Bud Burrell's Front and Center
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bburrell |
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1/10/2006 6:05 PM |
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Mr. Bud Burrell - Industry authority, expert, Wall Street veteran. Love him or hate him, you will always know where he stands - his no-holds-barred style and frank honesty make his blogs a must read, from one of the originals. View his landmark correspondences in The Bud Files section of this website. |
By bburrell on
3/13/2010 8:58 AM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
With the release of the CNBC CYA piece yesterday on Anthony Elgindy, the convicted felon, the exodus of his journalist supporters and apologists stage left has not only continued, but expanded. For over 10 years, this coterie of killer clowns has relentlessly attacked victims of illegal short selling manipulation with every slander imaginable. Then, in a single one hour piece, their world came crashing down, along with their co-conspirators at the regulatory agencies who made hay by attacking criminals and the defenseless in the name of hanging the easiest low hanging scalps from their belt.
The CNBC segment of the “American Greed” series, titled “Mad Max on Wall Street” was laughable in its defense of many of Elgindy’s supporters. While it attacked Elgindy personally, it left out little bites like his prior conviction for felony insurance fraud in Dallas before he appeared in San Diego.
Elgindy was a former pump and dump broker for the notorious Blinder, Robinson (known in the trade by the not so affectionate name “Blind ‘em and Rob ‘em”) in Denver, before he moved on to another bucket shop where the commissions were greater in Dallas. When he saw both these firms go under to regulatory and criminal findings, he astutely morphed himself into a short seller, one who postured himself as being only concerned with outing criminal pump and dump stocks like he had previously lived off of.
He opened a site called Anthony@investigations, on the Silicon Investor Board, which he morphed into Anthony@Pacific as he gained more traction and subscribers to his shorting service. He and his cohort would hit some 4000 companies, pretty much without discrimination, wrecking more than 2200. Many deserved such attention, but as many more did not. When Elgindy put his pack of wild dogs on a small company, they would be unable to find the resouces to defend themselves.
Milberg, Weiss would sue for the companies’ D&O Insurance policies if they had any, the SEC would be “tipped” about the fraud at the company (whether it existed or not), paid bashers would bury message boards with slanders of everything about the companies, legitimate business opportunities of the target companies would be eviscerated by wholesale attacks on the potential business partners, the SEC would open investigations on the company, its management, its financiers, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. By involving an FBI agent and his friends, Elgindy would gain access to insider information that could be used in an adversarial way against the companies. This last decision had more to do with the 11 year sentence to prison he received than anything else he did.
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By bburrell on
3/12/2010 8:07 PM
From “Front and Center”, By Bud Burrell
Today, the National Inflation Association made the momentous announcement of the US having passed a critical “Tipping Point”, that being the level at which if 100% of all income were taxed from payers, it would not cover the expenditures of the US Government. If you can’t understand what this means, then as a citizen, you damned well better learn. We have gone over the edge of a precipice that can’t be easily recovered. The futures of our currency and of the currencies of the World are in acute jeopardy that would predict the probability of an unprecedented collapse of our global economy. This collapse comes at a time when, as never before in American history, our national system of government and laws are imploding.
I was asked today what solutions I could see for the future and what could the individual do to protect themselves against the potential collapse. First, I don’t see a solution for the individual. All we can do is reduce the size of Government and the level of our expenditures and taxation immediately. The option is the seizure of our country’s financial assets, the decimation of our real estate markets both residential and commercial, the liquidation of our insurance industry, and worse.
Absent draconian changes in our way of life, I can see nothing to repair the institutional damage already done, and which is being magnified every day. Jobs creation was a hope a year ago, but I doubt it would be of any value now. Busting the energy paradigm with a new source of plentiful and cheap energy could be on the wish list, but it better happen soon. Fanciful pleadings that we trust our Government to correct, and to re-adjust are folly. We need action now, not a year from now, not in 2012, but now.
The hardest part of the question with the functions of our Government is to determine what isn’t broken beyond repair. Maybe the only elements of our national model that aren’t completely broken are the military and the local police functions.
Our Courts are a disaster, our legal system is corrupted beyond imagination, and our Government is almost incompetent at every level.
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By bburrell on
3/7/2010 8:13 PM
--From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell--
I was informed this evening that the CNBC Series “American Greed” will air a 2 hour special on the notorious short seller and convicted felon Amir “Anthony” Elgindy. Elgindy was the operator of the most notorious criminal short selling syndicate of the last decade, known by several names, including “Anthony@Pacific”, etc. After being arrested in early 2002, and being released on bail, Elgindy was caught trying to fly from New York’s Islip Airport back to San Diego, in possession of $40,000 in cash, and more in precious jewelry, along with phony passports with different names on them from his own.
While Elgindy was operating, he attacked thousands of companies, 2200 plus, with impunity and aggressive arrogance. Working with lawyers specializing in suits for Directors and Officers liability insurance, paid bashers, pay for play journalists, NASD (now FINRA) boiler room broker-dealers, PIPES financiers, bloggers and hedge funds short sellers to destroy and preferably bankrupt his target companies.
His syndicate eventually grew to over 650 members, including many of the biggest hedge funds, law firms and more, all in turn supported by the SEC, FINRA, and other regulators. His activities attracted the partnerships of Milberg, Weiss, then the most successful law firm in the country, on both of the US Coasts, the SEC, FINRA, the DOJ, and many more, including firms specializing in producing negative research reports on companies his syndicate had targeted for short selling raids.
The tactics he employed were classic manipulation. Most frequently his network would “tip off” him to a potential company to be targeted, particularly where there was sufficient market capitalization to make it very, very profitable to rip them off. He would generally establish his position, then go out with his alert to his subscribers describing what he thought the shorting opportunity was, with them acting in concert with him to simply overload the market with supply of stock, thereby driving the Company’s stock into the ground. With their stock suppressed, financing became irrationally expensive and dilutive. More often than not, the companies would have to throw in the towel, selling out at an enormous discount, deregistering or bankrupting.
Elgindy loved to see his targets bankrupt. He knew from some of the more arcane rules of FASB’s GAAP accounting that if a short seller’s target deregistered or bankrupted, they didn’t have to cover their short sale. That made the proceeds of their short sale tax free, since there would be no revenue recognition event.
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By bburrell on
3/3/2010 10:53 PM
--From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell--
This week, Certified Fraud Examiner Harry Markopolos announced the release of his new book, “No One Would Listen”, about the complete stonewall he hit with US Government Regulators including the SEC and FINRA. He told his story in his typical low key and very professional manner, making his message all the more devastating.
