Posted on 07/14/2002 3:51:42 AM PDT by Lecie
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:45 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Why Investigation of Bush's Stock Sale 'Just Didn't Pan Out'
WASHINGTON -- What Lisa Meulbroek best remembers about the day in 1990 when she handed her four-page report to two young enforcement lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission was their disappointment.
Meulbroek was working in the SEC's Office of Economic Analysis at the time. Fresh out of MIT, she had just done her doctoral dissertation on insider stock trading. The SEC lawyers, excited about a hot insider-trading case they had been pursuing for several months, had asked her to analyze trading patterns in a small Texas oil-and-gas exploration company.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"By the end of that year, Harken's stock had indeed tanked, selling as low as $1 a share. But in the interim, Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, Bush's father was mobilizing for the Persian Gulf War, and the only ace in the hole for Harken was an exclusive contract to explore for oil off the coast of Bahrain--in the heart of the war zone."
The 1992 U.S. News article (notice the date). While all this may be legal it smells pretty bad.
But, since rd seems concerned this is a political issue, let's look at how the public will look at it:
.........I'm sorry, what were we talking about?""Bush sold stock to fund his purchase of a baseball team, the stock then make the buyer a 100% profit in the next year. No out of work single mothers, no retirees without a pension, no corporate execs taking the fifth in front of Congress.......
Legally, ethically, and politically, there is nothing here.
"By 1986, Spectrum 7 also began to sink. In the best tradition of the deus ex machina, however, yet another angel descended to rescue the son of the sitting Vice President. A Republican Party fundraiser named Alan Quasha swooped in and acquired Spectrum 7, incorporating it into his bizarre little oil business, Harken Oil. Bush and his partners were given $2 million in Harken stock for the deal, and named as special 'consultants.' "------ http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:FEWlbPqrircC:www.willpitt.com/KingMidas.htm+Alan+Quasha&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
"Alan Quasha, a Harken director and former chair of the company, is the son of attorney William Quasha, who defended figures in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal in Australia. Closed in 1980, Nugan Hand was not only tied to drug-money laundering and U.S. intelligence and military circles, but also to the CIA's covert backing for a "constitutional coup" in Australia that caused the fall of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam." ----- http://mediafilter.org/caq/BushFamilyPreys.html
Alan Quasha
Director
Mr. Quasha is Chairman of the Board Directors of Hanover Direct, Inc. a position he has held since 1991. He also serves as a Director of NAR Management, Inc. and of Richemont, S.A., an affiliate of Richement-Switzerland. From 1980 until September 1991, he was a partner in the New York City law firm of Quasha Wessley & Schneider. -------- http://www.i-behavior.com/management.htm
Bahrain..yes...the word had gone out on the contract deal and Bush thought he would selling into good news, but some of the areas explored by Harken came up dry. I think, and the operative words being, "I think" this was covered in an article for National Review written by Byron York. I've read so many articles I can't remember where one ends and the other begins...:)
Harken acquired the Bahrein lease by beating out Amoco. Obviously that happened because Bahrein wanted to make points with the President. I don't know how investors reacted to that. Nor am I sure when this happened, or how much knowledge of Saddam's plans was available at the time, or how investors reacted to that knowledge. The Times says all this remains a mystery - but who knows how much investigation has been done into this aspect.
?/?/1990 Harken wins Bahrein lease
6/22/1990 Bush stock sale.....HEC at close $4.
8/2/1990 Iraq invades Kuwait
8/20/1990 Harken announces $23 million loss.....HEC at open $3. HEC at close $2 3/8.
8/21/1990................................HEC at close $3
?/12/1990................................HEC at close $1
1/12/1991 Congress authorizes use of force
?/?/1991 dry hole in Bahrein oil lease
I can find no explanation for movements of the stock price subsequent to announcement of the $23 loss. I tried going to the Harken site and doing a study of the price by date but could make no sense of the figures. Perhaps someone else can do better.
Ask yourself this question: when you buy or sell shares of stock, who is the counter party? Can anyone identify anyone who sold them shares or bought shares from them in any publicly traded company? Anyone?
A question is being asked by some: ” was someone doing Bush a favor by buying his stock?” Well, we have the testimony of the broker who solicited Bush’s sale. He was trying to fill an order for an institution and approached members of the board. Other members who he approached first did not want to sell. Bush did, but first wanted to check to see if he could legally sell. He could and he did. If someone was trying to do Bush a favor, why approach other board members first? And what was the favor the buyer did for Bush? Did Bush get a better price than the market price? Has anyone claimed this?
