UPDATE: The NFI debacle has been in the news, and so has the Easter Bunny - Apparently the press doesn't understand that I haven't had an active role in the NFI-Info website for a year and a half, after I publicly handed it over to independent webmasters so I could focus on this site and NCANS. Why they missed this tidbit is unknown, as it isn't exactly a secret. It was the topic of discussion on the same boards they apparently follow so diligently. I even put out a call to recruit people to take it over.
More mystifying is why the NY Times today invented a quote and attributed it to me.
Invented it. As in made it up.
Here's the quote, attributed to me, which was supposedly posted on InvestorVillage.com shortly after I learned about the company's shocking earnings release and forward looking statements, which blindsided not just me, but all the analysts following the company for a living:
""Yesterday, in what he described as “probably my last writing here,” the investor had this to say on the site: “I am shell shocked after the conference that took place yesterday, and quite annoyed that I participated in the collective hallucination that led so many into such a disaster.”
I said no such thing. They invented the last half. What I said is easily viewable in message number 42065.
Perhaps they are taking a quote the independent webmaster of NFI-Info posted? Dunno. But I do know it wasn't me, which they could have easily verified by doing something like, oh, I don't know, emailing me to see if it was me?
Not surprising, but sort of funny in that it speaks volumes about the integrity of the NY financial press.
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Every day, I ask myself, how bad does the FTD crisis have to get before Congress does its job and holds hearings, and appoints a special prosecutor to look into Wall Street's abuse of investors?
Apparently. Specter and Grassley finding that the SEC is either corrupt or incompetent isn't enough to do the trick.
Public outrage isn't enough.
Companies refusing to list on the US exchanges isn't enough.
Retirees losing their life savings isn't enough.
So, the question is, will a letter from the US Chamber of Commerce making a public and formal demand of Congress to act do the trick?
I guess we shall find out, but it does raise the question, what specifically is big enough to get Wall Street looked at by our lawmakers in anything but a fawning and superficial way?
You can read the short and sweet letter here.
But you won't read about it in any NY financial periodical or news outlet. Nope. Apparently that isn't big enough news. My musings on a message board rate many column inches by Marketwatch, but the US Chamber of Commerce saying that naked short selling is a problem that requires Congressional hearings isn't.
If we do see anything, what do you want to bet it will be the standard, "Confuse legal short selling and illegal deliberate delivery failures, and then blame everything on a bunch of crybabies and loons" diatribe?
How bad did it have to get before Rome burned, or the British lost their empire and became an also-ran? The US market system is a cruel joke operated by swindlers for the enrichment of the few, and the rule of law that keeps the rubes coming to the casino is a farce. Hedge funds and prime brokerage desks routinely use insider trading, bear raids, manipulative options plays, virtually every dirty trick ever conceived of during the worst of the 1920's, and the SEC stands by doing nothing but running interference for them. Any company targeted for extinction by these roving packs of predators might as well turn off the lights - it's not enough to have to compete globally, and pay a huge tax burden for the privilege of being domiciled here, and be in constant jeopardy of lawsuits and restrictive lawmaking. No, in addition, US businesses must become food for the machine that kills its young if they wish to access the capital markets - a machine that destroys with impunity and encourages crookery at every level.
Folks, I wouldn't put a dime into the market. Any promise of riches touted by the system is nothing more than the hucksterism that is required to keep you coming back to be swindled. It likely has always been that way, however with the advent of self-managed accounts, and ubiquitous margin accounts, and a culture wherein a whole generation has been brainwashed into being "investors" the retirement savings of the nation are up for grabs, and are in jeopardy.
After the 1920's and 30's, two whole generations stayed away from the markets. Real estate and business development were the investments of choice for the rank and file - build a better mousetrap, make a better burger, cut hair a bit less expensively. Hand your money over to some con artist in NY so you can watch it evaporate? Not on your life. And yet that wisdom was lost in the 1980's as the go go, anything is possible, greed is good culture rode the wave, crescendoing in the dot com absurdity of the late 1990's.
Which brings us to today. With fixed commissions going out the window, and decimalization and discount brokerages kicking the chair out from under the fat income structure of the Street, those big paychecks had to come from somewhere else. Some genuine ingenuity came to the rescue, but didn't last that long. Milken conceived of a derivative so novel in the 80's that it caught the industry flat-footed, and he quickly became a powerhouse, further eroding the mainstream Wall Street paycheck. That got shut down pretty quickly, as his upstart ways jeopardized the status quo. He was a bad guy doing bad things, but likely no worse than the rest. He simply threatened the powers that be, and wouldn't play ball. Bam. That was the last time the SEC mobilized, and a DA became famous as he eyed the political ladder - it didn't hurt that he was doing Wall Street's work for it.
Now we have a toothless impotent regulator as depraved and bent as a Burmese poppy merchant, a media that is completely bought and paid for, and a citizenry that is oblivious to anything more than Anna Nicole's baby's custody battle.
And Wall Street has never made bigger bonuses in its entire history. Stock lending is huge business. Bear raids are the norm. No company regardless of size is safe from the whim of organized, well funded packs of predatory destroyers. Corporate leaders lie to us, politicians lie to us, Wall Street lies to us, big business lies to us. We are the food. They are the consumers of the food, masticating the fruits of our labor like so much Juicy Fruit.
I wish I could say things were looking up, but frankly, unless this letter achieves its stated goal of hearings, it's just business as usual on Wall Street and the Beltway. Ignore everything that doesn't jive with the fiction you created, and simply stonewall the reasonable requests to rein in the larceny.
The bright spots are the lawsuits against the prime brokers, and the suits against the hedge funds who are their largest clients. Perhaps the plaintiff's bar will do what our regulators long ago abdicated as their responsibility: settle the trades, and put the crooks in jail.
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Bloomberg ran a typical "Byrne's a loon" piece today, which was actually the standard obligatory fare we have become accustomed to. In it, the reporter in question does exactly no research into whether Byrne's allegations have any basis in fact, and instead spends most of her time cuddling up to alleged prevaricator and sock puppeter extraordinaire 'lilGW - that apprently is what passes for reporting nowadays.
Get your favorite hack to sling mud, pretend that it's news, and then repeat every tall tale you've ever heard from the guys he's suing.
Nice work, Susan. Really. Very, very, uh, novel, and unexpected.
"Byrne must be bad, his stock price is down and the company isn't profitable yet!"
Nicely played.