I am sure that SEC, FINRA and other officials to whom he reported his findings on the scope of the Madoff fraud felt footfalls on their graves.
Starting with CNBC, and then going to Matt Lauer, CNN and FOX News, he recounted his story of his discovery of the Madoff fraud, which had been ongoing for many years, when he examined the claimed performance of Madoff’s split strike price conversion strategy, and his quick realization that he claimed performance that would have simply been impossible to produce. He recited the sequence of events that led him to conclude within 30 minutes that Madoff was a fraud. It is where it went from there that no one except people who had faced similar risks could imagine.
I come from an extensive derivative background and I have known everything about the history of conversions and reverse conversions for decades, literally. Like Mr. Markopolos, I had a serious math background, which had been the foundation of my move into the derivatives industry well over 33 years ago. I maintained many of my relationships in the industry as I moved into other areas later in my career, but I found myself drawn back into the space by the short selling scandal.
I knew what I had found in the illegal short selling manipulation scandal, enormous fraud involving all forms of organized crime globally. What Markopolos did was to confirm that his research led him down the very same rabbit holes, to the same slimy criminals. Slimy is not the right word though, slick and ruthless are better.
I was made more than a bit uncomfortable when he began to describe how a French nobleman had exposed him to contacts in Europe who warned him that Madoff was involved with serious organized crime, from the Red Mafiya, to the Columbian Drug Cartels, the Israeli Mob, and more. They didn’t hesitate to warn him that if he persisted, he would be at real personal physical risk, along with his family. I was told the same thing as I became more visible, and I was advised to go public as my only form of protection.
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By bburrell on
2/14/2010 8:02 PM
--From “Front and Center”, by C. Austin Burrell--
The last century has seen the global population push past 6 Billion almost without notice or concern. With no focus of leaders of the World on population concerns except from China, current growth rates of population will push global population of the World towards 12 Billion by the year 2050. This projection could give or take a few percentage points absent a global war or other natural disaster that might materially alter the final number.
What sort of World will we live in if this isn’t prevented? Clean water is already becoming a global crisis. Along with this shortage of clean water for consumption and irrigation, there is growing crisis of arable land suitable for production of grains and other vegetable staples, one that increases in severity every single year. 60% of the top soil of the Central Midwestern United States has been depleted by improper and inefficient use and irrigation. The Imperial and Central Valleys of California are being converted to Mesopotamian Desert acreage faster than the conversion of the ancient fertile crescent that once existed between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq.
The Sierra Club wrote a book over 20 years ago titled “Cadillac Desert” about the gross mismanagement of water resources in the fourteen Western States of the US that now reads like prophesy.
What other shortages are extant or projected?
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By bburrell on
1/30/2010 3:06 PM
--From “Front and Center”, by C. Austin Burrell--
A week ago Friday, Glenn Beck produced his first documentary, and it was technically and professionally outstanding. It recorded over 4 Million viewers, the largest number ever recorded for a Cable documentary in a traditional News time slot. This documentary was intended to show the monstrous human price of the liberal secular progressive movement in the 20th Century, stimulated by the works of Marx and Engels. It was a staggering dismissal of the true control motives of liberal secular progressives in the forms of the revolutions and Governments produced by Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro and Che and the 200 Million plus lives they took in unprecedented wholesale murder to achieve their political objectives.
The first effective point made in the presentation was that the word liberal was co-opted by leftist radicals, in that the people who led our revolution were self described liberals in their time. Conversely, the progressive movement that came out of the socialist thinking of Marx and Engels needed credibility, and they took this word to their breast to legitimize their existence.
In fact, as Beck demonstrated, beginning with Marx, progressives were racist savages.The true story of the agendas of hard left liberal secular progressives was demonstrated by Trotsky (who lived in Brooklyn under the name of Leon Bronstein before returning to Russia) in the Russian Communist Revolution of 1917. Some 40,000 active Communists successfully mounted a revolution that took over a country of 100 Million people, and stretched across 8 time zones. How they did that is its own story, but what they did after they seized control is the true story.
First under Lenin, and then under the brutal dictator Stalin, the Communists initiated programs of mass annihilation of anyone who stood in their way, beginning with the slaughter of the White Russians, which essentially wiped them out as a racial segment. The concentration on the annihilation of White Russians extended into foreign countries, with Stalin ordering the assassination of White Russians who had escaped his net, the last of which was in 1952. He bragged of the slaughter of 20 million White Russians later in his rule.
Next was Stalin’s collectivization of Russian farms, with a particularly savage focus on the bread basket State of the Ukraine, with its incredibly productive independent grain farmers, the “Kulaks”. In the year of 1932, to accelerate the collective farming plan, Stalin simply chose starve to death 10 Million Ukrainians to death in an unprecedented slaughter to that date, so vicious it was given a name, the “Holomador”.
I heard these stories from children of Ukrainians lucky enough to escape to the US, and from a second generation Ukrainian-Canadian whose father lived through this nightmare as a child. This was the same country whose nationals welcomed the arrival of German troops as liberator in World War II, only to be slaughtered again in horrific numbers, over 5 to 8 Million murdered.
In 1936, Stalin began the purges of the Russian military, killing without mercy, all but wiping out the officer corps of the Russian Army. In a little over 2 years, 5 million would die in Stalin’s attempt to “freshen” and “cleanse” the Communist revolution. When he was through, only one regimental commanding field grade officer was said to have survived. But he didn’t stop there.
Stalin was an equal opportunity monster, killing anyone who blinked at his political agenda and plans for a Soviet Socialist State. He slaughtered millions of Armenians, his own fellow Georgians, Turkestans, Poles, Kurds and millions more, some 60 Million all told before World War II started.
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By bburrell on
1/28/2010 8:18 PM
-From “Front and Center”, by C. Austin Burrell-
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." James Madison, in his speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788.
Since this country’s very inception, there has been a steady attack on the individual freedoms as delineated in the Bill of Rights, and of our Constitution as a foundational document. This attack has accelerated in the 20th Century, a period during which leftist radicals, greedy bankers, and revolutionary socialists have chipped away at the very core of our Constitution, to include wholesale infringements of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th Amendments, among others. The objective of these infringements has been to dramatically expand the power of our Federal Government, while reducing and limiting not only individual rights, but also the rights and privileges of States.
Beginning with the concepts of Marx and Engels, our Country moved on to establish in 1913 a central bank with total control of our currency and banking, set up as a private entity/enterprise owned and controlled now by the World’s banks and investment banks, and US only secondarily. They also chose 1913 to institute a personal income tax in individual US citizens, an act so unconstitutional, there is today no legal affirmation of its right to be exacted.
