The Barron's article from the 60 Minutes broadcast about Jon Lebed tonight.
The highlighted sentences are the same ones highlighted on the show:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Puppy Love"
By Alan Abelson
A boy and his dogs.
What could be more heartwarming, more in the hallowed American grain,
more pure Norman Rockwell?
Which, we suppose, is why the story of 15-year-old Jonathan Lebed, of
Cedar Grove, New Jersey, proved so irresistibly touching and instantly
captured the affection of the entire country.
Young Jonathan, as who among us doesn't by this time know, is the winning
and precocious teen stock rigger, and his dogs, of course, were not the usual
quadrupeds answering joyfully to Rover, Spot and Trixie but, rather, alien
creatures bearing names like Man Sang Holdings, Fotoball USA and Havana
Republic. Moreover, except when Little Jon whistled, they preferred to lie
immobile in the deepest recesses of the investment doghouse.
A new kind of Street urchin, Jonathan traded those and similarly uncelebrated
stocks online and, in the process, netted over $270,000 in roughly six
months. Commendably risk-averse, in carrying out his carefully planned
investment strategy, he wisely chose not to trust to the vagaries of the market.
Instead, as the awestruck gang at the SEC reports, Little Jon energetically
helped his investments along by posting on Internet bulletin boards admiring
(and entirely fabricated) descriptions of their attributes, accompanied by
earnest exhortations to buy now before the stocks soared out of sight. In
other words, he adapted standard brokerage-house procedure and put out
wildly bullish Buy recommendations, larded with fancy and void of fact.
What Little Jon seemingly wasn't aware of was that only Chartered Financial
Analysts are legally entitled to engage in the practice. As a result, he earned
the distinction of being the youngest person ever charged in this great country
with securities fraud.
It's not yet clear what clued the super sleuths at the SEC onto the kiddie
scamster, although their suspicions may have been aroused by sightings of
pinups in his bedroom of Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and a local hero,
Robert Brennan.
Little Jon was forced to promise, without admitting he did anything wrong,
never to do it again and to give up his stock-market winnings. Things have
reached a pretty pass when a bright, clean-living lad, instead of sneaking into
R-rated movies or squatting in the nearest alley puffing away on a cadged
cigarette, devotes himself to serious pursuit of the rewards of capitalism and is
punished for his enterprise!
There has been no end of speculation as to the cause of Little Jon's
extraordinary behavior. Some ascribed it to youthful rebellion against the
boredom of small-town suburbia; others blamed the baleful influence of our
society's excessive emphasis on materialism. However, we're privileged to
exclusively reveal the true cause is ... CNBC.
The evidence is overwhelming. His mother concedes that the family TV set is
frequently tuned to the station, and Little Jon himself credits CNBC with first
making his greed glands salivate. Striking confirmation of the results of a
recent exhaustive study by scientists at the Mayo Clinic that found teenage
mice, after several weeks of intense exposure to CNBC, became
extraordinarily agitated whenever a stock was touted within reach of their tiny
ears.
Scarcely a coincidence that immediately after the first mug shot of Little Jon
appeared in the dailies, the FCC began moving to require CNBC to
broadcast periodic warnings of the potential hazard of prolonged viewing.
Too late, alas, to save young Jon and his doting parents from public
embarrassment.
Yet let us not grieve too much for our talented young swindler. Clearly, he
has a great and glowing future in store. In the vanguard of the W (for wired)
generation, he is destined to become a billionaire before he's 20. And we
respectfully urge him, even as the lush offers from Morgan Stanley, Merrill
and Goldman pour in, to elevate his ambitions. Any broth of a boy who can
engineer the perfect pump-and-dump maneuver has the right stuff to one day
preside over this Nasdaq Nation and its ever-expanding, ever-bountiful New
Economy. |
