"go with your gut feeling"
Here is what my gut is telling me, as someone who was successful in commercial real estate in the NYC metro area, has been in the THC trade for 30 years, and grew up in the heart of the conservative financial community.
Alan Hammer joined the board in January of this year. He is not some schmuck off the street looking to make a killing on a penny stock. He is surrounded by lawyers and accountants who are among the best in NY. There is NO DOUBT that Phot was completely vetted and dissected by his legal/finance team before he lent his name to this endeavor. If you think otherwise then please, put the bong down.
The .02 stock grants were on the books before he got on board. If it was a glaring SEC violation do you think he would get on the bus? Why would he expose himself as a director with fiduciary responsibility?
The selling of shares at the start of April by Hunt and Sterlings wife have also been raised here as the smoking gun for the suspension. It is totally acceptable for Hunt to cash out a small percentage of his shares one year after selling his business, period. Yes he had tax liabilities, and yes, he was entitled to see compensation for competing the deal.
As for Sterlings wife, this will sound strange to many of you but $3 million is not that much money in the grand scheme of things. I realize many of you dream of that kind of money in the bank as do I, but having been around the finance and real estate community my whole life I can tell you the reality is it is small change. Given the market cap, and the parabolic trajectory of this stock, it is like crashing your Lamborghini to stop and pick up a $20 bill. I've heard the argument that it was a last minute dump before the SEC came and closed the party and while I have no facts one way or the other I tend to believe it was a sale long in the making given the first PR after the suspension.
My gut also tells me that unlike many people here who believe in the commercial future of ganja, the SEC and FINRA probably don't employ many people who share our view, and in fact are most likely dead set against it. Look no farther than the head of the DEA, who is still actively campaigning for full prohibition. I have little doubt the regulatory suits at the SEC share her view.
Lastly, I have seen first hand our governments role in the drug trade. I sat in a sound studio in NYC in 1983 with a brick of hash stamped Kabul across it. I wondered then how it made its way in front of me, until the Iran Contra affair hit the news. You think it is a coincidence there is a heroin epidemic in the US after ten years of war in Afghanistan? There are powers that be that have an interest in who controls these markets. It is naive to think otherwise.
GLTA today
"Shipping powders back and forth, black goes south and white comes north" John Perry Barlow 1982
