MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
When the business you run can't make a profit, you fire auditors at a whim and the SEC just won't get off your ass, you might make some enemies. Such is the case of Overstock.com (OSTK) CEO Patrick Byrne. Byrne, however, is proactive about these types of things.
So he made himself an enemies list. From Barry Ritholtz:
Here is something weird, and a little creepy:
The freakshow that is DeepCapture.com seems to have grabbed all of the Facebook friends of anyone who has ever: a) written anything positive about short selling or 2) said anything negative about Overstock.com.
http://www.deepcapture.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/facebook-data.csv
For those of you who are unaware of what DeepCapture is, the name suggests that the short sellers have “Captured” the press. Deep Capture is a work of Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com.
For the record, I am in favor of shorting stocks, but do not favor naked shorting, which is against SEC rules.
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Here's part of a Screen Grab Ritholtz took:
You know, it never ceases to amaze me how wildly complicated and conspiratorial Byrne has managed to make a company that basically sells overstocked Clappers and Toasters. Make no mistake about it, though, Patrick Byrne will go down in history.
More from Gary Weiss, Sam Antar and the Business Insider.
UPDATE: You can find another of Judd Bagley’s videos here, as well as a call to supporters to add names to the enemies list here (”As promised in the video, researchers are encouraged to find additional links within the Facebook friend lists of the short-selling hedge funds and journalists and bloggers who love them.”)
--WKW
Comments
You really seem to understand what patrick is doing. I am very impressed of how incompetent you are and how ridiculous your claims can be. I feel sorry for people that actually believe what you are trying to sell. if anything is true Patrick is only trying to show us the audience what the other side has been doing for such a long time. Patrick has been praized over and over again for his work and for the truth he brought forward. If we all can remember clearly it was patrick who predicted the market crash and not you, it was patrick who sued gradient and got 5 million dollars...... and it was patrick who has been an advocate of rule change at the SEC that failed over and over again...It was patrick who started a show that gets freaks like you go crazy claiming he is nuts while all the evidence proves that people like yourself are always attacking honest hardworking men that want to do good. I wonder who paid you to write this nonsense.....
I wonder if you can back up anything you said with real evidence instead of just filling lines....
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Rocker-Pays-5-Million-to-prnews-3555312432...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_FZO9-ZIWU
by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 12/10/2009 - 11:04am
Wow. That really proves that Byrne and his supporters aren't thin-skinned or vindictive. Jeez.
by Doctor Cleveland on Thu, 12/10/2009 - 12:39pm
I'm surprised you're not on his enemies list, although it does seem he's found your blog…
by Nebton on Thu, 12/10/2009 - 11:10am
Judd Bagley e-mailed me one time and let me know that I was well below his radar. So I'm cool ;)
by William K. Wolfrum on Thu, 12/10/2009 - 11:21am
Byrne has no problems with short selling. Like you, he is against naked short selling and any loopholes that allows naked short selling.
by John (not verified) on Fri, 12/11/2009 - 11:17am