Journalist: Bethany McLean

Journalist, People

Bethany McLean (born December 12, 1970) is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. She is known for her writing on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. Previous assignments include editor-at-large, columnist for Fortune and a contributor to Slate..

McLean started her career as an investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs and joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in 2008.[citation needed] She began as a contributor to “Slate’s” Moneybox column, in 2010 and “The Bulldog” column in “Fortune”. Continue reading “Journalist: Bethany McLean”

Article: Meet Patrick Byrne: Bitcoin Messiah, CEO of Overstock, Scourge of Wall Street

Article - Media, Publications, Uncategorized

Meet Patrick Byrne: Bitcoin Messiah, CEO of Overstock, Scourge of Wall Street

Cade Metz, WIRED, 18 February 2021

The problem with the modern economy, Byrne says, is that it rests on the whims of our government and our big banks, that each has the power to create money that’s backed by nothing but themselves. Thanks to what’s called fractional reserve banking, a bank can take in $10 in deposits, but then loan out $100. The government can make more dollars at any time, instantly reducing the currency’s value. Eventually, he says, laying down a classic libertarian metaphor, this “magic money tree” will come crashing down.

Continue reading “Article: Meet Patrick Byrne: Bitcoin Messiah, CEO of Overstock, Scourge of Wall Street”

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

Article: Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is waging an EXTRAORDINARY CAMPAIGN against short-sellers. The hedge fund guys say he has underperformed. He says they are tools of a sinister “SITH LORD.”

Article - Media, Publications

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is waging an EXTRAORDINARY CAMPAIGN against short-sellers. The hedge fund guys say he has underperformed. He says they are tools of a sinister “SITH LORD.”

BETHANY MCLEAN, 14 November 2005

Even hardened denizens of Wall Street were shocked by a conference call that Patrick Byrne, the CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, held on Aug. 12. “I want to get something off my chest,” Byrne announced. Then he launched into a rant about a “miscreants ball” in which he mentioned hedge funds, journalists, investigators, trial lawyers, the SEC, and even Eliot Spitzer. “I believe there’s been a plan since we were in our teens to destroy our stock, drive it down to $6–$10 … and even a plan for how the company would then get whacked up.” The “designated final owner,” who provided the “orchestration,” was someone Byrne dubbed the “Sith Lord,” a person he refused to identify other than to say that “he’s one of the master criminals from the 1980s.” And that’s just the basic outline. There was more. As Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor, later wrote on his blog, “Never before in the history of Wall Street has a single conference call mentioned the following topics: miscreants, an unnamed Sith Lord he hopes the feds will bury under a prison, gay bathhouses, whether he is gay, does cocaine, both or neither, and an obligatory ‘not that there is anything wrong with that,’ phone taps, phone lines misdirected to Mexico, arrested reporters, payoffs, conspiracies, crooks, egomaniacs, fools, paranoia, which newspapers are shills and for who, payoffs, money laundering, his Irish temper, false identities, threats, intimidation, and private investigators. All in 61 minutes.” Cuban is now short 20,000 shares of Overstock. Continue reading “Article: Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is waging an EXTRAORDINARY CAMPAIGN against short-sellers. The hedge fund guys say he has underperformed. He says they are tools of a sinister “SITH LORD.””

Article: Overstock’s phantom menace

Article - Media

Overstock’s phantom menace

Bethany McLean

CNN Money, 1 November 2005

Patrick Byrne, the 42-year-old CEO of online retail liquidator Overstock.com, is under growing pressure to deliver numbers that prove his business will make money.

Certainly the third-quarter results, announced on Friday, Oct. 28, did not help his cause. Once again Overstock.com (Research) lost far more than analysts were expecting.

Read full article.

THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?