Wall Street's Naked Swindle

Rolling Stone ^ | Oct. 14, 2009 | Matt Taibbi

[Wolfie]

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

[Publius6961]

Just wow...
Somebody finally unraveled the national screwing of the middle class.
I'm going to have to re-read this a few times to absorb all of the ways somebody managed to run off with trillions$.

The next move, one would hope, is to follow the thread and deal with the culprits, however many they are, wherever they are.
I never really believed that it was possible to make a trillion$ disappear without leaving a trace.

Can we keep this thread going for a while? Remarkably, to this day there are many delusionary self-styled experts here on FR willing to dazzle us with the explanation that the means of perpetrating this monumental scam were simple tools of the trade that we mere mortals are just too dumb to grasp.

The necessary arrogance of the scam artist is still in play. But the victims are slowly awakening from their unconscious role as financial sheep.

[junta]

The big conservatives have a blind eye to these crooks, so boxed in by ideology that law breaking being so obvious is ignored. That gives the Dems leeway to play both sides, populist rants about wealth, millions in contributions from shady people such as Jim Cramer and other GS alum.

[Publius6961]

Man, it only took four posts?

Even the insane are occasionaly right. I, for one, am grateful for the wasted bandwidth.

Your attack on the messenger suggests you are one of the perpetrators.

[grey_whiskers]

I think what we are seeing is the Auric Goldfinger principle:

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy ... Three times is enemy action."

Cheers!

[b359]

Asking for some help understanding the whole concept of short selling. I believe I understand it from the article and I guess fundamentally, if I conceptualize it as a scam, it makes more sense.

Is there a website or book for dummies like me to read to break it down into more examples and layman's language that you would recommend?

Thanks.

[Cvengr]

ping

[Publius6961]

Not surprisingly, pieces of the puzzle are everywhere.
Ignore the voices reminding us that nothing happened, there is nothing to see here, so stop looking, dammit.

The financial types, from top to bottom, are paragons of virtue.

Tiny Piece of the Puzzle

[Liz]

This financial lottery was rigged........and rigged lotteries generally have the fingerprints of George Soros on them if you dig deep enough............

We know that Soros' organization is global....is this the paper trail? No question Obama, Rahm, Soros, and FDIC's Sheila Bair, among others, are colluding in a naked grab to gain complete control of our financial system.

NEED TO KNOW When he became WH COS, hid investment banker Rahm reveal to Ohaha all his ties to financial institutions involved in Obama's trillion-dollar federal bailout?

NEED TO KNOW Did Rahm outline to Ohaha all of his activities on the Freddie Mac Board as Clinton's appointee (involving trillions in mortgages that investment bankers repackaged and sold as securities)?

=============================================

CIRCA Sept 15, 2009 A SHOCKING DISPLAY OF OBAMA'S THIRST FOR POWER---IT MUST BE BE RESISTED AT ALL COSTS.

FOX News' Judge Napolitano notes: if implemented, the unconstitutional proposals Obama urged in his speech to Wall Street will amount to a final coup d’état by banksters, their technocrats and enforcers, at the Federal Reserve (*the privately-held bankster cartel that masquerades as a government agency).

Obama's "reforms" would install a dictatorial regulatory power controlled by international bankers over the entire US economy — down to the local grocer and hot dog vendor on the corner. It will control our lives down to the smallest detail. It will require us to ask permission for the most mundane and routine of financial transactions.

VIDEO LINK AVAILABLE Judge Andrew Napolitano On Obama/Bankster Takeover

===============================================

* EXCERPT http://mises.org/story/1353

The establishment of the Federal Reserve followed lengthy debates and disputes. Central banking was a topic the Congress of 1913 approached gingerly. America had its experiments with early forms of central banks and had repelled them. Interesting to note, too, that the initial charter of the Federal Reserve was good for only twenty years. Permanence was not established until the McFadden Act in 1927. The mistrust of government power still lingered in the air, though its scent was not as strong as it had been in prior generations, it was certainly much thicker than in the climate of warmed over socialism that permeates today's governmental chambers.