Generally, those favoring a more powerful central government and many socialist agendas have moved very gradually, expanding their powers with under-handed dealing and misdirection. A simple example is the institution of the Social Security program in the 1930’s. Originally, the tax was to be imposed only at a rate of 1% of income up to $1400, and participation was strictly voluntary. In these years, the life expectancy of an American averaged around 54 to 56 years, and this program did not begin to payout benefits until age 65, which most citizens did not make it to.
When instituted, politicians then in power denied any contingent risk in these numbers, just as they had discounted the real potential impact of a minimal personal income and estate tax in 1913. Everyone knows how both of these programs have worked out, exploding past any actuarial tables ever compiled at the times, always relentless in the failure of promises of future costs.
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By bburrell on
1/26/2010 2:27 PM
From “Front and Center”, by C. Austin Burrell I have watched the conduct of a figurative nest of journalists/bloggers/bashers/critics in a series of attacks on the targets of short raids many times over the past 15 years. The questions that never seem to be answered are the most basic? How do these parties pay their bills? Who is paid or not paid to the benefit of what organization, entity, or agency? If you think so many man hours could be devoted completely pro bono to analysis of mostly small companies balance sheets and management, I encourage you to look deeper.
I have watched the unrelenting attacks against companies who have dared to challenge these self-described vermin in the Courts. Without exception, the same attackers’ names appear repeatedly in such a consistent pattern that it cannot be a random occurrence. I have seen the work of internet sleuths tracking the patterns of relationships between these journalists and notorious market manipulators, including everyone from major hedge funds, to a community of professional journalists, unpaid web site and message board bloggers, compensated bashers, criminal rigged research organizations, and eventually to the federal agencies we depend on for oversight of our markets and the manipulators to regularly savage our assets.
The question “Quo Bene?” is older than our society. Thousands of years ago, corruption was cited that was tracked back to its sources by the simple method of looking first at who benefitted from the acts of corruption. This was true from Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, to modern times. The “contracts” between these parties track to not only involved cash considerations, but also to professional support, school access for related parties, legal partnerships, and more. Predation consumes assets as its cost of doing business, and those assets must come from some source.
Why haven’t those in charge asked these questions? Indeed, the SEC and FINRA have protected their related external supporting parties to this predation from any fair, open and balanced inquiry hundreds of times over the past decade. Why is this so?
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By bburrell on
1/13/2010 8:48 PM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
Last week, in a speech given in West Palm Beach, Attorney General Holder announced the pendency of 5000 indictments by the Department of Justice of individuals linked to financial institution fraud as part of an overall targeting of market manipulators and cheaters across the Board. His speech did not specify for the audience the type of targets the DOJ was focusing on, leaving open the most important questions about such an announcement. Who is being indicted by type, for what kind of specific misconduct?
I have devoted thousands of man hours over ten years to try and work with and within the legal system of the United States to get its principals to focus on the rape of the American investors stealing literally trillions of dollars, through conduct that could only be identified legally as sedition. Ten of thousands of securities issued by thousands of legal issuers have been manipulated, counterfeited, and stolen in virtually every form of security bought and sold in every market in the World. I pointed out to many of the responsible government oversight and regulatory officials that various tactics were being strategically employed to launder money for the purpose of stealing securities and evading taxes.
I broke this down into a single memo of eight bullet points for not only these parties but also for numerous journalists, lawyers, victims, government officials and more, with a uniform silence from them with only a handful of exceptions. The summation of this memo was that criminals both domestic and global were tactically manipulating all forms of assets, engaging in various forms of counterfeiting facilitated by vested public interests, in a huge global conspiracy lined inextricably to all forms of organized crime, again, done strategically to launder US assets into foreign accounts for the purpose of evading all forms of taxes, both legitimate and illegitimate.
The enormous size of the thefts here (in the Trillions of dollars) threatens US national security, and global stability. We have seen the dollar implode, retirement accounts savaged, and major institutions brought to their knees and worse, much worse in many cases. These thefts have been implicated in the destruction of investor confidence, and there is no form of security that has not been impacted, from stocks and bonds, currencies, physical and forward commodities, agencies, to commodities, and more. These same thefts could never have been executed except with the wholesale cooperation of not just hedge funds, and investment banks, but only with the implicit cooperation, support and protection of every form of financial service monopoly involved in trading, clearance and settlement of securities globally in all forms of assets along with the major international money center banks, a pliant press, and a corrupt research industry perforated by criminal interests who pay top price for the purchase or sale of research for securities they specialize in. Oversight provided by our US Government branches and agencies hasn’t been deficient, it has been non-existent, a canard by every perspective.
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By bburrell on
1/10/2010 12:07 PM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
“Machine” politics have not always been with us in this country, but rather, they are a product of the exclusionary practices directed at particular emigrant populations in the 1800’s. For those wanting a better understanding of how political machines came into existence in this country, there is probably no more succinct explanation than that contained in the third book in the now legendary Daniel Boorstin trilogy “The Americans”, The Democratic Experience, now over 35 years old. Boorstin had not only an extraordinary intellectual bandwidth , he had the ability to synthesize extremely complex topics in highly literate prose, including most certainly history and its patterns as well as any writer in US history. Hardly could anyone have sustained his own personal literary output to sync with the job he had and mastered as the Librarian of Congress.
History has been an interest of mine extending back to my childhood, raised in a Christian home where the Bible was seen as an historical document. One early influence on my reading was works done by the classists, including Homer, Ceasar, and more, to modern biography and history done by authors including Manchester, Anthony Cave Brown, Churchill, Joseph Campbell and more. Hardly any of these many authors would disagree with the assertion of Nietzsche that “The Past is Prologue”.
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By bburrell on
1/3/2010 1:21 PM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
Our political process has degenerated into a hardened two party system, the objective of which can only be the control of the electorate. The leaders of this system have become the worst kind of elitists, concerned only with furthering their own power, as opposed to protecting this nation from its enemies, both foreign and domestic. The latest of the many affronts to the US citizens was the decision by our legislative bodies to exempt them from being subject to the new “Health Care Reform Act” which oversteps their Constitutional authority according to my best analytical sources.
The most disgusting element of the proposed “Health Care Reform Act” is that our legislators have chosen to exclude themselves from living under the same system they would unilaterally impose on the American People. This sort of effrontery has brought down other governments in the past, and before this is over, it may well have the same effect here.
