Tag: DTCC

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Article: In Pursuit of the Naked Short by Alexis Stokes

Article - Academic

In Pursuit of the Naked Short

Alexis Stokes, Texas State University

Journal of Law and Business 5/1 (Spring 2009)

This article explores the origins of naked short-selling litigation; considers
the failures of significant naked short-selling lawsuits in federal court;
surveys the obstacles erected collectively by constitutional standing requirements, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, brokerage firms, death spiral financiers, and the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation; examines the efficacy of Regulation SHO, SEC rule 10b-21, and new FINRA rules; discusses recent state legislation and state court litigation; and identifies non-litigation options to curb naked short-selling. Ultimately, this article seeks to answer the question: If manipulative naked short-selling is more than a mythological scapegoat for
small cap failure, what remedies are, or should be, available?

PDF (62 Pages): Article In Pursuit of the Naked Short

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Article: Geithner – Treasury Nominee Failed to Halt Bond Scam

Article - Media

Geithner – Treasury Nominee Failed to Halt Bond Scam

Lucy Komisar

The Komisar Scoop, 19 January 2009

U.S. Senators at Timothy Geithner’s confirmation hearing for Treasury Secretary Wednesday may want to ask him about a failure to act that is costing the U.S. a lot more than the amount he evaded on taxes.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which he has led since 2003, conducts the operations on Wall Street of the Federal Reserve in Washington, the country’s central bank.

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Article: Gary Weiss, Psychopath & Scaramouch

Article - Academic

Gary Weiss, Psychopath & Scaramouch

Patrick Byrne

Portfolio Magazine cited by DeepCapture, 31 December 2008

For over 10 years Gary Weiss (once a reporter with BusinessWeek, and recently, a columnist with Forbes) has been posting under fake names to confuse, distort, and hijack Usenet groups, stock message boards, and Wikipedia, using social media to prevent the public from understanding criminal activity.

I now turn to Gary Weiss. Last year one of the most prominent journalists on Wall Street warned me, “I’ve known Weiss for years. Be careful. He’s a psychopath.” As you will see, he was neither joking nor exaggerating. I think, however, that Gary is better described as a “Scaramouch.”

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Article: Emails show journalist rigged Wikipedia’s naked shorts

Article - Media

Emails show journalist rigged Wikipedia’s naked shorts

Cade Metz

The Register, 1 October 2008

Two and a half years ago, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne penned an editorial for The Wall Street Journal, warning that widespread stock manipulation schemes – including abusive naked short selling – were threatening the health of America’s financial markets. But it wasn’t published.

“An editor at The Journal asked me to write it, and I told him he wouldn’t be allowed to publish it,” Byrne says. “He insisted that only he controlled what was printed on the editorial page, so I wrote it. Then, after a few days, he got back to me and said ‘It appears I can’t run this or anything else you write.'”

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Web: How Big is the Failure to Deliver/Naked Shorting Problem? Yet More Information

Web

How Big is the Failure to Deliver/Naked Shorting Problem? Yet More Information

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 8 August 2008

How big is the problem? I mean, we hear the now famous $6 billion delivery failure number tossed around from the DTCC, but how accurate is that, really? Is it a complete answer? Is there more information that is knowable?

The answer is, yes, more is knowable.

Access archived page.

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Web: Why The DTCC Is A Prime Mover In Securities Fraud and Naked Shorting

Web

Why The DTCC Is A Prime Mover In Securities Fraud and Naked Shorting

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 5 August 2008

To hear them tell it, they are powerless to deal with NSS, acting more as a vessel through which stock flows. They ignore that they are an SRO, chartered with regulating the business conduct of their owner/members. They pretend that they don’t become the intermediary, and thus the contra-party to the trade to both buyer and seller, and thus in full control of buying in failed trades (if they wanted). They pass self-serving rules that declare they can’t force a failing member to buy in the fail, even though they are chartered with ensuring timely clearance and settlement. And for years they have been claiming that NSS is basically a non-issue, while their press geeks and counsel employ mind-numbing doubletalk.

Access archived page.

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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: The ‘Phantom Shares’ Menace

Article - Media

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

Continue reading “Article: The Economics of Naked Short Selling — The Koch Brothers Approve!”

