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Video: SEC Ignoring Fraud At Big Caps, Focuses On Easier Small Caps – Matt Taibbi

Posted by AGORACOM at 10:34 AM on Thursday, May 31st, 2012

I’ll be the first guy to support weeding out small-cap fraud – but I’ll also be the first guy to tell you that big cap fraud is:

  • Far worse
  • Goes unpunished
I believe there are several reasons big caps go unpunished, including deeper pockets, better connections and whopper sized embarrassment for regulators that should have caught things sooner.  Of course, this has always been my belief and instinct, with no evidence to back it up … until now.
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone wrote an article last year titled Is The SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?  It was incredibly damning, which only further infuriated everyone who shares my dismay at the fact nobody on Wall Street has been punished for filling their pockets at the risk of the entire global financial system.
If you didn’t get a chance to read the article (a must read), here is a short recent interview with Matt and Elliot Spitzer on the subject.

60 Minutes Fries Wall Street / SEC / Justice Department ….. Sarbox Officially A Joke

Posted by AGORACOM at 12:04 AM on Monday, December 5th, 2011

(CBS News) Two whistleblowers offer a rare window into the root causes of the subprime mortgage meltdown. Eileen Foster, a former senior executive at Countrywide Financial, and Richard Bowen, a former vice president at Citigroup, tell Steve Kroft the companies ignored their repeated warnings about defective, even fraudulent mortgages. The result, experts say, was a cascading wave of mortgage defaults for which virtually no high-ranking Wall Street executives have been prosecuted.

I blankly stared at my keyboard thinking of ways to succinctly articulate my thoughts on this matter for 10 minutes. I couldn’t do it. Not without embarking on a 1,000 word rant.

All I can say is that Wall Street will burn. That isn’t anger. It isn’t vengeance. It is simply the clear path upon which Wall Street has set itself upon.

The full 60 Minutes page on this story can be found here.

The full 60 Minutes video can be found in the two clips below.

VIDEO: Betrayed – The Story Of Aurelian Resources

Posted by AGORACOM at 4:12 PM on Thursday, April 28th, 2011

With Century Mining Shareholders leading yet another small-cap shareholder revolt against a “friendly” (definition: predatory) takeover, I am reminded of the very first online revolt by shareholders of Aurelian Resources. Despite forcing Kinross to renew its offer 4 times (a record for a “friendly” takeover?), Aurelian was acquired – BUT not before shareholders made headlines, videos and history.

Here are a couple of my favourite videos:

This is the story of Aurelian Resources, and how everything went horribly wrong when the company’s management sold its shareholders down the river.

This is the opening title from The Battle for Aurelian Resources, in which the Rebel shareholders from Agoracom take on the Evil Kinross Empire, which has all the money in the world

This was Hitler’s reaction when he was told of the Kinross Gold offer to buy

*The Most Popular Of All Aurelian Videos With Over 17,000 Views

Canada Stockwatch – “The National Enquirer Of The Resource Industry” (James West)

Posted by AGORACOM at 11:46 AM on Thursday, March 17th, 2011

We have a lot of competitors in this space and I generally like them all … but to say I despise everything about Canada Stockwatch is an understatement.  Hence, why I took such pleasure in the following quote by James West, which came via this post on AGORACOM.

Golden Hope Mines Update

Another good company with lousy shareholders, Golden Hope suffers from negative press from the National Enquirer of the resource industry, Canada Stockwatch (currently the defendant in two libel suits by TSX listed companies), and newsletter writer Brent Cook ( he told subscribers to sell Colossus at$0.40….its now trading in the $7 – 8 range.). So fools with an audience can do immense damage. The company continues to methodically execute on its strategy of attempting to find the limits of the mineralized band that thus far extends along a potential 20 kilometres of strike – a strategy being emulated by Bowmore Exploration Ltd. (TSX.V:BOW), a TSX company with directors and management in common with Osisko Mining Corp. (TSX:OSK) It is worth noting that Osisko had a very hard time finding believers in its story on the Canadian Malartic mine potential. The stock bumped along below $0.50 from the period of 2002 to 2006 as people essentially laughed at CEO Sean Roosen and company. Similar stories are to be found throughout the history of mine and resource development. Frank J. Callaghan, who I met with on his Barkerville Gold story, himself the model of tenacity and a serial target of bad press. For all these folks, vindication comes in the form of success.

The confusion between the two is so prevalent that even clicking on their logos above creates confusion. Click on them to have some fun.

Regards,

George

Am I Angry About SEC Letting Lehman Walk? Fucking Right I Am

Posted by AGORACOM at 1:55 PM on Saturday, March 12th, 2011

I’m not going to add much more than what has already been said below via ZeroHedge and then my responses Via Twitter.  The only question that remains, is whether Canadian Securities Commissions are going to pursue Lehman Brothers for the mega losses inflicted on Canadians as a result of Lehman’s acts to clearly mislead investors. If not, why not?

