A new article in the WSJ is a classic. It is so filled with agenda, and misstatement, and misdirection, as to be breathtaking.
You can read it here.
First, we have the canard that Gradient was trying to sell with their press release immediately following the Senate hearing, namely that Demetrios didn't write his own testimony.
There are a few things wrong with that deeply flawed line of reasoning. First, it assumes that because a guy named Mark Griffin last edited it, that Mark wrote it.
That's stupid.
Mark, who is now an attorney working for OSTK, was apparently asked to review the testimony and make sure that there was nothing it it that could get Demetrios sued. Smart, and expected, as Mark was Demetrios' legal connection in the OSTK case.
So much for the mystery of who wrote the testimony.
Why do I know this, but the authors of the article don't? Good question - perhaps the identities of those authors will give up some clue: Herb Greenberg, Jesse Eisinger, and a few outers.
Huh.
How unexpected that they would credulously parrot whatever defense Gradient mounts.
Here's a fun fact, for those that don't know much about computers: I can send you a word document, and in the field they are sighting, put George W. Bush, or Donn Vickrey, or Jenna Jameson. Doesn't matter - it can say whatever you want.
In point of fact, Gradient hasn't explained where they got that word file from - it wasn't from any official or accessible to the public source. That raises the question as to the veracity of their claim in the first place, but hey, it's Wall Street, so why sweat the small stuff?
Notice that they don't address any of the factual content in the testimony? Why do you think that is? Could it be because the agenda is to smear Demetrios, not discuss the implications of a research company colluding with a hedge fund, and with some of the very journalists who are writing hatchet jobs like this one?
So where do you think Herb and Jesse got the word file from? I'm betting Gradient. Which means that anything is possible when it comes to the story they are telling.
I personally would love to see some of the author fields for some of Herb and Jesse's work. You can only wonder at whose names would appear there.
The rest of the article is even more mind-boggling, in that it manages to omit 90% of the testimony from the hearing, and instead focus on a sliver, wherein predicted short selling apologist Owen Lamont gave his expected defense of short selling - which nobody at the hearing had any problem with.
This selective reporting, and material ommission of most of reality, qualifies them for a prestigious Liars Club award: The Remond, or as it is referred to by those in the know, a "Carol."
What is particularly amusing to me is that these great minds all missed that the hearing was about stock manipulation, and collusion between hedge funds and research firms - not legitimate short selling, which nobody has any issue with.
Instead, they have decided to pretend that short selling was being attacked (which it wasn't) and then defend that practice, introducing Lamont's testimony as an example of how good short sellers are for the world.
All well and good, but completely irrelevant to the actual topic.
I guess when the Liar's Club has its regular meeting, one can always count on some knee slapping tall tales to emerge. That the WSJ is kind enough to print them as though they were fact is even better, as it highlights exactly how complicit a particular editor there is in assisting certain factions of Wall Street's rogue's gallery with propagating their disinformation. That it is so poorly masked and executed just makes it that much more satisfying.
So frame this one - you could really call it the death of American Journalism, officially announced on July 1, 2006.