More scamming by those that Bill from Wisconsin defends in his cheesey monthly posts. MY SCAM IS OK, YOURS IS NOT.
Richard Sauer, Short Apologist in NY Times, Employed By Rocker Partners/Copper River
Location: Blogs Bob O'Brien's Sanity Check Blog
Posted by: bobo 10/8/2006 3:33 AM
My last blog was devoted to tearing apart the hypocritical and biased piece by an ex-SEC staffer, inexplicably published by the NY Times.
By one Richard Sauer.
The article stank to high heavens, and I smelled a big fat rat. As I dug around, I saw his appearance with Marc Cohodes back in 1999, in an interview. The rat meter spiked off the chart.
I saw the references to prominent and well known Rocker Partners short plays in his bio, and read with astonishment about how short sellers provided great info to him, and were heroes, friends of the SEC, etc. The meter now was pegged in rat zone.
So it was with no surprise that the NY Post did what I call a "soft break" of what was coming my way as well - that Richard Sauer is employed by Rocker Partners/Copper River.
Suddenly the characterization of those suing miscreants (alleging unfair business practices) as being anti-short-selling is clear. This wasn't a factual piece at all. It was a hit and smear piece, thinly veneered, along with a piece of rather clumsy hedge fund propaganda, by one of the funds that shows up in a surprising number of the SHO list stocks.
Huh.
Does it bother anyone that certain hedge funds seem to have an unusual sway within the SEC, and with prominent NY papers? Does it give anyone pause over what the subpoenas this ROCKER EMPLOYEE was denigrating under the imprimatur of the NY Times, could well have turned up? Does it not connect a lot of dots for anyone doubting that some hedge funds can get their spin published by the same papers that are so against any modification of naked short selling rules, and are so quick to call critics of the funds or the system the funds use, "kooks" and "loons?"
Everyone, perhaps we should let the NY Times know how much we appreciate them allowing Rocker/Copper to run full page propaganda pieces in that noble publication, sans the revelation that the guy slamming the companies suing a couple of hedge funds is IN one of the hedge funds!
How much more intellectually dishonest does this have to get for one to completely give up on the NY press as a whole? This is about the shiftiest episode yet - more shifty than when Herb "mistakenly" said that PMI was suing NFI, causing their stock to drop $4 or so before that "mistake" was corrected, at the height of a massive short attack - and where Rocker had bought millions of put options just a week or so before the huge article in the WSJ, AND THE SEC PROBE that amounted to nothing, gave the stock a 60% haircut.
This might as well have been written my Marc Cohodes, and been titled, "Why regulations that could land hedge fund asses in prison for years are bad."
No, instead, it went under the byline of a "former SEC" attorney, presumably highly credible and relatively unbiased.
Except that Cohodes is his new boss, and the spin being spewed was self-serving horse poop.
I either have an amazing instinct for duplicity, or just got lucky, because I actually have emails wherein I placed the odds in the higher end of the range that Sauer either had gone to work for SAC, or Rocker/Copper, given the agenda he was trying to advance, and the way he made a special point of attacking the issuing of subpoenas, and suing of alleged bad guys. There just wasn't any logical way to get to the destination he seemed hell-bent on getting to.
And now we know why. Follow the money. He is paid by the hedge fund that prompted the subpoenas being issued in the first place, and is being sued.
This is jawdroppingly slimy. Really. Unbelievable.
But not at all surprising.
They really must believe we are all dolts, and that these sorts of sophomoric attempts will have anything but a negative long term impact.
Let's review some of the statements by Rocker/Copper's employee now, in the new light of understanding:
"But if short sellers are friends to the S.E.C., the commission has been no friend to short sellers. The agency has saddled short sellers with trading restrictions and has looked the other way when companies have taken potentially illegal actions to silence short sellers’ criticism."
So why characterize a suit alleging unfair business practices - essentially writing and font-running biased research reports, and timing them to make illicit profits from your having advance knowledge of the timing and content - as potentially illegal actions to silence short sellers' criticism?
BECAUSE YOU NOW WORK FOR THE GUYS ACCUSED OF DOING IT!!!
""In addition, the S.E.C. staff has been willing, indeed eager, to pursue investigations against short sellers based on complaints from companies that the shorts have said mean things about them. One recent case made national news: the S.E.C. staff sent subpoenas to financial journalists suspected of using short sellers as sources for their articles — as if that were somehow improper."
Why try to change the reason for the subpoenas being issued - suspicion that some supposedly unbiased reporters were timing their articles and the content to help in stock manipulation-like trading - to "using short sellers as sources?"
BECAUSE YOU WORK FOR THE FUND ACCUSED OF DOING IT!!! And you are trying to rewrite history, and make this about something it was never about, to deflect the real reason the subpoenas were issued!
And people don't understand why the public doesn't trust the supposedly unbiased writing of those gracing the pages of the NY Times and the other fine, ethical, upstanding papers there. Gee. I wonder if that is because the guys involved in doing the writing WORK FOR THE HEDGE FUNDS? And as the subpoenas were intended to discover, the SEC wanted to know if any of the journalists subpoenaed also were working for hedge funds, one way or another... How dare they persecute those unbiased freedom fighters...
Nah. Who would be paranoid enough to believe that major financial icons would allow subpoenaed hedge funds to write propaganda pieces and place them in their pages, masquerading as expert commentary? Why, that would NEVER happen.
Right?
And it highlights why some hedge funds are untouchable by the SEC - they are the Commission's retirement employers. Who would go after the folks that will be paying you 10 times what you made at the Commission? But there isn't anything untowards going on.
I wondered aloud as to whether Sauer was writing about the bogus TASR SEC investigation, or bogus NFI probe, when he was discussing how helpful short sellers had been to the SEC, in my last blog. Now it appears that question really is a serious one. Who initiated those? Interesting question, no?
Did I mention what a farce this was becoming? |