ZeroHedge Article Excerpt: (Click For Full Size Image)

My Responses Via Twitter:

No Insider Trading On Fuqi Int’l Today ($FUQI)… None Whatsoever

Posted by AGORACOM at 12:50 PM on Friday, March 4th, 2011

BREAKING: Silver Price Manipulation Lawsuits Begin. Expect More To Come

Posted by AGORACOM at 7:31 PM on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Via Zerohedge:

Yesterday’s announcement by CFTC commissioner Bart Chilton that he was fully aware of fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control silver prices may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back on precious metal manipulation. Today, Brian Beatty and Peter Laskaris (Southern District Court of New York, cases 10-08146, and 10-01857) sued the two firms at the very top of the precious metal manipulation pyramid: JPMorgan and HSBC. The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, alleges that “between in or about March 2008 and continuing through the present, Defendants have combined, conspired and agreed to restrain trade in, fix, and manipulate prices of silver futures and options contracts traded in this District on the COMEX division of the NYMEX. Defendants thereby have violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C ¶1. Also during the Class Period, individual Defendants have intentionally acted to manipulate prices of COMEX silver futures and options contracts. Such conduct violates Section 9(a) of the Commodity Exchange Act, 7 U.S.C. ¶13b.” And so, the tidal wave of lawsuits by all those who may have ever lost money trading precious metals against JPM et al begins.

The lawsuit alleges that the means by which JPM and HSBC manipulated the market is as follows:

  • Defendants have effected their foregoing restraint of trade and manipulation through diverse means. These means themselves include lawful and unlawful acts.
  • Defendants have held large positions in silver futures and silver options.
  • Defendant have held a concentrated and substantial amount of the open interest in silver futures contracts
  • Defendants have made large trades at key times.
  • Defendants or others have made large “spoof” orders which appeared on the trading screens; “spoofing” is the submission of a large order which is not executed but influences prices and is then withdrawn before it reasonably can be executed.
  • Defendants have communicated with and/or signalled one another their trades

Continue To Zerohedge article to see actual lawsuit filing.

This may be the first of such lawsuits but don’t expect this to be the last.  Across the USA, bigger and badder law firms are preparing their own lawsuits.

Further, don’t expect this to end with silver.  GATA, Sinclair, Sprott, Ron Paul et al will be vindicated in their assertions that gold too has been manipulated down for years.

Regards,
George

CNBC “House Of Cards”. How Wall Street Fucked America and The World. Why They Will Do It Again

Posted by AGORACOM at 1:34 PM on Monday, September 6th, 2010

The growing criticism of CNBC amongst financial bloggers and commentators (including me) is growing and warranted.  Too much cheer leading, too much emphasis on entertaining us, too little guest analysis beyond short octobox/decabox sound bites.

Having said that, they have some great talent over there and one of those people is David Faber, who put together the 90-minute must see documentary.  I’ve embedded it below.  I don’t care how busy you are, put the family to bed and find the time to watch it.  It will not only tell you how Wall Street greed fucked the global financial system – I believe it demonstrates why Wall Street greed is in the process of doing it again.

After all, no Wall Street CEO has gone to jail or even been forced to payback the hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses generated during Sub-Prime / CDO scam, so you count on them looking after themselves all over again during QE1 and the soon to be released sequel QE2.

Skip a movie, skip a game, skip anything that won’t arm you with the information you need to potentially protect your financial future.  Watch this video, absorb the information, never trust Wall Street again and do what you must to protect yourself.

CNBC presents the defining story of our time. Correspondent David Faber investigates the origins of the global economic crisis and the events leading to the most devastating financial collapse since the Great Depression.

04/23/10: Wall Street 2 Money Never Sleeps

Posted by AGORACOM at 9:30 PM on Monday, February 1st, 2010

“Someone reminded me that I once said ‘Greed Is Good’.  Now it seems it is legal”

We Are Now In Pump and Dump 2.0 – And It’s Bigger Than Ever

Posted by AGORACOM at 5:46 PM on Thursday, January 7th, 2010

My friend and respected colleague, Timothy Sykes, tweeted this earlier today:

ECOB Sykes

That tweet triggered a post I had seen the day before from Cameron Fous who I’ve been following for some time really and seems to have a lot of success – almost too much success for my comfort – but there is no denying he is generating some great returns.

ECOB Fous

In fact, I was considering using this as my first ever Fous trade but it was already at $0.74 and I figured the fast money had been made.  Boy was I wrong, as the stock rocketed over $1 on huge volume.  Obviously, this is one massive promotion so I quickly checked Google and Twitter to see what part they are playing in the matter.   First, I punched “ECOB” into Google.  Look at how many promoters are working on the deal!

ECOB Pump

Then I searched ECOB on Twitter.  Again, the number of newsletter types is simply staggering:

ECOB Twitter

Folks, we are officially in Pump and Dump 2.0.  The difference is that promoters are being far less intrusive.  I’m not seeing promotions role into my fax machine and Inbox.  Rather, they’re using search engines and Tweets (plus other tools I didn’t take the time to look up) – both of which require the investor to act (searching or subscribing) in order to be part of the promotion.

This leads me to believe that investors are actually choosing to become a part of the promotion – which is more like a flash pyramid scheme – and they are OK with it.  Did it work?  Take a look at the chart below.  Will it work for long?  I think Pump and Dump 2.0 has legs and will be with us for a while.  It’s fast money and it works.  Not everyone will win – but gamblers and speculators don’t expect to win every time. They just need the action and some wins along the way.

The best part is that guys like Timothy Sykes are actually feasting off these promotions/pyramids by shorting them once they inevitably burn out.  Tim hates the promoters – and they probably hate him – but the fact of the matter is they’ve created this twisted promo-to-short ecosystem that rely on each other.

Tim, I hope you can weigh in here with some thoughts.  Here’s the chart.  Wild stuff.

ECOB Chart

Regards,

George