I want to be a highly paid NY financial journalist when I grow up - I can pretend complete amnesia with the best of them, and selectively ignore anything that gives the power structure that pays me discomfort.
What am I talking about?
Yet another article on the now familiar Milberg Weiss case, wherein they were paying a cast of crooks to act as their lead plaintiffs.
This time, from the NY Times.
You can read the lengthy article here.
So, what is my problem with this piece?
Well, it's actually pretty simple. We have a lengthy article chronicling a Mr. Vogel's history as a professional plaintiff, and yet at no point does the reporter ask the obvious, pressing, and most damaging question:
How did Mr. Vogel know that the companies he was taking positions in were going to fall out of bed shortly thereafter?
It is astounding to me that the SEC is ignoring that obvious question as well. I mean, if your clandestine business was taking positions ahead of collapses, so that Milberg could be the first mover in the class action suits that were sure to follow, isn't it pretty obvious that you HAD to have inside information, from Milberg or parties connected with them, that the stocks were due for a major decline in price?
What does that tell you?
Consider the case cited - Oxford Health, whose computers "mysteriously" had a major malfunction, costing them billions in lost market cap.
How did Vogel know that these computers were going to have this problem? Alternatively, if the problem was ongoing, how did Vogel know that there was an ongoing problem which was soon to be exposed?
Now, I'm not an incredibly savvy forensic PI or anything, but doesn't it seem like the obvious answer is that someone was planning to tank the price of the companies targeted, and that is how this was known? And isn't that a massive RICO action against whoever was doing it, again and again and again?
So why are the SEC and the DOJ ignoring what a five year old can put together during recess?
I think that is an excellent question. Why indeed.
You would think that they would want to know who was rigging the markets, repetitively, obviously in possession of inside information, and planning to destroy the victim companies' market caps.
And yet not a peep out of these august bodies.
Consider the more disturbing aspect of this - if Oxford hadn't yet had the problem with their computers (I don't know the story here, so if someone does, help me out...) and Vogel took the position in anticipation of a problem, wouldn't that point directly to someone sabotaging a company in order to create a market event?
Again, I don't know the sequence. I'm fine with it being more than bad enough that he knew the company was going to tank, and took his position accordingly. So why hasn't the SEC pulled the trading records for the period in question, and discovered who bought massive put positions, or had large short positions taken in advance of this calamity?
Does everyone see why I am so disgusted with the supposedly "best in breed" choagies in the NY financial press?
In this story, that is THE question.
And I have yet to see one person ask it in print.
And that is disturbing in the extreme. Almost as though it is taboo - off limits for reporting.
Welcome to the machine.