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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems
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To: Charles Tutt who wrote (39934)12/31/2000 7:06:11 PM
From: QwikSand  Read Replies (1) of 64865
 
Am I the only one crazy enough to think that the NYT article that Ken posted describes a form of theft that should be punishable by law? I probably am.

I know we're very anti-government here on SI and always favor the market regulating itself. Law of the jungle and all that. But it seems to me that the NYT article simply describes a form of securities fraud. Isn't securities fraud against the law? Shouldn't it be against the law?

The clown-killers (for example) and others who did in fact warn the victims for years about their impending fate will argue it was the victims' own fault. Since no guns or other means of coercion were used in the theft, the victims were asking for it. They were victimized because they were stupid, unsophisticated and greedy. And they're not done yet.

And this is of course true. But the question stands: when a "respected" analyst puts a strong buy rating on a stock they know is odds-on to go belly-up in 18 months, and comes up with valuation formulas based on internet page views, just to get some i-banking fees for another branch of their house and in utter disregard of their fiduciary duty toward their retail investment customers, is that securities fraud?

I saw lame-duck SEC Chairman Levitt (who will be gone in a month) on 60 minutes talking about how analysts who fail to mention their employers' banking relationships with the companies they pump on CNBS and CNN should be regulated into doing so. BFD. That's called PAINTING the barn door after the horse has escaped.

I agree with the clown-killers that it's hard to feel much sympathy for the hundreds of thousands or millions of people who got taken. I know I got taken, and I don't want any sympathy; in my own case, there is in fact no one to blame but me. But I'm a retired rich person with the educational and financial resources to have known better, and I just lost some fun-money. There are a lot of hard-working people who have neither of those things, whose lives were seriously screwed up by listening to Wall Street crooks that the entire media establishment proclaimed to be "experts" tell them that they should invest in garbage. The pseudo-investors were greedy and stupid, there's no question about it. But still, if they were knowingly talked into pissing away their money by a rich and powerful gang of thieves hiding behind a cloak of establishment respectability that few people could see through, is that securities fraud?

Opinions welcome.

--QS
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