The two party system preached by our politicians is designed to wrap broad controls over the electorate irrespective if their political views. In most cases, each party is controlled by fringe elements whose principal concern is the continued propagation of their own power, which can only occur when the largest unit of American voters shifts support between the parties at elections. The Republican Party is generally identified with conservative positions which used to be limited government, rational fiscal and monetary policy, and protection of individual rights. The Democratic Party’s posture is that the individual cannot provide for himself except with the help of big Government, at the price of losing some unimportant liberties that obstruct the Government’s role as the big brother to the people.
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By bburrell on
12/23/2009 10:03 AM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
On a quiet weekend when I expected little external stimulation other than another historical lesson from the pen of the now legendary former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin, from his book “The Americans”, I was presented a lesson in the gross monetary economics of both the collapse of the dollar since 1913, and an explosion in inflation in dollar terms since the same 1913. I have fallen into a pattern of rarely being provoked to comment by two or three small pieces of data, but this has become something I could not drop. Much was happening in the United States in 1913 or thereabouts, beginning with the extra-Constitutional establishment of the Federal Reserve, and the beginning of the march towards what today has become a confiscatory Personal Income Tax, which was also outside the provisions of the Constitution.
What many Americans fail to realize was that there was an explosion of discoveries in the Oil and Gas arena at this time, which drove not only the entire US economy into a boom post WW I. It would support the explosion of the internal combustion engines applications which particularly focused on cars and trucks, and in the process, an economic dynamic for technical innovation that would be repeated in the consecutive booms that began with Western range land farming in the 1860’s, and ended most recently in the Internet Boom.
Between 1776 and 1913, the Dollar had appreciated in value by a solid but not flashy 11%, and the currency had earned respect Worldwide. This was the era of the economic dominance of the British Empire, which was ultimately hammered to dust by its losses of its best and brightest beginning in the insane trench warfare of WW I. We in the US had booms and busts in the 1800’s, but if anything, it was controlled with a couple of key exceptions from becoming something that would be used by Government in such a manner that would destroy its core residual value.
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By bburrell on
12/17/2009 5:34 PM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
Our Congressional majority, which is increasingly unbalanced, now seeks to impose an unconstitutional Health Care Reform Act that would be the first step towards Universal Health Care, which by any other name will be socialized medicine. With no evidence it works anywhere else, they are being maniacally driven to this goal, irrespective of the desires of the American people now standing at 60% opposed and 33% in favor of what has come to be called Obamacare. Indeed, the American people are being roundly ignored by those they chose to lead them.
The hard left now has a firm grip on this administration’s policies, having had it most extreme leaders penetrate the highest levels of control of core agencies and programs. Amorality rules this world, in which everything is in play, to include outright bribery and legislative corruption and manipulation. Anyone speaking out against the continuing attack on the Constitution’s very foundations is called a radical, a right wing wing-nut, irrational, prejudiced, greedy, and corrupt.
There have been threats that if health care reform is not put in place, the US Government will be bankrupted. I ask each of you to tell me by what, and in what sequence. Our first attempts at socialized medicine have been Medicare and Medicaid, both unfiled bankruptcies. Social Security is now upside down, with forecasts that it will bankrupt as early as 2012, down from a previous forecast of 2027. Which will collapse first?
Every single program the US Government has initiated of a socialist character has failed to ever adhere to the original charter creating it. How many failed efforts have the American people got to be confronted with before they realize they are suckers for the politicians. These self-same politicians of both parties generally don’t have much of an ethical problem: They have no ethics; therefore, they have no problem.
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By bburrell on
12/9/2009 2:13 PM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
The country is being targeted by a skillful, pervasive, amoral and well-funded program of “disinformatzia” (disinformation) using the Internet in particular as a media platform for their highly targeted plans. The intention of the controllers of this program is to create divisions and distrust across the political spectrum, with a particular focus on conservatives, Judeo-Christians, capitalists, and their supporters. Their goal is to disrupt confidence in the judgment, integrity, competency, and trustworthiness of our current Government.
What could they have as an end game? I would assert it is an eventual takeover of our political system, in order to replace it with a socialist regime run by the most aggressive secular progressives, who are elitists with a Marxist and atheist view of the World. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the detachment of the Eastern Bloc, one would have to be blind, deaf and dumb to have concluded that this implosion of their Communist systems on every level was anything but a terminal condemnation of Marxist ideas. But, to the surprise of all, the place where these concepts most appear to be alive and well are in the very centers of Western thought.
I see an enormous amount of material from virtually every source imaginable, and I have seen a pattern emerge from many of the postings I have researched. At what has to be an enormous expense involving thousands of pairs of hands, stories are woven together which are based on 80% or more fact, and 20% manipulation of concerns. They are only successful because they are leveraging a ground swell of distrust of our financial system, our legal system, our political system, and last but no least, our own Government.
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By bburrell on
12/1/2009 9:07 PM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
Journalist Mark Mitchell’s article today announced a prospective investigation by the SEC IG of SEC Staff conduct of investigations into naked short selling, in particular with respect to a specific case specifically, and with regard to many cases generally. The SEC staff has been guilty of the most appalling conduct on the illegal shorting scandal for literally years now, from attacking victims, to rigging studies used to justify elimination of wholesale abuses by hedge funds and broker dealers, to taking numerous positions justifying virtually any kind of conduct by anyone, and blocking any effective enforcement of any rules of substance.
The financial foundation of this country is inextricably linked to the basic safety and well being of the people. As the principal regulator of US financial markets, and the most likely aspirant to the role of Chief Financial Regulator of the US Government, the SEC has demonstrated disgraceful favoritism to the most powerful financial entities to the exclusion of providing any protection to small enterprise. If an award could be conceived and granted to that agency of the US Government doing the most damage to our economy and national security, the SEC would have to be the winner hands down walking away from all others for two decades now.
There is probably a dramatic shortage of military veterans in the SEC if their record of not honoring their oath of office is seen as any indication. Indeed, I challenge anyone to show me any federal agency with a more appalling and disgraceful record unless it is the Congress itself. The officials of the SEC have been nowhere in stopping the most egregious and shameful abuses of our financial system, no matter what you look at. They have been a day late and a dollar short at every turn, engaging in the most hideous cover-ups of their incompetence, venality and malfeasance at every opportunity.
