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To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (146299)	1/25/2002 6:55:22 PM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

Jeez, don't these SEC dopes have enough legitimate scams to investigate, without inventing new ones? quote.bloomberg.com 01/25 18:27 SEC Publishes Bogus IPO Press Release to Educate Consumers By Adam Levy Washington, D.C., Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the main regulator of the securities markets, published a bogus press release touting a fictitious company's initial public offering to show the investing public how easy it is to get scammed. In a statement distributed by PR Newswire Association Inc., McWhortle Enterprises, which the press release describes as a maker of anti-terrorism devices, announced its offering was ''pre- approved'' by the SEC for sale Jan. 30. PR Newswire agreed to disseminate the statement if it could alert Bloomberg News, Dow Jones News Service and Reuters that the release was a fake. Anyone who calls the telephone number given for McWhortle Enterprises will get the following message from the SEC's Office of Investor Education: ``See, you could have been fooled.'' An attempt to look at McWhortle's financial statements on its Web site reveals a link that says: ``If you responded to an investment idea like this ... You could get scammed!'' The SEC then directs investors to a site that illustrates telltale signs of online investment fraud. SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt is pushing the agency to broaden public awareness of Internet scams, said a person familiar with the SEC proposal. An SEC spokesman declined to comment. ``This is just a dopey idea,'' said Patrick McGurn, vice president of Institutional Shareholder Services, an investor advisory firm. ``Is this going to confuse investors? Doesn't the SEC have anything better to do?'' Past Hoaxes In the past three years, PairGain Technologies Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc., Emulex Corp. and other companies have been victimized by phony press releases published on the Internet and electronic news and information services. Law enforcement agencies arrested the people responsible for most of the hoaxes. Asked about the ethics of agreeing to issue a bogus press release, PR Newswire President David Armon said, ``The credibility of our service is very important to us and transmitting a bogus press release is not something that PR Newswire takes lightly.'' Armon's group distributes press releases over 3,500 websites and reaches an estimated 1 million computer screens worldwide. ``We have a tremendous number of systems in place to guard against any real-life situations where false content moves on our circuit,'' Armon said. ``We're doing this because the SEC is the partner and its goal is investor education.''

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (146299)	1/26/2002 12:27:44 AM
From: LLCF	Respond to of 436258

Interesting... thanks. DAK

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (146299)	1/28/2002 12:06:18 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

hi Heinz, i'd be curious for your take on this article... efficientfrontier.com the author argues that real expected returns on equities (SPX) are 4.5%, and that the risk free real return (T-bill yield) is 0%, so expected equity risk premium is 4.5%, which seems "about right for our times". personally, i have a very hard time believing that expected real returns are 4.5%, since that assumes a 3% real div yield growth, which is about 50% higher than historical norm; which might itself be too high a benchmark going forward. also, the div yield could be subject to further "slippage". the other side of the equation--risk free return--i am skeptical about defining the market as fairly priced or not based only on the T-bill yield, which seems rather subject to manipulation. and there are others that argue the real TIPS yield of 3.4% or so is the real risk-free benchmark against which to compare equities, in which case there is not much of a risk premium to the SPX even using the 4.5% figure. to me it is disturbing if the T-bill yield can be the ultimate arbiter of the risk premium, because by extension that could mean Greensp*n could dictate the fair market value of the stock market, imho.