NO QUARTER FOR CORRUPTION (Focussing on The Fed./FRBS)

[Telephonics]

60 Minutes: From Joe Mainstreet to Daddy Warbucks
By Mark Faulk
March 26, 2006


Another week, another tepid news report. This was how I phrased it two days ago, as excitement spread about the 60 Minutes “expose’” that aired tonight:


In other news, CBS is airing a segment on 60 Minutes this Sunday about hedge fund SAC and Gradient Analytics concerning stock manipulation accusations involving Overstock.com. In this writer’s opinion, it will most likely be another “isolated incident” story, just as NBC Dateline turned their “major expose” into a 10 minute segment about a single company, Eagletech Communications, and ignored the larger issue altogether. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that there will be no more than a passing reference to naked short selling at all, and that that will accompanied by a lame joke about the word “naked” and a slightly embarrassed giggle from a female commentator. Any takers? Our only hope is that Patrick Byrne is involved in the segment, because, given more than 30 seconds of air time, he will address the larger issue of fail to delivers and stock counterfeiting. Good for him.


As it turns out, I was being overly optimistic at that. It was indeed just another “isolated incident” story (with one notable exception), although a well-presented one, but they didn’t even mention naked short selling, stock counterfeiting, or fail-to-delivers AT ALL, and the only mention of Overstock was a cursory, “It’s worth noting that Camelback, now known as Gradient, is being sued by another company on charges that parallel the Biovail case.”


In all fairness, the 60 Minutes piece was far superior to the watered-down Dateline whitewash, and it painted a fairly unflattering picture of SAC Hedge Fund owner Steven Cohen as Daddy Warbucks, showing an aerial view of his massive mansion, complete with outdoor hockey rink, on his 14 acre walled estate, and pointing out his $500 million salary from 2005. They also showed him to be as secretive as the hedge fund industry itself. Of course, this is the same man once called by Business Week “The Most Powerful Man on Wall Street You’ve Never Heard of”.


Read the rest of this commentary at:


http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/LettersToEditor/1028.html