What they don’t realize is that they have left the system in shambles, with a wrecked dollar about to hyper-inflate to the moon, as signaled by the run up in the price of Gold to a new record. If anyone at the SEC had ever actually had to earn a living in the securities industry, they might understand what havoc their arrogance and CYA behavior has wrought. I know of no sophisticated investor globally who thinks our markets are anything more than a badly rigged casino emulation, one that always savages the very companies and investors that all markets rely on, but most especially those that were the backbone of our economy. They are so stupid and dangerous, they would take credit for the current run up in the Dow, not realizing what that signals, a product of inflationary fears, and a collapsing dollar. I am reminded of the great line that “Pride Goeth Before the Fall.” What I can’t allow myself to tolerate is the fact that the current SEC staff are about as effective as deckhands on the Titanic.
The history of this country has been one of reacting to a crisis, rather than paying less when it would have been able to avoid it entirely. The SEC has lost sight of why it exists, and who it is mandated to protect, the individual investor. If I could force them into the role of managing their own exorbitant retirements, most would be doomed to bankruptcy most certainly. They don’t deserve the protection of bankruptcy. This current morass they have facilitated through arrogance, greed and venality has taken this country into the worst financial and national security crisis in more than a century.
I mentioned the rigged Casino concept above. Not even the most criminal and greedy of the Las Vegas casino operators have ever caused or allowed so much to be stolen by so many. They are sharp enough to realize that they need winners too, to keep the suckers coming. The SEC is obviously over its head when it comes to concepts like this. They have allowed thousands of small public companies to be raped along with their investors, treating them like criminals when they ask for the protection our laws should accord them. They are too stupid to realize that they are killing the very geese that lay the golden eggs of our markets, the stocks that come from nowhere and become a Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, etc.
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By bburrell on
11/2/2009 9:30 PM
The Implications Of A Post “Nuclear Option” Environment Planned By Democrats For The Senate Healthcare Vote
From “Front and Center”, by “Bud Burrell”
We find ourselves now less than 72 hours from a projected House Vote on the Healthcare Reform Legislation put together by the Democrats. From there, the plan of the Democratic Majority is to send their House version of this bill to the Senate for passage under the terms of a “Budget Reconciliation” requiring only 51 votes for confirmation.
This option for the passage of legislation by these means is well known as the so-called “Nuclear Option” for abuse of minority rights to get legislation passed when conventional and generally accepted processes can’t produce the necessary 60 votes for cloture, suspending debate. It is the ultimate declaration of legislative war by the Democrats against the Republicans, and I would expect it to be the end of any pretense whatsoever of “bi-partisanship” in either the House or the Senate for the for-seeable future. This is as it should be, as it casts the charade of equity into the cesspool it has belonged in since the Democrats took voting control of the Congress and the Senate in the 2008 Elections.
The tricky part of using this kind of “Nuclear Option” to pass a controversial piece of fascist/socialist legislation is that the total ownership of the outcome belongs to the Democrats, lock, stock and barrel. As they move to the 2010 Mid-Term Elections, you can expect the Republicans to jam this where the Sun doesn’t shine for each and every Democratic candidate who voted to go along with this totalitarian approach.
The record number of seats lost recently was in the 1994 Mid-Term elections, when 50+ seats were lost by the Democrats to the Republicans under Newt Gingrich. They came with a promise to reform the system, but within two terms, they were eaten alive by the existing system of lobbying and spoils, and their promises to America and its people were broken wholesale. They won’t get a second chance to blow this. They get it right this time, or Socialism will be the system of Government taught to our young people.
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By bburrell on
10/18/2009 4:43 PM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
The harsh truth of reconciliation of the right and left by well-intended “Centrists”, who allege to seek the best balance of the arguments and positions of both sides is a never-ending movement to a socialist agenda. This should be no surprise to those who have studied historical socialist and communist theology. The fraud they perpetrate is one based on the ends justifying the means, and they view politics as class war by other means.
The United States has married itself to a two party system, chosen over a parliamentarian system of many parties seen in most Western nations. In these systems, government is run by vacillating assemblages of a number of parties who choose to come together to form a voting majority necessary for rule.
The core principals of republican democracy are aligned in this country by positions of opposing parties. One purportedly supports conservative values linked to individual liberties tied to States’ rights constituting a federalist system. The opposing party is linked to the concept of a controlling central government which provides for all of the needs of the people known as a compact theory of union, in exchange for the abrogation certain rights accorded when this country was formed.
This system only works when there is good faith on the parts of each party to preserve and protect the fundamental authority from which all central government authority is derived, the Constitution of the United States. It works only as long as both parties pay obeisance and pledge their loyalty to this highly logical and legal system of rights and obligations of citizens and politicians.
Our founders knew at the time of the writing of the US Constitution that there would be powers who would seek to circumvent the Government founded on this body of thought and philosophy, and the formers of this power provided for a highly balanced process for its modification. Integral to this was a legal process that provided for a balance of power between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches that depended on enforced checks and balances.
The hard left wrote a body of work in the 1800’s which provided for a mechanical plan for the circumvention and eventual defeat of these checks and balances, reflected most completely in the works of Marx, Hegel, and many others. They saw what they determined to be a fatal flaw of republican democracy, which was its undiluted reliance on the good faith of our political leaders to their pledges of allegiance to this Country and its foundations.
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By bburrell on
10/11/2009 7:38 PM
Fom “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
This week, an 80 page internal report of the behavior of Dallas and New York FINRA staff members in actively protecting and shielding Sir Allen Stanford and his billion dollar Ponzi scheme was leaked by unidentified sources. This sickening report drove home the total absence of internal controls at FINRA related to discovering and acting on massive frauds for which they were given nearly untold numbers of signals that should have prompted their action against such parties. Near the end of the report, it was stated that the behavior of FINRA was essentially identical with regard to Bernie Madoff’s Registered Investment Advisor and his related broker-dealer.
Some years ago, I had the chance to see a brilliant and upcoming 18 year old comedian at “Catch a Rising Star”. He wrecked the audience with the description of his multi-ethnic background, saying his mother and father, who were from different ethnic groups, had met each other on the subway picking each others’ pockets.
After hearing the full stories of the way in which Madoff and Stanford each manipulated the SEC and FINRA to a point of abuse, I was reminded of this routine. The only difference was that in this case we had two RICO criminal enterprises manipulating two other Government and quasi-governmental institutional criminal enterprises, working together to pick the pockets of major investors, domestically and internationally.
All of this went on while all were conning each other and most of the American investing public that they had any other purpose in mind at all. The facts of these stories were simply too closely aligned to the comedy routine to be anything other than tragic.
When the now famous certified fraud examiner called FINRA a RICO, he could have said the same thing about the SEC. Both organizations have become revolving doors for key lawyers who swing in and out of lucrative securities legal partnerships, into the securities industry, then into the Regulatory organizations in a never ending twisted Merry-Go-Round.