Despite this, the Act itself was vague in its purpose as most creations of political compromise tend to be. The essential feature of the Federal Reserve System, though, was its ability to pool the gold reserves of many banks and thereby make it easier for national member banks to issue notes. In simple terms, the Fed would allow banks greater freedom to inflate by giving them greater flexibility in skirting the restraints of the older gold standard.

By Christopher Mayer, commercial lender for Provident Bank in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

===================================

NOTE The Reserve Primary Fund's failure several weeks ago was "a tragedy," said financial analyst Crane Data. A very strange charge.........without details. Could be a con---a diversion---scapegoating in a dedicated scam by the govt.

[Publius6961]

Unfortunately, one-line rants that use ad-hominem attacks don't qualify.

You might note that this poster has consistently pooh poohed the notion that massive fraud beyond imagination has occured, and nobody is rooting out the rats.

Make you want to say "hmmmmmmmmm."

I agree with you; ignore the facts and attack the messenger. Where have we seen this criminal technique before? And almost daily, as if to rub it in.

[combat_boots]

BTTT

[TopQuark]

It appears Taibbi, a charlatan without brains and an honest bone in his body, has acquired quite a following on FR. It’s nice to see the unity of the leftist scum and the supposedly conservative forum...

[TopQuark]

It appears Taibbi, a charlatan without brains and an honest bone in his body, has acquired quite a following on FR. It’s nice to see the unity of the leftist scum and the supposedly conservative forum... MNJohnnie, thank you for your voice of sanity. Beware, however, you’ll be attacked...

[Mr. Jeeves]

The next move, one would hope, is to follow the thread and deal with the culprits, however many they are, wherever they are.

The culprits are our ruling class. They are not going to accept being "dealt with".

[HangnJudge]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/business/17insider.html

Hedge Fund Chief Is Charged With Fraud
By all appearances, Raj Rajaratnam was a self-made billionaire, having built Galleon Group into a giant hedge fund with a specialty in technology companies.

But prosecutors said on Friday that he had profited not from his trading genius but from his Rolodex, and they arrested him on charges of conspiracy and securities fraud in what they called the biggest insider trading scheme ever involving a hedge fund.

[Ron C.]

Since when has anything printed in the leftist Rolling Stone been proven to be great and truthful revelation?

But - this long article is perhaps the best expose of how the lawless political left has moved to dominate private markets.

[Publius6961]

What will it take to keep this thread alive?
Reading it at 6 in the morning was an accident for me. A few hours later and the thread would sink out of sight forever.

The nit-pickers (minor perpetrators in the scam) will undoubtedly choose a few inaccuracies in the article to attempt to prevent us ignorant rubes from actually reading the substance of the long article, the facts contained, and the total absence of rational point by point rebuttal.

[advance_copy]

I’m sure the Obama administration will act fast to correct the problems and prosecute those who committed fraud. /sarc

Folks, this is how Barak Obama got elected. The 2008 financial crisis was orchestrated to get him in office and turn what would have been a moderate recession into a full scale economic collapse.

One thing everyone should realize right now. There is not one share of publicly traded stock that is worth the paper on which it is written. It is all one giant scam. And if you are in the stock market, you are the sucker.

[TopQuark]

Another article by the same author was referenced on this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2301629/posts?page=49#49
My analysis of it may be found here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2301629/replies?c=49

The presently posrted article is much of the same: a rant by a person who does not even understand the words he is using and manipulates both fact and fiction to prove his Marxist views. The man himself has done nothing in his life for more than a year or so. He is much like our current president: moves from place to place without accomplishing nothing but finding enough of an enchanted audience (even here on FR).

[SAJ]

This 'article' conflates a large, suspicious-looking put purchase with the odious practice of naked short selling, virtually as if the author believes (can't say 'thinks', because he clearly doesn't) the two actions are part of the same coin. Worse, that's just one of the flaws in the 'article'.

The number of factual errors contained in this 'article' is laughably high. The point the author attempts to make, which is certainly valid, is obscured beyond recognition by his shoddy research and ad hominem arguments.

[grey_whiskers]

I'll try reading your analysis before further comments on the topic posted.

He is much like our current president: moves from place to place without accomplishing nothing but finding enough of an enchanted audience (even here on FR).

Obama has an enchanted audience on FR??

I hope I'm misreading that!