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Article: Phantom shares

Article - Media

Phantom shares

Jonathan E. Johnson III

The Washington Times, 21 November 2007

In the late 1800s, American financier Daniel Drew refined the art of selling counterfeit shares. Drew’s biographer wrote, “There is no limit to the amount of blank shares a printing press can turn out. White paper is cheap… printer’s ink is also cheap.” Today, it is possible to counterfeit shares electronically — and it happens with such frightening regularity and impunity that Drew would be proud.

Access archived page.

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Testimony: Statement of Robert J. Shapiro The Economic Costs of Tolerating Equity “Failures to Deliver”

Testimony

Statement of Robert J. Shapiro: The Economic Costs of Tolerating Equity “Failures to Deliver”

Robert Shapiro

11 September 2007

I am Robert J. Shapiro. I am chairman of Sonecon, an economic advisory firm in Washington, D.C., and former U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs under President Clinton. I am also a Senior Policy Fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Business and Public Policy and a Senior Fellow of the Progressive Policy Institute. I have served previously as a fellow of Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Brookings Institution.

PDF (3 pages): Statement of Robert J. Shapiro: The Economic Costs of Tolerating Equity “Failures to Deliver”

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Web: Counterfeiting Stock (Primer)

Web

Counterfeiting Stock

Illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation are two of Wall Street’s deep, dark secrets. These practices have been around for decades and have resulted in trillions of dollars being fleeced from the American public by Wall Street. In the process, many emerging companies have been put out of business. This report will explain the magnitude of this problem, how it happens, why it has been covered up and how short sellers attack a company. It will also show how all of the participants; the short hedge funds, the prime brokers and the Depository Trust Clearing Corp. (DTCC) — make unconscionable profits while the fleecing of the small American investor continues unabated.

Who Profits from this Illicit Activity?

The short answer is everyone who participates. Specifically:

  1. The shorts — They win over ninety percent of the time. Their return on investment is enormous because they don’t put any capital up when they sell short — they get cash from the sale delivered to their account. As long as the stock price remains under their short sale price, it is all profit on no investment.
  2. The prime brokers — The shorts need the prime brokers to aid in counterfeiting shares, which is the cornerstone of the fraud. Not only do the prime brokers get sales commissions and interest on margin accounts, they charge the shorts “interest” on borrowed shares. This can be as high as five percent per week. The prime brokers allegedly make eight to ten billion dollars a year from their short stock lend program. The prime brokers also actively short the victim companies, making large trading profits.
  3. The DTC — A significant amount of the counterfeiting occurs at the DTC level. They charge the shorts “interest” on borrowed shares, whether it is a legitimate stock borrow or counterfeit shares, as is the case in a vast majority of shares of a company under attack. The amount of profit that the DTC receives is unknown because it is a private company owned by the prime brokers

Read full primer online.

PDF (14 Pages): Counterfeiting Stock (Primer)

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Article: SEC seen shy on naked shorting

Article - Media

SEC seen shy on naked shorting

Bloomberg, 23 April 2007

Critics of short-selling practices they deem abusive are up in arms over what they say is continued inaction by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
They say that the SEC delayed long-overdue reforms last month when it asked for more comments on proposals to tighten up exemptions to a rule intended to curb illegal “naked” short selling.

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Paper: The Deep Capture Story by Mark Mitchell

Paper

The Story of Deep Capture

By Mark Mitchell, with reporting by the Deep Capture Team

The Columbia School of Journalism is our nation’s finest. They grant the Pulitzer Prize, and their journal, The Columbia Journalism Review, is the profession’s gold standard. CJR reporters are high priests of a decaying temple, tending a flame in a land going dark. In 2006 a CJR editor (a seasoned journalist formerly with Time magazine in Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe, and The Far Eastern Economic Review) called me to discuss suspicions he was forming about the US financial media. I gave him leads but warned, “Chasing this will take you down a rabbit hole with no bottom.” For months he pursued his story against pressure and threats he once described as, “something out of a Hollywood B movie, but unlike the movies, the evil corporations fighting the journalist are not thugs burying toxic waste, they are Wall Street and the financial media itself.” His exposé reveals a circle of corruption enclosing venerable Wall Street banks, shady offshore financiers, and suspiciously compliant reporters at The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, CNBC, and The New York Times. If you ever wonder how reporters react when a journalist investigates them (answer: like white-collar crooks they dodge interviews, lie, and hide behind lawyers), or if financial corruption interests you, then this is for you. It makes Grisham read like a book of bedtime stories, and exposes a scandal that may make Enron look like an afternoon tea.

Introduction By Patrick M. Byrne, Deep Capture Reporter

PDF (69 Pages): Deep Capture Story

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