I don’t know this cited fraud examiner, but all elements of his conclusions are consistent with my experiences with this process. I have watched the electronic counterfeiting of securities and assets of all forms literally explode, to the point where the underlying assets no longer control the markets. Rather, the electronic counterfeits and derivatives trading on those assets do. The tail is wagging the dog, while the dog’s food is being stolen out of his bowl.
The bald-faced arrogance of these parties goes to the very point of insulting every American citizen, shoving sedition in their face and saying to them: “You don’t have the cojones to be able to make us stop stealing. To the devil with you and your horse.” And, so far, the American people have said nothing. And they will continue to say nothing until the day when they don’t. When that happens, this ATM toy will be too broken to fix with anything other than a draconian outcome. This latter outcome is what I fear.
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By bburrell on
10/3/2009 1:16 PM
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
Rational observers of the current environment of this country are watching as divisive policies championed by the Obama Administration have torn apart important opinions about what this country should stand for, how our Government should operate, what our Constitution and Bill of Rights mean, and much more. The citizenry is torn apart by who has primary responsibility for the education of their children first, how our healthcare systems should be paid for, what energy policies are rational in a period of extreme recession, who should be relied on to protect this country from its enemies, and much more. The Obama Administration has for the first time in decades managed to wake the American people from their perennial political slumber, and they have chosen to do this while they try to sell an old standard of invasive big government, whose competency and integrity are both non-existent. They try to sell the American people the idea that they should trust the US Government, which has managed (or better, mismanaged) Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare with a ham-handedness that boggles the imagination, to handle now their national security, their healthcare, their access to affordable energy, the jobs creation process and more. This agenda is NOT supported by the majority of American people, who want healthcare reform, but not national health, who want cheaper and cleaner energy, but not a fascist energy industry, who want jobs, but not at the cost of the destruction of our capitalist system, and more. The response of our legislators is to go for the big lights, when the dimmer answers are right in front of them. Those answers are to make health insurance competitive on an interstate basis, to make rational tort reform, to seek out affordable energy sources domestically, and to penalize liars.
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By bburrell on
9/27/2009 3:51 PM
Effective and Efficient: Two Words Our Government Has Demonstrated It Doesn’t Understand
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
We face impending legislative actions by our elected representatives that would potentially nationalize our health care systems, and a new taxation policy on energy being called euphemistically a “Cap and Trade” program, intended to have the US to try and unilaterally control Greenhouse Gases, while the rest of the World changes nothing. This comes on the heels of moves to effectively nationalize our banking system under the control of an entity which has never been audited or examined except “In Camera”, and a move to negate more than a century of property rights of bondholders as expressed in our bankruptcy laws by the national unionization of our automotive industry.
The expressed goals of any organization must ultimately be linked to operating effectively, meaning getting the job in front it done, and operating efficiently, meaning to operate in a manner that clearly treats all assets consumed in such activities as limited scarce resources which must be conserved with a conscience. Objective standards for measurement of the performance of any organization by necessity and practicality cannot come from within the organization in question, but must be based on third party, arms length research and review. This element is sorely lacking in our Government and its agencies today.
Our Government has done simply done an appalling job of controlling itself, if measured by the operating outcomes of the organizations it has been responsible for most directly. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and more have been or shortly will be bankrupted. Indeed, if future losses were to be applied to assessing the net present value of these programs, they are unfiled bankruptcies. Most beneficiaries would agree that Social Security, Medicaid and Medicaid provide real benefits valued by US citizens legally and other than legal immigrants illegally. So how can this country solve these problems?
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By bburrell on
9/23/2009 8:46 PM
The Terrible Lies Promising Transparency And Their Reality Today.
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
Today, this Administration, supported by the Democratic Party’s regulars excepting one holdout voted 12 to 11 to negate any attempt at giving the American public a 72 hour look at the proposed Obamacare Health Reform legislation. This motion was made to allow the entire American public and all of the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to read this bill in its entirety.
Democratic Congressmen and Senators made every attempt to kill this initiative, saying that presenting this entire 1000 page (estimated) bill was a waste of time and that any readers would simply get lost in the complex verbiage. I think they were saying something entirely different from their intent.
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By bburrell on
9/15/2009 11:07 PM
What Does Harry Markopolos’ Example Teach All Researchers About Research Methodology?
From “Front & Center, by Bud Burrell
Harry Markopolos made his second major appearance before Congress two days ago, this time in front of the Senate Banking Committee along with two SEC lawyers, who clearly were not up to his professional and intellectual standards. Harry talked about his aborted attempts over a ten year period to get the SEC to listen to the fact that it had taken him about five (5) minutes to figure out Bernie Madoff was a stone fraud. He then described his impressions of lack of professional attributes of SEC staffers to recognize fraud at even an elementary level, much less a career examiner’s level.
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By bburrell on
9/6/2009 3:49 PM
Yesterday, I received a pamphlet translated from the French titled “The Coming Insurrection”, by an anonymous author. This was printed by MIT Press according to my copy. I must say I was surprised at the competency of the content from a literary perspective, and I was fairly stunned to see a booklet calling for the formation of communes to effect a change of government by sophisticated insurrection. If this book is not a violation of the bar on calling for the violent overthrow of the US Government, I would like someone to explain to me what it is.
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By bburrell on
8/21/2009 4:56 PM
Two evenings ago, Fox News broadcast the announcement of the appointment of the woman doctor who is the current head of the Canadian Medical Association to run their National Health System. Dr. Doig is her name and on being interviewed, her first quote was to say that this system was in meltdown, a catastrophe. This obviously sent Obamacare’s leftist champions here into a paroxysm of anger.
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By bburrell on
8/18/2009 8:30 PM
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By bburrell on
8/9/2009 7:46 PM
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By bburrell on
7/21/2009 12:42 PM
Three of the major initiatives of our current administration present potential alternatives that the American people are only just now waking up to. Jay Leno made history with his parody of the ignorance of the American people with his "Jaywalking" comedy episodes, many of which were as terrifying as they were funny. How about every American sucking it up and actually pay attention to the mess surrounding us right now?
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By bburrell on
7/1/2009 2:36 PM
if this were coming from the right, you would see people in the streets.
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By bburrell on
6/30/2009 12:03 PM
This is just more of the never-ending story of a failed DOJ, and a worse SEC.
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By bburrell on
6/28/2009 9:41 AM
Unceratinty is the one thing that neither markets nor capital formation can deal with. Well, that is what we have for the next four months.