The comment that Harkin was a “thinly traded stock” is very telling. A thinly traded stock will move up or down in large percentage increments if large blocks are eithr being bought or sold. That is why a thinly traded stock is volatile and can move 25% per day easily depending on whether there are more buyers than sellers. It also explains why the institution looking to buy the shares was looking for a large block that could be traded at the market, rather than putting in market orders for several hundred thousand shares and having its own demand pump up the price artificially - and temporarily.
Of course, after the criminal conspiracy that was the Clinton administration has made everyone more than a little suspicious about skullduggery in high places. But that is no reason for bizarre conspiracy theories or references to vague “good old boy networks” that derive from watching re-runs of “Dallas.” There are “good old boy” networks, but they are the kind that operated out of the hinterlands of Arkansas and Louisiana (and parts of New York). And crossing them can get you dead.
As this thread goes on I see that Bush is in cahoots with drug smugglers, money launderers, lawyers (the scum), and people who toppled the Australian government. That kind of over-the-top hysteria really is not persuasive unless you, too, have been abducted by space aliens for weird sexual experiments. We even have posters who have an in with the government of Bahrein and can tell us, from personal knowledge why that government gives development contracts to one company instead of another. Golly, I wish I had those connections, life would be simpler.
Change Obviously to probably...or come up with some other likely explanation given that... a)Harken was a small, not very successful company...b)Amoco was the opposite...c)Knoweledgeable people were extremely surprised at the outcome and said so.
Whenever management walks away with a fortune while stockholders, creditors, and employees lose jobs, pensions, and value one can expect questions about legitimacy and legality. Also, I live in old mining country. Out here it is common knowledge that, often as not, what was being mined was investors. I'm sure nothing has changed.
So the question is was Bush's stock sale legitimate...or did he benefit from insider info...or did some angel buy him out of a bad situation. Analysis of the sale will, hopefully, provide an answer.
The Broker knew who it was that "wanted to buy a block of shares"
"He was trying to fill an order for an institution and approached members of the board." ------
And to THIS DAY that "Institution" needs to remain anonymous? That Institution went SEEKING Harken shares out of the Clear Blue whatever, had to have a Large Block of Shares, and was just playing a Hunch? Doesn't fit for me!
"There are “good old boy” networks, but they are the kind that operated out of the hinterlands of Arkansas and Louisiana (and parts of New York). And crossing them can get you dead."-------
And Texas is exempt from that "curiosity", huh?
"I absolutely had no idea and would not have sold it had I known,"
George W. Bush - The News during his 1994 campaign for governor. - Source: The Dallas Morning News - By Mark Curriden - September 7, 2000 - Article: Records Show What Bush Knew Before Stock Sale.
Harken Papers Offer Details on Bush Knowledge
"The SEC's general counsel at the time was James R. Doty, who represented Bush in his purchase of the Texas Rangers. Doty recused himself. Bush was represented in the SEC case by Jordan, who had been law partners with Doty and now is Bush's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The SEC chairman was Richard C. Breeden, nominated by Bush's father."
Some links and reading material courtesy of Uncle Bill on another thread.
"There is nothing rotten in the accounting profession."
Harvey Pitt, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission - January, 2002 - SOURCE.
I watched part of his spiel on MTP this morning. I believe he's an "unrepentant" designated fall guy. Just playing that "delay, delay, delay" game that was fine tuned/perfected by the Clinton Mob. :-)
"Bush, who sat on Harken's audit committee, has said he did not know about the extent of the losses later reported for the quarter in which he sold the stock. If he had, he could have been subject to charges that he profited from insider information. "I absolutely had no idea and would not have sold had I known," he told the Dallas Morning News in 1994."
Let's see, Bush has an MBA, I heard.
Wendy Gramm of ENRON Fame ---
"Wendy Gramm of Washington, D.C. received her bachelor of arts degree from Wellesley College in 1966 and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1971.
Dr. Gramm is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and Director of the Regulatory Studies Program of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia.
Before joining the Mercatus Center, Gramm served as chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988-1993. She was administrator for Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget from 1985-1988, the Executive Director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief and Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Economics. Dr. Gramm was on the research staff of the Institute for Defense Analyses. She started her economics career at Texas A&M University, where she taught economics for over eight years. Dr. Gramm has an extensive publication record including articles in the American Economic Review and the Journal of Law and Economics.
An economist, Dr. Gramm serves on the National Advisory Board of the National Federation of Independent Business' Legal Foundation and is a member of the boards of Enron, Invesco Funds, Longitude, State Farm Insurance Companies and Independent Women's Forum. She has received several awards, including Financial Executive of the Year from the Financial Management Association."
Maybe she and jr. just need to get a little more education in money matters, huh? Or maybe they should SUE for complete refunds on the cost of all the education they DID get!
Or maybe this IS what they learned.
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