldn’t Have

Notice

Public Statement by SEC Chairman:
Naked Short Selling Is One Problem a Slumping Market Shouldn’t Have

Chairman Christopher Cox

SEC.gov, 18 July 2008

The demise of IndyMac, coming on the heels of Bear Stearns’ desperate sale to JPMorgan Chase, is a sure sign of the fragility of today’s markets. What’s needed now, more than ever, is reliable information for investors and confidence that trading can be conducted without the illegal influence of manipulation.

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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.”

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Article: Bringing Down Bear Stearns

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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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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

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

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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: Overstock attempts to uncover malicious naked shorts

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Overstock attempts to uncover malicious naked shorts

Keith Hahn

Dealbreaker, 25 April 2007

Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com, is seeking $3.5bn in damages from 10 prime brokers for intentionally manipulating Overstock’s share price through naked shorting. The big names charged are Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley.

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Article: Hedge Fund Hell

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Hedge Fund Hell

Liz Moyer

Forbes cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 28 July 2006

Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings filed a $5 billion lawsuit against SAC Capital, Rocker Partners and a number of other hedge funds, claiming they manipulated the insurance company’s stock, shearing its market cap by one-third.

Earlier this week, the regulatory arm of NYSE Group, fined Daiwa Securities America, Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, Credit Suisse Securities, and Citigroup Global Markets $1.25 million for violations of Regulation SHO–a rule put in place in January 2005 to clamp down on abuses–related to how they handle and monitor short-sale transactions by hedge funds and other clients.

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Article: Lawsuits Accuse “Prime Brokers” of Securities Fraud

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Lawsuits Accuse “Prime Brokers” of Securities Fraud

Wayne Jett

San Gabriel Valley Tribune cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 19 July 2006

Two class-action lawsuits filed in Manhattan federal court in April allege fraud by the world’s largest “prime brokers” in securities lending practices.

Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Banc of America Securities, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, UBS Financial and Bank of New York allegedly charge high fees to lend securities for short selling, but fail to deliver the securities sold short by hedge funds.

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Article: Brokers in an Uproar over Utah Law Cracking Down on “Naked Short Selling”

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Brokers in an Uproar over Utah Law Cracking Down on “Naked Short Selling”

Lincoln Journal Star cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 28 May 2006

A bill approved by the Utah Legislature is causing an angry revolt among Wall Street firms with Utah operations.

The measure cracks down on a stock trading practice defended by some as necessary for orderly markets and assailed by others as easily exploited for stock manipulation.

At issue is short selling, the investors’ practice of borrowing stock and selling it, hoping the share price declines so they can buy cheaper shares, return them to the lender and pocket the difference.

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Web: Suit Against Prime Brokers for Phony Stock Borrow Charges Filed

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Suit Against Prime Brokers for Phony Stock Borrow Charges Filed

Bud Burrell, Chad Bray

Dow Jones Newswires cited by Sanity Check via Wayback, 12 April 2006

An antitrust lawsuit was filed Wednesday against the securities industry’s largest brokerage firms over fees charged as a result of “naked short selling.”

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan by Electronic Trading Group LLC alleges that the major broker-dealers charged unearned fees, commissions or interest on short sales where those broker-dealers failed to borrow or deliver the stock to back a short position.

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Article: Naked Shorting Targeted

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Naked Shorting Targeted

Roddy Boyd

New York Post cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 16 February 2006

Two state securities regulators have issued subpoenas to get at the trading records of Wall Street’s largest firms in a quest to stamp out the controversial practice of naked short-selling, sources said.

Naked shorting — the tactic of selling shares short without properly borrowing them first in order to bet on a stock’s fall — has been a concern of state securities regulators during the past year.

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Web: The Death of a Thousand Cuts

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The Death of a Thousand Cuts

Bud Burrell

Sanity Check via Wayback, 2 February 2006

During my undergraduate studies, I read of an historical method of execution known as the Death of a Thousand Cuts. I have come to see that as a metaphor for how guerrilla wars (like ours) are won and lost.

Whether any of us have fully realized it or not, we have been engaged by an insidious enemy whose sole desire was to steal what was not theirs from others they viewed as their inferiors, rather than earn it legitimately. When a person was executed by the infliction of a thousand small cuts, the pain was enormous, eventually killing the subject by shock and loss of blood, but very, very slowly.

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