Again, if I were a bearish reporter, which stocks would I probably find the juiciest stories on? Probably the stocks that are hard to borrow because everybody wants to short them. So Greenberg's articles having a strong correlation with SHO list just seems natural to me. If it were any other way, then I would be surprised.
Anyone who believes in leftist wacked out nutjob conspiracy theories like naked shorting or 'paid bashers' should be run out of the country. Or are you alleging a grand conspiracy theory involving the highest levels of power?
I hate the fact that my elected representatives are such a collective sack of shit. I voted for George Bush twice. I know for a fact the highest levels of his administration, therefore he, knows about naked shorting. I am not happy with that. You can say a lot about decisions made; not all is black and white. But, "Mr. President. It seems Wall Street is counterfeiting shares at an alarming rate, destroying companies and capital for their own illicit gain." "Ok. What else"? Seems like a no brainer to me. And from what Ratboy says, the man qualifies. He canned Donaldson, the Donaldson that said, "how much fraud are you willing to tolerate for liquidity", and appointed that political hack Cox. Look back over the history of the SEC. The SEC Chair has always been a money man. I root for OSTK to get their business on track, and I root for Patrick. That's as far as I can go with that. But the fact that the trades have not been settled for over 500 days tells you there is a massive coverup at the highest levels.
http://online.barrons.com/public/ar...odDc_20070619.html?mod=9_0002_b_free_features Odd Couple: CIA Briefs SEC By STEVEN M. SEARS THE THREAT OF TERRORISM IS HAVING an impact on the people who oversee the U.S. markets. For the first time in its history, the Securities and Exchange Commission is regularly being briefed by the Central Intelligence Agency. Each month, Chairman Christopher Cox and the four other commissioners are told about terrorists and other criminals increasingly active in the global capital markets. In an interview with Barron's last week, Cox said the intelligence reports offer the SEC a "somewhat sharper focus" to an "underworld of murky, illegal dealings that threaten the world capital markets." "The U.S. government's focus on money laundering and terrorist financing and other criminal activities in the capital markets has laid bare a good deal of activity of that sort," Cox added. He declined to elaborate on what he said was classified information. Prior to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, suspicious trading of puts was spotted in American and United airlines. There was similarly suspicious trading in Europe in insurance-company stocks. U.S. intelligence agencies determined that portfolio managers coincidentally initiated the trades before al Qaeda's attack. But it is now evident that the intelligence community regularly monitors the markets for terrorists. And the trend toward merging exchanges across national boundaries presents opportunities for greater regulatory enforcement in global markets. A "JAMES BOND SCENARIO" IN WHICH terrorists buy millions of dollars of put options and blow up buildings or airplanes to increase the puts' value is deemed unlikely by intelligence authorities. Yet less developed securities markets have reported stock trading by terrorists to raise money. In February, India's national security adviser, M.K. Narayanan, said at a security-policy conference in Munich that India had evidence of "isolated incidents of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations." Cox would not say if terrorists were active, or present, in U.S. markets. But he was clear about the reason for this increased illegal activity in global markets. "This phenomenon is born of the arrival on the scene of so many different, and substantial, liquidity pools," Cox said. "It used to be that significant capital had to be raised in the United States," but that is no longer true. And therein lies SEC's great regulatory challenge. While insider trading in Dow Jones, TXU and Reebok securities linked to Hong Kong, Pakistani and Croatian residents may capture public attention, more significant market threats are harder to detect. Criminals now purposefully disperse operations into different countries to avoid detection and prosecution. For example, residents of Hong Kong, Malaysia, Estonia and Latvia have hacked into U.S. online brokerage accounts and used the money to bid up the price of their own stocks. In one "account intrusion" case, criminals made more than $732,000 trading 15 Nasdaq-listed stocks. The SEC's jurisdiction ends, of course, at the U.S. border, and extends into foreign countries through agreements with foreign regulators. This is how the commission freezes bank and brokerage accounts in foreign countries. "We're not into real time international enforcement," Cox said. "We now have templates for sharing information in many cases on a prudential basis in advance of problems cropping up." MERGERS OF EXCHANGES, WHICH ARE providing structural definition to global markets, may help regulators battle capital-market crimes by internationalizing U.S.-style securities regulation. So far, the New York Stock Exchange has merged with Europe's Euronext to form NYSE Euronext (ticker: NYX). The Deutsche Börse hopes to close its acquisition of New York's International Securities Exchange (ISE) by year's end. Nasdaq (NDAQ) wants to buy the London Stock Exchange and could be interested in a Nordic exchange. Securities and futures exchanges throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia are all considered takeover targets. Futures exchanges, which are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, also are part of the global merger mania. The New York Mercantile Exchange (NMX), for example, has partnered with Dubai Holdings to open the Dubai Mercantile Exchange. Electronic exchanges, however, are in the real-time enforcement business. They routinely program trading systems to detect illegal activity, enforce exchange rules and produce electronic audit trails that have made it easier for regulators like the SEC to prosecute criminals. Currently, several government-led projects are under way in the securities industry. The Treasury and Homeland Security departments are working with clearing houses, including the U.S. Options Clearing Corp., to safeguard the industry against another terrorist attack. To most people, clearing corporations are deservedly obscure. But because they settle securities -- effectively functioning as exchanges' exchanges -- they could be useful in extending the reach of securities regulators across borders. "CROSS-BORDER REGULATORY COOPERATING questions are now going to be foremost on the agenda, not just for national security reasons, but because the full benefits of market integration cannot be achieved without the cooperation of market authorities," declares Benn Steil of the Council on Foreign Relations. Merging clearing and settlement systems lets investors with similar positions in different international stocks -- say Apple and Hewlett-Packard -- satisfy risk-management requirements without depositing more money into their clearing accounts. In theory, investors use the extra money to buy more stocks and derivatives, which further increases exchange transaction fees, which ultimately drive revenue of these newly minted international exchange companies. This is not simply an academic point. For while exchange mergers are marketed to investors on the basis of cost savings that might be achieved by eliminating duplicate functions, robust international trading may not be achievable if, for example, regulators do not allow NYSE Euronext to make its European-listed products available in the U.S. "The big savings in trading costs are yet to come. They do require regulatory action, particularly by the SEC," Steill said. In fact, the commercial motivation for integrating clearing systems globally could substitute of the lack of a comprehensive global legal framework for battling terrorism and criminality in the international markets. This fact does not appear lost on Chairman Cox, who noted that the SEC has not approved -- nor has it been asked to -- clearing-system mergers. Those mergers may ultimately be the linchpins of international exchange deals. THE CHALLENGES OF REGULATING a global market in which large sums of money move around the world with the push of a computer button will likely emerge as a major policy issue in Washington. A congressional delegation that includes the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees securities firms and SEC, visited key European regulators in early April to examine joint regulation issues amid concerns that regulators are ill-equipped to address coming challenges. "The extension into national security is a huge issue for everyone. This will not be a secondary issue, but an extension of our ongoing talks," says Steve Adamske, spokesman for Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, the committee's chairman. Meanwhile, the SEC recently asked the CIA for higher security clearances. The intelligence community is currently vetting Cox and the commissioners to see if they qualify for access to even more highly classified information than they are currently shown in their intelligence briefings.
Sweet TT! Thanks for that. I've emailed that photo to many people...truth expressed so eloquently and smartly. The GOP hasn't a clue that Ron Paul is their best hope to get back to their true roots - and if they don't realize it, I hope my party - Libertarians - eventually come into power.
Patrick says he's a Libertarian. He's explained it to me, but tell me, what, in your words, is a Libertarian? Some people think it's the lady that lends you books.