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.

You want to argue that the stock dropped to $1 because of events subsequent to Bush's sale. But the stock dropped to 2 and something with the release of info about the extent of losses - and then immediately rebounded for mysterious reasons. What reasons?

Gee, I dunno, maybe because someone was willing to pay that much for the stock?

I'd be inclined to say that BUSH was the foolish one because HE didn't hang on to the stock until it made 8.00 per share.

Exactly. And RDavis ought to be a lot more curious about how Hillary managed to turn $1,000 into $100,000 the one and only time she tried investing in cattle futures. That's a real trick! Or about how Terry McAuliffe turned $100,000 investment in Global Crossing into $18 million right before they screwed their investors and went bankrupt.

"In fact the stock had dropped from 4 when Bush sold to 3 on the day the bad news was made public - then 2 3/8 at the end of the day. Why the sudden rise the next day? Exactly!

Now: WHY AREN'T THE DEMOCRATS (who claim to be so high and mighty - though illegally directly collecting White House bribes from foreign countries the whole time Clinton was President (and Bill was screwing around) - investigating who BOUGHT it/who SOLD it THOSE TWO DAYS?

Could it be: A Democrat donor/briber sold it?

After all, Anderson IS Lieberman's biggest donor.

My current understanding is that the buyer has chosen secrecy and has every right to do so. Harken and the SEC have relevent info but won't release it unless Bush requests it - which so far he has refused to do.

As far as I'm concerned the paper trail is dead - unless something new surfaces. The Bahrain oil lease looked valuable in 1990 so the buyer may have simply had a different view of the situation than the rest of the market. Bush knew that earnings would decrease by 4 to 9 million dollars because he had a flash report and was on the audit committee. Only the executive committee knew that the true figure was 23 million dollars. It seems virtually impossible to me that Bush wasn't notified informally or indirectly but that can't be proved. So there you are.

Until that happens, some of us with the more cynical nature will continue to mistrust that assertion.

You mean the DNC won't stop beating this dead horse until it begins to stink, which it does at this late date but the DNC is so desperate for something to smear Bush with that they can't let it go, even when it has no political usefulness anymore. Idiots.

There is nothing illegal, unethical or dishonest about this Bush-Harkin stock sale and these grasping, hysterical attempts to somehow, someway make President Bush look like he may have done something wrong just won't fly, no matter how many cut and paste anti-Bush hatchet-job articles you cut and paste here from DU.

The only people who buy into this idea that a throughly investigated 12-year-old stock sale was somehow shady and/or unethical are those who despise President George W. Bush. The rest of America is already well on the way to getting bored. Shouting accusations with no basis doesn't work as well as it used to.

Democrats who think the public is in any way believing that President Bush is suddenly morphing into the criminal Bill Clinton because of a legal stock sale in 1990 are delusional.

Keep it up, you'll lose even bigger in November. Bush isn't Clinton, he didn't steal, cheat or lie about this non-issue, no laws were broken, no documents shredded, nothing went missing and any reasonable person can easily see that. Except Democrats.

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