Tag: Lehman Brothers

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Article: Gary Weiss, Psychopath & Scaramouch

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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: Dick Fuld’s Vendetta Against Short-Sellers—and Goldman Sachs

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Dick Fuld’s Vendetta Against Short-Sellers—and Goldman Sachs

Heidi N. Moore

Wall Street Journal, 7 October 2008

Fuld didn’t let up on his hatred for short-sellers–primarily David Einhorn–even after his company filed for bankruptcy last month, and he believed the shorts were part of a cabal driven by Goldman Sachs Group.

In April, Fuld reported back to general counsel Thomas Russo about a dinner with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson that Lehman had a “huge brand with treasury,” which “loved our capital raise” and, in perhaps an oblique reference to short-sellers, that Treasury “want to kill the bad HFnds + heavily regulate the rest.”

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Article: Fuld says Lehman victim of short sellers

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Fuld says Lehman victim of short sellers

Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Greg Farrell

Financial Times, 2 October 2008

Dick Fuld, Lehman Brothers’ chief executive, broke his silence on the collapse of his bank by telling a congressional committee on Monday that he would go to his grave wondering why the US government opted to save AIG but allowed Lehman to fail.

Three weeks after the 158-year-old firm sought bankruptcy protection – the largest such filing in US history – Mr Fuld blamed Lehman’s collapse on a plague of naked short selling, and said in response to a question that he had no idea why US regulators would judge his company unworthy of a federal bail-out.

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Article: The Naked Short Selling That Toppled Wall Street

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The Naked Short Selling That Toppled Wall Street

Mark Mitchell

DeepCapture, 2 October 2008

The Wall Street Journal stated in a lead editorial last week that the SEC was “reasonable” to “clamp down” on naked short selling. Well, that was progress of sorts, though one wonders how it could have taken all these years for the nation’s most important newspaper to suggest that it might be “reasonable” to put an end to criminal activity that has eviscerated hundreds of companies and destroyed countless lives.

And now that this criminal activity has been implicated in the Humpty Dumptying of our financial system, one grows wistful for the golden age of journalism when editorialists (people working for famous newspapers, not just cyber weirdos) would express a little outrage, demand that heads roll – muster something better than “reasonable” to describe the limpid “clamp down” of an SEC that bows in oily servitude to the very short-sellers who manhandled our markets.

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Web: Naked in Wonderland

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Naked in Wonderland

Patrick Byrne

Forbes via Wayback, 23 September 2008

Recent concerns about short-selling have culminated in a regulatory flurry of emergency orders and amendments. What should be of concern, however, is not short-selling per se: As its devotees frequently remind us, short-selling is a vital and legitimate market activity. What should be of concern are specific types of stock manipulation that cloak themselves within legitimate activities such as shorting, and which, in one way or another, rely upon loopholes in our nation’s system of stock settlement.

“Settlement” is the moment in a stock trade when the seller receives money and the buyer receives stock. Our settlement system has gaping loopholes that allow sellers to sell shares but fail to deliver them. In such cases, the system creates IOUs for shares, and lets those “stock IOUs” circulate in the expectation the seller will soon correct his error. This is harmless–as long as the IOUs are inadvertent, temporary and few.

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Article: Calling Out the Culprits Who Caused the Crisis

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Calling Out the Culprits Who Caused the Crisis

Eric D. Hovde

Washington Post via Wayback, 21 September 2008

Looking for someone to blame for the shambles in U.S. financial markets? As someone who owns both an investment bank and commercial banks, and also runs a hedge fund, I have sat front and center and watched as this mess unfolded. And in my view, there’s no need to look beyond Wall Street — and the halls of power in Washington. The former has created the nightmare by chasing obscene profits, and the latter have allowed it to spread by not practicing the oversight that is the federal government’s responsibility.

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Article: Are Short Sellers to Blame for the Financial Crisis?

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Are Short Sellers to Blame for the Financial Crisis?

Bill Saporito

TIME, 18 September 2008

“It was sad to see Merrill go down as well,” said the voice from inside Lehman Brothers this week as he pondered his own future. “But at least they screwed the shorts. That was good to see.”

