As the NY Press remains completely silent (except for Forbes) about the shocking data accumulating that our top securities cop is assisting fraudsters to dupe investors, a small paper in California broke a well-written, comprehensive article on the state of the union to date.
You can read it here.
What is truly appalling about this whole situation is not just the SEC's role in aiding and abetting a massive fraud against investors - see the previous 4 blogs - but it's the financial media's complete blackout on the news.
Floyd Norris has the latest in a long string of "Byrne's crazy" articles out in the NY Times, wherein he tries to make the case that if a broker simply executes your order, that he's done his job, even if you never get the goods. Try that argument in any other industry. Still, Floyd was able to dig up some attorney that would frame it that way.
Floyd? When Congress passed the 1934 Securities Exchange Act, and mandated a linked clearing and settling, including transfer of record ownership, did I miss the caveat wherein it says, "Unless the seller doesn't feel like delivering, in which case the buyer's broker can shrug his shoulders but still keep the commission"?
Mr. Norris, a question: Why would anyone ever deliver anything if they could be paid for it, and not have to deliver because some shyster says it's OK?
The piece isn't particularly noteworthy, other than the fact that there is genuine evidence of massive financial fraud that the press is working so diligently to ignore. That's the curious thing about the article. You have to know that Byrne had the data about Global Links, and likely told Floyd all about it - but he just ignored it all in favor of the agenda.
I've said it before, and I will say it again.
This is a new low in the history of American Journalism. Our institutions have let us down - our regulator, our market system, our elected officials, and the final watchdogs, the press. There is no need for a free press if they are so co-opted that they won't report the truth. That reduces the institution to a propaganda machine, an arm of the special interests that would frame your opinion, a Pravda insisting that happy tractor workers are begging for longer than 12 hour workdays even as they revel in the positives of low level radiation exposure and an all potato and rat tail soup diet.
This is a farce.
And you are having to read about it here, because with a few exceptions, nobody will touch it. Too much money and power wants it covered-up.
We need a special prosecutor. Now.