PAY FOR PLAY JOURNALISTS: C. AUSTIN BURRELL
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.5375/pub_detail.asp
Exclusive: Predator Pay-For-Play Journalists And Their Ilk: Who Pays And Who Benefits?
C. Austin Burrell
I have watched the conduct of a figurative nest of journalists/bloggers/bashers/critics in a series of attacks on the targets of short raids many times over the past 15 years. The questions that never seem to be answered are the most basic: How do these parties pay their bills? Who is paid or not paid to the benefit of what organization, entity, or agency?
If you think so many man hours could be devoted completely pro bono to analysis of the balance sheets and management of mostly small companies, I encourage you to look deeper.
I have watched the unrelenting attacks against companies who have dared to challenge these self-described vermin in the courts. Without exception, the same attackers’ names appear repeatedly in such a consistent pattern that it cannot be a random occurrence. I have seen the work of Internet sleuths tracking the patterns of relationships between these journalists and notorious market manipulators, including everyone from major hedge funds to a community of professional journalists, unpaid web site and message board bloggers, compensated bashers, criminal rigged research organizations, and eventually to the federal agencies we depend on for oversight of our markets and the manipulators to regularly savage our assets.
The question “Quo Bene?†is older than our society. Thousands of years ago, corruption was cited that was tracked back to its sources by the simple method of looking first at who benefited from the acts of corruption. This was true from Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, to modern times. The “contracts†between these parties track to not only involved cash considerations, but also to professional support, school access for related parties, legal partnerships, and more. Predation consumes assets as its cost of doing business, and those assets must come from some source.
Why haven’t those in charge asked these questions? Indeed, the SEC and FINRA have protected their related external supporting parties to this predation from any fair, open and balanced inquiry hundreds of times over the past decade. Why is this so?
Our Congress has been little different. Look at the not so simple protection afforded to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Look at the protection afforded the support of ACORN by an unending list of liberal, secular progressive legislators and regulators. Can’t you see the patterns?
I have followed the slanderous work of many of the so-called top journalist and bloggers in their never-ending attacks on certain key companies, including Overstock, Nanopierce, Taser International, and more. In most of these attacks, there is a clear beneficiary that attaches to the bashing directed at the targets, most commonly from short sellers and/or corporate raiders.
The list of questionable bashers includes many whose ethics have been repeatedly questioned. They include financiers and conventional bankers, broker-dealers, private equity firms, day traders, speculators, and other entities that have made a very nice living, thank you, by acting as the facilitators of the shorting industry – much like shovel salesmen to gold miners in the California, Colorado and Alaska Gold Rush. Indeed, on past examination, many of the great fortunes in energy accrued to the oil-field services and other technical service providers, such as Halliburton and Schlumberger.
If you agree there is a problem, then we all see the need to resolve the situation – whether or not some of the worst will claim, typically, that they are innocent victims themselves, and that they could never imagine that what they were doing was contributing to, aiding and abetting an on-going criminal enterprise, RICO at its optimum and most disgraceful.
I have reported this activity to the IRS for its most egregious aspect, which is willful and criminal tax evasion on a scale without precedent in Global History. Attributing only 20 percent of the last two raids on our markets in equities only, I come up with a number exceeding $14 trillion moved offshore without tax consequence. And this does not include the amounts stolen from our currency value, bonds, physicals, futures, forwards, commodities and other derivatives, including the largest derivative of all, credit default swaps, now approaching $700 trillion in face value.
The GDP of the United States stands at $14 trillion and the GNP at $15 trillion. It is from this basin that all wealth and public expenditure flows under a rational scenario. If you add our national debt to the net present value of our forward entitlement liabilities, you are looking at a total exceeding $105 trillion. From where does the American public think this is going to come?
This math doesn’t work, period. We are making false promises to future generations that can never be paid for except with our country’s future and freedom. This isn’t something that requires an MBA or Ph.D. to understand. Unless draconian action is taken to reel in this insanity, this country is headed into economic collapse that could parallel that of Haiti after the earthquake, with a currency of less value than the Peso, and an unprecedented condition of civil disobedience never before seen in World History. Tell your elected representatives you have had enough of misdirection, half-truths and out-right lies. Yes, Lies. The word every journalist and politician hates will be the cause of their end.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor C. Austin Burrell is a corporate finance generalist with over 30 years of Wall Street and related experience. He was a senior derivatives specialist and development stage company investment banker for more than 35 years on Wall Street.He is a 1968 Graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and a graduate of the Army’s Finance Officer Advanced Course.
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