It was also, at least in the minds of many angry investment bank CEOs, a long time coming. In the months leading up to the current market chaos, the short sellers have been on the prowl. But now the witch hunt has begun. The shorts nailed Lehman and Bear Stearns by betting that their shares would continue to fall. And now they have Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in their sights, sparking speculation that the last two remaining go-it-alone investment banking giants may have to find a deep-pocketed commercial bank to partner up with.

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Article: New SEC Rules Target ‘Naked’ Short-Selling

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New SEC Rules Target ‘Naked’ Short-Selling

Marcy Gordon

Associated Press, 18 September 2008

Federal regulators yesterday took measures aimed at reining in aggressive forms of short-selling that were blamed in part for the demise of Lehman Brothers and that some feared could be used against other vulnerable companies in a turbulent market.

The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted rules it said would provide permanent protections against abusive “naked” short-selling. Unlike the SEC’s temporary emergency ban this summer covering naked short-selling in the stocks of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and 17 large investment banks, the new rules apply to trading in the broader market.

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Article: SEC reins in ‘naked’ short selling, will check recent trades

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SEC reins in ‘naked’ short selling, will check recent trades

Adam Shell

abc, 18 September 2008

Reacting to concerns that many financial stocks were losing value at an alarming rate due to aggressive bets by short sellers who profit when prices fall, federal regulators on Wednesday acted to stem the abusive practice known as “naked short selling.”

In an ordinary short sale, a short seller borrows stock and sells it, with the hope of buying it back later at a lower price to replace the borrowed shares.

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Article: Banking crisis: Regulators look to curb naked ambition of the short sellers

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Banking crisis: Regulators look to curb naked ambition of the short sellers

Simon Bowers

The Guardian, 17 September 2008

Short sellers in New York and London are facing tough new regulations as market officials attempt to curb what they see as “abusive” attacks on the proper functioning of stock markets — particularly the pricing of banking and financial stocks.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission will tomorrow impose new rules designed to end “price manipulating” through aggressive short selling. Earlier this week the chancellor, Alistair Darling, signalled the Financial Services Authority was also looking at closer policing of certain short-selling activities.

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Article: A good summer for David Einhorn

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A good summer for David Einhorn

Tracy Alloway

Financial Times, 15 September 2008

The outspoken hedgie David Einhorn would have made a killing from his bets against Lehman Bros this summer. He first announced his position in April, when Lehman’s share price was at about $40, saying he had questions about the company’s balance sheet. Lehman stock is now under $4 — giving Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital a 90 per cent return according to some estimates.

Could the role of short-sellers like Einhorn give fresh fodder to the push for a ban on certain forms of short-selling then?

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Article: Banks Fear Next Move by Shorts

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Banks Fear Next Move by Shorts

Louise Story

The New York Times, 14 September 2008

In May, David Einhorn, one of the most vocal short-sellers on Wall Street, made no secret he was betting against Lehman Brothers.

Now, some investors are afraid that fund managers like him will take advantage of the climate of fear stirred up by the troubles of Lehman to target other weak financial firms whose declining share price would bring them rich rewards.

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Article: Complaint Over Auction Rate Securities Market Details Brokers’ Greed

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Complaint Over Auction Rate Securities Market Details Brokers’ Greed

Courthouse News Service, 5 September 2008

In a federal filing replete with lurid examples of document destruction, inside trading, naked greed, lies and market manipulation, the City of Baltimore joins the long list of plaintiffs demanding treble damages from Citigroup, UBS, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Lehman Bros., Wachovia and other banks that conspired to prop up the auction rate securities market, until it collapsed in a $300 billion rubble heap from which investors are still digging out.

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Article: Did It Help to Curb Short Sales?

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Did It Help to Curb Short Sales?

Floyd Norris

The New York Times, 12 August 2008

A rule that made it harder to short some financial stocks and that may have helped raise prices and reduce the volume of shorting in those stocks expired Tuesday, as the Securities and Exchange Commission considers whether to tighten the rules on all short selling.

It may be a coincidence, but the announcement of the rule on July 15 coincided with the bottom of the bear market for financial stocks, which leaped that day and are now well above where they were. And the final day proved to be a very bad day for those shares.

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Article: SEC Moves to Curb Short-Selling

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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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