Looks like elliot Spitshit is going to bust up Merrill Lynch. Looks like the market is going to have a new leader with the self service firms rulling. Details at 8. tune in.
I'm willing to bet your brother and his little daytrading office will go out of business before Merrill does. Be sure to let us know when he folds up. We'll all be tuning in.
I'm no supporter of NY Attorney General Spitzer but I have to say he has hit the bullseye here. All this Wall Street whining about picking on brokers and making scapegoats out of investment banks turns my stomach. Mer's "apology", ie we're sorry you found out what we really thought, was equally revolting. There is no exception for fraud committed in the IPO market. "everyone knew it was corrupt" is also not an excuse. Bring on the lawyers, at least this time they have some really culpable targets.
Spitzer is only an ass for not having the guts to take on these guys before it was clear he had a slam dunk. But hey, he is a politico, and a rich one at that. Thse guys Merril Lehman Goldman are embedded institutions and they are not going away. They will pay. Spitzer I bet will not force them out of business even if he could. He is playing to the masses because he has designs on higher office. But he can't put the rich guys on the street becuase he needs the wealthy to finance his future campaigns, even if his daddy is rich. The brokers understand that paying fines is a cost of doing business and they have always done that. No one gives a shit in those places, the personnel rotates every 1/2 generation anyway.
Yeah, right, the next thing we know, you'll be telling us one of the top accounting firms like Arthur Anderson is going out of biz. Shhheeeezzzz.
This guy is doing a great service to the public. And anyone putting him down is either mis-informed or ill-intentioned.
New York needs Wall Street. Putting the guilty out of business may be just, but not realistic. Harvey Pitt and the SEC are looking like total fools on this one. They nailed 15 year old Jonathan Lebed but missed wall street doing same on a trillion dollar scale. "On Sept. 20, 2000, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled its case against a 15-year-old high-school student named Jonathan Lebed. The S.E.C.'s news release explained that Jonathan -- the first minor ever to face proceedings for stock-market fraud -- had used the Internet to promote stocks from his bedroom in the northern New Jersey suburb of Cedar Grove. Armed only with accounts at A.O.L. and E*Trade, the kid had bought stock and then, "using multiple fictitious names," posted hundreds of messages on Yahoo Finance message boards recommending that stock to others. He had done this 11 times between September 1999 and February 2000, the S.E.C. said, each time triggering chaos in the stock market. The average daily trading volume of the small companies he dealt in was about 60,000 shares; on the days he posted his messages, volume soared to more than a million shares. More to the point, he had made money. Between September 1999 and February 2000, his smallest one-day gain was $12,000. His biggest was $74,000. Now the kid had agreed to hand over his illicit gains, plus interest, which came to $285,000."
How many posts on Yahoo might still be his? Didn't that happen on a larger scale with ASW?But to the down side?
The following is plagerized from a friend of mine. I don't think he'll mind. _____________ Forests need forest fires. The fires clear the underbrush. The fires kill off the weaker plants trees and animals so the strong survive. Government intervention to suppress forest fires have done more harm than good. The American Indians used fire to clear fields for hunting and farming. When our European settlers arrived they saw no good in a forest fire. It has taken hundreds of years to figure out what the Indians already knew. Like a forest fire, perhaps stock markets need panics and crashes. It clears out the weaker hands. Only the strong traders and investors survive. Government intervention by the way of circuit breakers, fed intervention, bail out packages and now more government regulations only temper human emotion. This, without admitting human nature does not change. This created an environment in the nineties where fires and panics were not big enough to make the stock forest healthy. The forest seemed safe. No fire was spotted. Until the markets, ripe with fuel exploded like a tinder box from Nasdaq 5000. We do not need more disclosure. We do not need new rules to prevent fear and panic. We need less rules. We need fear and panic. For a healthy forest, a fire makes. All this talk of more disclosure, suing brokers and new legislation the nasdaq has fallen even further. Get the Joke..