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By bburrell on
6/20/2009 10:48 AM
I told everyone this increase was coming. Well, here it is, at least the first round. I'd bet on more to come past this.
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By bburrell on
6/12/2009 7:02 AM
I have waited for six years for a large number of promised indictments to come down on this menage of causes and criminals. For what?
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By bburrell on
6/10/2009 10:53 AM
Some months ago, I predicted that logic would dictate a market bounce triggered by the inflationary impact of historic stimulus spending in all forms. I also said it would have to carry not onlly the stock market up, but commodities too.
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By bburrell on
5/27/2009 3:08 PM
Here we go yet again into the breach.
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By bburrell on
5/25/2009 7:04 PM
Here is an educational piece and a warning.
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By bburrell on
5/19/2009 5:40 PM
Here is the bad news on a bill I hope will be moderated in legislative process.
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By bburrell on
5/6/2009 10:56 AM
An invitation for you to read about this again.
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By bburrell on
5/5/2009 2:07 PM
A Tribute and Commentary to a great Veteran.
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By bburrell on
4/24/2009 12:05 PM
Tax increases were announced today. The really bad news is coming.
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By bburrell on
4/21/2009 4:41 PM
Lessons for all.
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By bburrell on
4/17/2009 3:02 PM
Here comes another nightmare in the making. Wake up or eat sewage.
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By bburrell on
4/15/2009 8:15 AM
Here is a brief summary that isn't exactly Rocket Science.
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By bburrell on
4/6/2009 11:04 AM
There will be a time for early optimism, but it isn't here now.
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By bburrell on
3/23/2009 6:11 PM
Here is more than you probably wanted to know about alternative energy, but that you need to know.
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By bburrell on
3/22/2009 6:08 PM
Many of us don't see what is headed at us with this insidious plan. Global Warming be damned.
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By bburrell on
3/21/2009 7:15 PM
Here is brief overview of today's most pressing issues.
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By bburrell on
3/12/2009 7:32 PM
Opinions are being polarized by politics, surprise, surprise. This economic opinion polarization mirrors the political polarization, and it is damned unhealthy.
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By bburrell on
3/6/2009 7:04 PM
More on technical analysis. Watch out for Credit Default Swaps.
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By bburrell on
2/27/2009 12:02 PM
She really blew it today.
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By bburrell on
2/20/2009 12:05 PM
This is response to many questions, many keyed off the now verified Dow Theory Sell Signal yesterday.
I told eveyone that the insane volatility of our market in October, November and December were a bad signal.
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By bburrell on
2/19/2009 11:23 AM
As is becoming more and more evident, the criminals here, with Madoff standing as a shining light to guide all others like himself, had to have had a lot of serious dirt on the many industry executives and their regulators. Why hasn't there been a single indictment of their co-conspirators and facilitators? Going a step further, where have the promised super-ceding indictments promised in many of our cases never come down, not one?
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By bburrell on
2/14/2009 3:09 PM
One perspective for all. This whole thing is turning nasty.
Generally, we choose up sides in elections. That isn't working anymore.
I'd like to hear others ideas. I am in a dark-side mood here.
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By bburrell on
2/13/2009 9:48 AM
CNBC reversed course today, saying that earnings were declining and naturally, the multiples of earnings are declining with this fall.
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By bburrell on
2/13/2009 9:47 AM
Re: O'Quinn Team Contributions
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By bburrell on
2/9/2009 9:32 AM
Argue intelligently with this. I was surprised Thomas Sowell didn't sign this, but he might not be a part of the CATO Institute.
This full page ad ran nationally in the major newspapers across the United States.
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By bburrell on
2/7/2009 7:49 PM
Mr. Markopolos handed the heads of some incredibly arrogant bureaucrats and lawyers to them in front of their employer, Congress. The Response of these clowns? They shut down completely.
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By bburrell on
2/3/2009 3:15 PM
These days too will pass.
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By bburrell on
2/1/2009 2:44 PM
The stunning acceleration in the distribution and use of basic economic data has impacted most parts of our society. Here are comments.
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By bburrell on
1/30/2009 10:35 AM
Everything our Government needs to do now can be summarized simply: Create Jobs. What we got from Congress is a shameless piece of politics, and bad economics.
This is a hijacking of the American Democratic Process.
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By bburrell on
1/29/2009 2:49 PM
The phrase "A Bodyguard of Lies" come from a quote by Winston Churchill in World War II, when he spoke about the War of Deception brilliantly employed by Britain and the Allies to wage this war. Much later, author Anthony Cave Brown wrote a now famous book of the same title, "Bodyguard of Lies" to tell the whole story of this Secret War. I ask you what secrets are our enemies trying to protect with their half-truths, obfuscations, lies, and more here?
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By bburrell on
1/28/2009 1:13 PM
Here is an important note for all.
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By bburrell on
1/17/2009 11:15 PM
Here is as close to a "Standard" that I have ever seen on the massively complex financial scandal we face destruction by.
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By bburrell on
1/13/2009 1:14 PM
The huge market corrections in all sectors has wiped out thousands of traders, and many more trading accounts in all forms of securities.
What do we see as a result?
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By bburrell on
1/12/2009 3:31 PM
Nothing happens in a Democracy without the forces focused by unified Political Will. What happens when not enough people get hurt across the board at the same time?
What steps have to be taken to begin to dig out of this hole?
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By bburrell on
1/8/2009 9:40 AM
Contingent liabilities now have reached the point of overwhelming any practical potential solution.
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By bburrell on
12/29/2008 11:09 AM
Here is the best short telling of this story thus far.
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By bburrell on
12/20/2008 1:30 PM
While the whole world has taken its eye off the ball thanks to the standing of the Madoff Ponzi scandal, far worse and much more deadly threats face our financial systems.
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By bburrell on
12/16/2008 4:45 PM
The coming crisis in rebated, discounted, arm and especially secondary and similar "back" mortgages is still six months from beginning.
The Madoff scandal deepens daily, turning into a analog to plutonium to the existence of the SEC and the NASD. Anyone who believes that anyone, and I mean ANYONE, could run a $50 Billion dollar Ponzi investment scheme without big outside support deserves the beating they are getting.
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By bburrell on
11/26/2008 3:04 PM
Everyone knows that the Great Depression was ended by WWII.
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By bburrell on
10/28/2008 11:57 AM
The Dow made its second biggest up day in history, just 15 days after setting the all time record of up 925 points. Does this tell us anything? I think not.
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By bburrell on
10/26/2008 5:35 PM
A must see for everyone.
