Timothy Franz Geithner is a former American central banker who served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2013. He was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2009, following service in the Clinton administration. Since March 2014, he has served as president and managing director of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm headquartered in New York City. At the New York Fed, Geithner helped manage crises involving Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the American International Group. Geithner graduated from Dartmouth College (BA) and Johns Hopkins University (MA).
Article: Researchers say market manipulation is destroying traditional safe havens
Article - MediaResearchers say market manipulation is destroying traditional safe havens
Valentina Ruiz Leotaud
Mining.com, 17 May 2020
The University of Sussex Business School released an analysis stating that widespread market turmoil caused by the covid-19 pandemic means regulators have so much on their plates right now that large-scale manipulation of the markets remains below their radar.
In the view of the researchers behind the study, this is the reason why prices of safe-haven assets such as gold and bitcoin are not surging.
Subject: Pascal Bandelier
Subject of InterestPascal Bandelier is the Senior Managing Director, Head of Equities. He joined the Cantor Fitzgerald based in New York. Bandelier was the Head of Equity Execution Trading at Barclays, where he was responsible for the trading, sales trading, desk analyst and low-touch electronic businesses during his tenure at Barclays since 2013. Prior to Barclays, Bandelier was Head of TMT Cash Equity Trading, at Morgan Stanley, and Head of Cash Equity Trading & Risk at Nomura. From 2001 to 2010, Mr. Bandelier worked at Barclays/Lehman Brothers. Bandelier graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor’s degree in economics.
Web: Wikipedia – Naked Short Selling
WebNaked short selling, or naked shorting, is the practice of short-selling a tradable asset of any kind without first borrowing the security or ensuring that the security can be borrowed, as is conventionally done in a short sale. When the seller does not obtain the shares within the required time frame, the result is known as a “failure to deliver” (“FTD”). The transaction generally remains open until the shares are acquired by the seller, or the seller’s broker settles the trade.
Article: How phantom shares on Wall Street threaten U.S. companies and investors
Article - MediaHow phantom shares on Wall Street threaten U.S. companies and investors
Lucy Komisar
The Komisar Scoop, 26 March 2020
As stocks are in free fall, a scam run by the big banks/broker-dealers for the benefit of themselves and their hedge fund clients threatens to worsen the situation of large and small American companies and investors.
It’s when the bank/broker-dealers buy stocks, pocket the money and fail to deliver to clients the shares they are supposed to settle through the national stock clearing house. In another industry that might be called embezzling.
Article: The Truth About Naked Short Selling Commentary
Article - MediaThe Truth About Naked Short Selling: Commentary
John Olagues
Investopedia, 25 June 2019
The basic form of short selling is selling stock that you borrow from an owner and do not own yourself. In essence, you deliver the borrowed shares. Another form is to sell stock that you do not own and are not borrowing from someone. Here you owe the shorted shares to the buyer but “fail to deliver.” This form is called naked short selling.
Web: 5,000 Reasons Why the Overstock.com Saga is Crazier Than Ever
Web5,000 Reasons Why the Overstock.com Saga is Crazier Than Ever
Gary Weiss
gary-weiss.com, 30 January 2018
It’s been a long time since the financial press has cast a skeptical eye on Overstock.com and its CEO, Patrick Byrne, Yet there are multiple reasons to do so. Five thousand to be exact. So I’ve dusted off my blog for an update on my favorite fraudulent stock.
As in all soap operas, its continuing story line is not new: Byrne wants the stock to go up. The stock has a history of manipulation, mainly through cooking the books, resulting in multiple restatements. But it takes an expert to sniff out accounting irregularities. All you need to detect the latest Overstock scam is a working pair of eyes and an Internet connection.
Web: RGM Communications Archive on Naked Short Selling
WebRGM Communications Archive on Naked Short Selling
Accessed via Wayback, 31 January 2001 – 31 March 2014
Listed below are a large number of public information articles and reports detailing the brokerage houses, market makers and the conduct of the main “street” characters engaged in the illegal practice of “naked short selling”, “death-spiral financing”, “failure to delivers (FTDs)” and/or stock fraud. This page is a resource for anyone wishing to educate themselves regarding the depth and breath of these illegal activities. Please note that some of the articles may have been added out of time sequence because they were discovered weeks or months after publication. All the dates are, to the best of our knowledge, when they came into the public domain.
Article: SEC under Schapiro struggles to turn around amid political, financial head winds
Article - MediaSEC under Schapiro struggles to turn around amid political, financial head winds
David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post, 7 October 2011
Mary L. Schapiro took over a discredited SEC in early 2009 and vowed to rebuild it.
She promised tougher enforcement — “war without quarter” on financial fraud. Modernized rules to keep up with Wall Street. And a new, more effective organization.
Her tenure at the federal agency responsible for protecting investors and policing markets offers a Washington lesson: Even when epic crises create a sense of urgency, it is tough to tighten the reins on powerful industries. Dramatic results can prove elusive.
Article: Wall Street’s Naked Swindle
Article - MediaMatt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, 5 April 2010
On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who —made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — “like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets,” according to one financial analyst.
But what’s even crazier is that the bet paid.
Article: Our Watchdogs and the Financial Scandal of the Century
Article - MediaOur Watchdogs and the Financial Scandal of the Century
Mark Mitchell
Deep Capture, 3 April 2009
“Accountability – Integrity – Reliability”
That’s the motto of the Government Accountability Office, and it almost makes you believe that there really is a functioning watchdog – somebody, aside from us Internet loons, to investigate and report on the incompetence and malfeasance that pervade our public institutions.
Certainly, there were high hopes when the GAO began investigating the Securities and Exchange Commission’s oversight of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a black box Wall Street outfit that is at the center of one of the great financial scandals of our era.
Article: How Wall Street Is Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution
Article - MediaHow Wall Street Is Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, 2 April 2009
It’s over – we’re officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline – a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country’s heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
Article: Naked short sales hint fraud in bringing down Lehman
Article - MediaNaked short sales hint fraud in bringing down Lehman
Gary Matsumoto
Bloomberg, 22 March 2009
The biggest bankruptcy in history might have been avoided if Wall Street had been prevented from practicing one of its darkest arts. As Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc struggled to survive last year, as many as 32.8 million shares in the company were sold and not delivered to buyers on time as of September 11, according to data compiled by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bloomberg. That was a more than 57-fold increase over the prior years peak of 567,518 failed trades on July 30. The SEC has linked such so-called fails-to-deliver to naked short selling, a strategy that can be used to manipulate markets. A fail-to-deliver is a trade that doesn’t settle within three days. We had another word for this in Brooklyn, said Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman. The word was fraud.
Report: SEC IG Practices Related to Naked Short Selling Complaints and Referrals
ReportEditor: bottom line up front: SEC does not “do” complaints and considers naked short selling to be legal and generally contributing to “liquidity,”
Practices Related to Naked Short Selling Complaints and Referrals
Naked short selling has been a controversial practice for several years and, while not illegal per se, abusive or manipulative naked short selling (e.g., intentionally failing to borrow and deliver shares sold short in order to drive down the stock price) violates the federal securities laws.
The prior GAO audit found that Enforcement’s system for receiving and tracking referrals from the Self-Regulatory Organizations (SRO) needed improvements and recommended enhancements that would facilitate the monitoring and analysis of trend information and case activities.
Continue reading “Report: SEC IG Practices Related to Naked Short Selling Complaints and Referrals”
Article: In Pursuit of the Naked Short by Alexis Stokes
Article - AcademicAlexis 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