deepcapture.com An illuminating, informative insight into our financial mess

[sixmile]

Deep Capture is a website of investigative journalism examining the growing threat to our financial system posed by illegal naked short selling founded by Patrick Byrne, CEO of overstock.com, and heavily contributed to by former WSJ writer Mark Mitchell. The site delves into the underbelly of Wall Street and its incestuous relationships to regulatory agencies like the SEC and the DTCC. It is enlightening, frightening, easy-to-read, and is a must for any DU'ers who have money invested in the stock market.

From Mark Mitchell: "I have maintained all along that naked short selling was not a hard problem to solve: it was just a hard problem to solve without seeing about 20 rich guys get their asses handed to them. And because they were rich and well-connected, efforts to persuade the federal government to enforce the law were stopped dead in their tracks.

Somewhere in the middle of 2008, after the horses bolted from the barn, the barn collapsed, the barn burned, and the barn’s ashes scattered to the four winds, the federal government decided to close the barn door."

http://www.deepcapture.com/

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. Is Symbolman still around?

This sounds like a job for Symbolman!

To enter our $75,000 "Crack the Wall Street Cover-up!" contest read to the bottom of this (very long) story.

First prize is $30k


..and, lords knows he needs the money, and would be a great candidate for this contest!


Thanks for posting this link, sixmile! Am bookmarking and keeping an eye on it! :hi:

[Double T]

2. wall street; close one barn door and another immediately opens.

wall street represents perpetual corruption. Y2K, dot.com bust, energy price gouging, commodities price gouging, health care price gouging, etc.

[sixmile]

3. If the evils of greed only affected the perpetrators I would not care

But they affect the entire planet leaving a permanent 80% of the Earth's population scratching the dirt for grubs.

[Double T]

4. grubs are becoming endangered and fewer as the population continues to explode.

[sixmile]

5. So I should instruct my hedge fund to go long grubs?

And short humanity?:(

[Double T]

6. Yep. That'll work............

toward our demise.

[Waiting For Everyman]

7. Naked shorts=classic mafia bustouts. Fantastic site K&R. Thanks.

Still reading. I'm not in the stock market, and never was, but I can't believe that nobody caught on to this.

What I can't understand is, why can't real shares of stock be separated from phantom shares? Aren't stock certificates numbered?

[ContinentalOp]

8. Wow, that was really confusing. I think the CEO of Overstock started this website right?

At first I thought you were accusing the CEO of Overstock of short selling.

[sixmile]

15. He (Patrick Byrne) founded and funded the site's excellent journalism

as a substitute for ABCNNBCBS, the gambling channel CNBC, and the right wing-controlled rags including the WSJ and IBD.
He is a believer in investing, not shorting. But shorting, mind you, is how most of the wealth of this country has been lost over many years, especially since the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the uptick rule (thank Phil Gramm).

[Waiting For Everyman]

9. Anybody who lost money in the market needs to read that.

The most amazing thing I've read in I don't know how long.

[Karenina]

10. ...

[HamdenRice]

11. What worse is that the credit default swap issuers cover by short selling

That is the biggest danger in the system -- namely, that credit default swaps must be covered by dynamic hedging, which in essence, is short selling.

The executives of each bank that has gone down, including the banking catastrophe in Iceland, has commented that some group somewhere forced them out of business through massive short selling.

[burythehatchet]

12. and here's the money shot

b) Steinhardt morphed his hedge fund into a solo act: “Steinhardt Partners.” He also morphed politically: originally a Goldwater Republican, in the 1980’s Steinhardt played a leading role in the development of the new “Democrat Leadership Council,” and became its chairman in 1985. The DLC is the centrist Democrat group out of which Bill Clinton emerged onto the national stage. This brought him into close proximity with Marty Peretz, who parlayed his skill in marrying a Singer Sewing Machine heiress into becoming publisher of The New Republic (which I believe he has since sold, though he retains editorial control).

[Danascot]

13. Great find

I cross-posted this over on the Stock Market Watch thread. There are a lost of folks who follow SMW who will want to know about deepcapture.com. We've been certain that this sort of manipulation has been going on in the shady world of hedge funds but Byrne names names and provides intricate detail. Thanks for posting. (and recommended)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3646824

[truedelphi]

14. Here's a professional writer saying what I imagine many of us secretly believe

From a story read on above URL:
"He concludes that Madoff “is just the beginning. I don’t know, of course, more than you, but…I think he has in fact indicted himself to cause prosecutors to investigate the entire corrupt system.”

Whatever the real story, it is clear that market makers are accessories to a scheme that is much, much bigger than Madoff"

[sixmile]

16. As someone who worked for eight years in the business

on both the trading and market-making side, and the retail brokerage side I can unequivocally say that the corruption is endemic and deep, throughout the entire market.

[truedelphi]

17. When you have the time, can you do up an entire OP based on

Your experiences and your reflections?

I knew the housing market bubble was rather weird. M forgot to show up for our previewing a house that was cheap by California standards but located down the street from the Russian River. (I imagine some properties near volcanoes might be as risky.)

It was selling for $ 175K. I made around 21K that year (1999) the husband made most of our income then.

When he didn't show, the realtors said not to worry - I could have the loan in my name (Despite my making about 10% of that 170K.) Then they started reminding me of how under-inflated my income statement was. "Didn't rich aunts give
$ 2K a year at Christmas? Wasn't there a mid-sized inheritance coming soon?" Etc.


I walked out of there real fast. But for me, it was a foreshadowing of what was to ocme.

[sixmile]

18. The written word is not my strongest suit

Especially when it comes to relating experiences. But I could write some anecdotes of my best and worst days trading, selling and training future stockbrokers on the market.
If I could leave you with one pearl of wisdom, one important lesson regarding stock picking from my past it would be to do the opposite of what your broker tells you, and you'll likely make money.

[truedelphi]

19. Heh. Heh.

One thing to do when you have a great story but don't consider yourself a great writer - get out a tape recorder and just tape your oral version of the story.


I was floored when a friend who claims she can't write a coherent sentence gave a six minute speech that was brilliant.
"How can you ever say you are no good as a writer."

"Well that wasn't written - I spoke it into a tape player and then memorized it off the player!"

[sixmile]

20. That's why I was a broker and not an analyst

I could talk your ear off about xyz, but it would take me weeks to make it coherent on paper. Plus it's more exciting to orate than write.