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By bburrell on
10/24/2008 6:45 PM
Beware of Actions taken in haste by the fearful. Just because they have acted harshly doesn't mean they will achieve their goals, or that they have done the right things.
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By bburrell on
10/23/2008 7:54 PM
Here is another non-technical explanation for those not from this background.
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By bburrell on
10/22/2008 5:59 PM
This is a brief simplified explanation for non-technical market participants. You need to understand how expectations affect markets and their levels.
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By bburrell on
10/18/2008 5:44 PM
Many of you may never have seen this. From 2004.
No one can say no one told them.
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By bburrell on
10/16/2008 7:17 AM
The wealthy and small business owners along with numerous investors subject to taxes are voting with their portfolios. They have tossed in the towel economically speaking, conceding the Election to Obama, and a hard left socio-economic turn when he takes office.
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By bburrell on
10/13/2008 7:29 PM
Today's volume was weak. Banks were closed. Europe was pending its own bailout plans. What does it mean?
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By bburrell on
10/12/2008 6:34 PM
You may or may not learn something here.
We live in interesting times.
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By bburrell on
10/12/2008 11:19 AM
Here in numbered sequence is the simplest delineation yet of this process. Irrespective of any criticism yet leveled at Jim, this nails the DTCC intent.
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By bburrell on
10/11/2008 4:45 PM
Lou Dobbs show tonight had two parties calling for the suspension of markets here for a "Cooling Off Period". They alleged that the USG was considering just that, among a number of alternatives.
Sources in Washington began talking about the nationalization of Goldman and Morgan whatever, whatever the hell that means.
GM, now trading for a lower market cap than it did after the 1929 Raid, is in talks with Chysler about a merger, backed up by Cerebus, who has interests in both.
What does this mean for Ford?
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By bburrell on
10/8/2008 3:42 PM
DTCC has shown itself to be a shameless facilitator of Counterfeiting of Commercial Securities, many of which are tied to hedging naked ownership of CDS paper, another kind of put insurance product.
Given their role in the NSS scandal, how can they be trusted? They can't, and someone needs to pull their head out of their respective patoots before this happens.
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By bburrell on
9/20/2008 8:55 AM
Illegal short selling continues unabated, after the hedgies took the Rule change of Wednesday as a non-event.
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By bburrell on
2/28/2008 3:42 PM
Senator Bennett used the word the word EIGHT (8) times in the broadcast meeting of the Senate Banking Committee with Paulson, Bernanke, and Cox. He directed most of his comments directly to Honorable Chairman Cox, who reacted with about 40 tells indicating he was being less than totally honest at best, constantly touching his lips, eyes, ears, and mouth. In my basic training in interrogation, such actions were a major RED FLAG. Maybe a little recitation of the case history of Counterfeiting would be helpful here. There is nothing here not contained in my previous writings, but a linear recitation could be of value, with a single focus on Counterfeiting.
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By bburrell on
2/22/2008 7:55 PM
No one knows if Tony Ryals is real or not, but someone or something uses this name in an unrelenting attack on any and all targets of short sellers. He(She?) is big on rumors and innuendo and short on fact.
Should we be concerned? I think not, but it can be helpful to let the many rumors about him/her be spread throughout the land.
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By bburrell on
2/20/2008 3:51 PM
Here a classic statement of a great libertarian, and honest and ruthless critic of fools and chalatans. I will let all of you guess who I think is which.
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By bburrell on
1/16/2008 3:50 PM
Here is literate little ditty that should put some noses out of joint, as well they should be.
As I have repeatedly said here, SHAREHOLDERS HAVE RIGHTS!
Would but the lawyers at the SEC could pull their heads out of wherever long enough to realize this.
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By bburrell on
1/12/2008 6:35 PM
The last of the cases here will be heard many years from now civilly, while 99+% of the thieves skate off into the sunset, their warchests replete with massive assets stolen from their helpless and undefended victims.
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By bburrell on
12/16/2007 4:18 PM
Levant, a musical genius, had more depth than just that.
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By bburrell on
11/27/2007 7:01 AM
Here is the genius on Corruption bearing the Mantel of the legendary iconoclast H. L. Mencken.
He makes himself heard here.
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By bburrell on
11/5/2007 2:20 PM
I have a problem with the original entry.
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By bburrell on
11/5/2007 10:47 AM
I had a lot of inquiries about how to get this. See the link below.
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By bburrell on
11/3/2007 10:42 AM
This is for those who think they know everything there is to know about this case.
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By bburrell on
10/28/2007 5:29 PM
Looking at the basic statistics of traditional floor auction exchanges, it is clear that the SEC and the NASD have determined to either shut them down entirely, or morph them into something looking like an electronic NASDAQ market maker system. The NYSE members who damned Grasso with faint praise are going to look back on him as the very last great white hope. The AMEX, which was so instrumental to the maturation of the Options Market Place in the US, is now just a high profile target. Again, we have a bunch of lawyers with absolutely no business background making fundamental strategic decisions about business and market matters they know nothing about. The move that made the NASD the sole regulator should have been a signal of the intent.
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By bburrell on
10/6/2007 10:36 PM
I have repeatedly cited the abhorrent nature of the crises faced daily by those have crusaded for 7 or more years against the collective sociopathy of the manipulators here. Psychological studies of those who wage war on its front lines have pointed out that absent some recurring positive reinforcement, the front line warriors will burn out, almost without exception, after some specific period of time. I am there now, and I need a break before I break something else.
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By bburrell on
10/3/2007 9:01 AM
Use these links instead.
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By bburrell on
10/2/2007 12:03 PM
Here is some amusing reading. Welcome to 1929 again. May the SEC choke on this.
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By bburrell on
9/30/2007 3:42 PM
Want to know why socialism hasn't worked anywhere it has been tried? It goes against basic drives in the human nature.
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By bburrell on
9/18/2007 7:40 AM
From studies of forecasting methods, Occam's Razor is broadly accepted as a general rule. It states that in all analytical situations, the simplest solution is most likely the optimum one, even if not the only one. How do we apply it here to our situation of having to confront pandemic corruption?
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By bburrell on
9/18/2007 6:26 AM
In any retail store environment, the control and reconciliation of inventory is a CRITICAL part of the ENTIRE accounting reconciliation Process. How can our Regulators say it has no applicability to Securities Markets?
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By bburrell on
9/4/2007 7:43 AM
Post general questions and comments here from today forward. There is software glitch in the way comments get posted after a post gets a certain number, So let's start fresh from here.
Best, Bud.
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