swindling jews

—Dot Com and Stock Option Schemes—
"Don't Be Deceived, Don't Be Betrayed"

AmNote on The Dot Com and Stock Option Scams: Is This Kosher Cooking?
The Jew scam of the 80's was the Savings and Loan deregulation; The Jew scam of the 90's was the Dot Com stock scam. What the Jew brokerage houses would do is hype stocks to investors only to make it easier to dump the stock on them. Brokers say that they love a stock so they can selling the stock before the bottom falls out of it. Again, the little guy is left holding the bag. One of the predictions offered by Mark Gilbert, a Bloomberg columnist, is that there will be a "backlash against analysts." People will want to know why Merill Lynch's famed Internet analyst, Henry Blodget, for example, maintained a "buy" on Amazon.com as the stock fell 85%...and then switched it to a "near term accumulate." They'll also be curious as to why Morgan Stanley's ace Internet analyst, Mary Meeker, gives eBay an "outperform" rating, when the stock is clearly in a dead heat with Amazon and others for the title of one of the most dreadful disasters of the year. The lack of integrity of the Wall Street Jews is infamous. In fact, Jews are proud of cheating trusting, naive investors and view their underhanded dealings with "suckers" as accomplishments. Jews are just out to steal people's money.
Jew brokerage houses worked an old-fashioned Ponzi scam, in which Dot Com shells (that's all dot.coms are anyhow) were created to attract an initial group of inside investors, and then the stock markets were used to attract a larger group though an IPO to pay off the first group, and finally another group of small stock investors were pulled in using hype and a strong stock buy when it was time to dump the stock. The Jewish Doc Com Ponzi scam is similar to the pyramid scheme the Orthodox Jew, David Schick, pulled worldwide in real estate, but on a much bigger scale since the Dot Com scam used major financial markets, such as the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, and exploited millions of small investors and institutions. The Ponzi/pyrimid scam seems to be a favorite of the Jews, because they can sneak around and hide in the background, like New York cockroaches, which fulfills the Jews' preferred role as behind-the-scenes movers and shakers, or better said, manipulators, who traditionally advance their agenda outside of the public spotlight. The Jewish media was also used to hype the "new economy", which turned out to be the Jew's "new scam". The network Jew news and Jew news magazines hyped the phony "new economy" nightly. Jews think they are smarter than other people, because trusting people in good-faith are deceived by their lies. Jews figure that if you believe a Jew, then you deserve to get screwed. The Jew is a sneak thief and a liar that cannot be trusted. Don't be the Jews' fool! Part of the Jew's sick thrill is in controlling and deceiving people into believing their lies.
Did the Jew scams jump-started the American economy? Of course, that is the purpose of the con; it is supposed to prime the pump. But unfortunately at the end of the run, the Jew stockbroker, that told you to buy the stock he's dumping, and his insider trader Jew buddies are the ones who walk away with your cash in their pockets. Million of Americans have not only lost their retirement funds and savings to the Jews, they have also lost their sense of security. What's Jew scam does the new millennium hold for the average American? Whatever it is, the Jew is going to screw you. The dream of the Jew is to total screw someone over and get away with it without the person even knowing he's been screwed. Both the Dot Com and S & L scams come close to realizing that dream. The Savings & Loan and Dot Com scams give Americans an idea of the Jewish problem and the kind of havoc Jews rained down on the Germans during pre-WW II Germany, and how such economic terrorism could destabilize the country and give the rise to the Nazis. There is a reason why every culture the Jews have been in has wanted to kill them! The Jews should come with a warning that they are dangerous to the health and stability of societies.
The arrogance of the Wall Street Jews, TV network news Jews, and our Judas government is astonish! They acting as if the collapse of the Nasdaq and the nosedrive of the NYSE are all apart of a normal financial cycle. What nerve these Jews have—they think everyone is stupid! Ask yourself, would the Nasdaq drop over 66% in one year, lead by the dot coms, if the dot coms were truly financial substantial and worthy of listing on the Nasdaq or NYSE? That's 2/3 of the Nasdaq's total value in 12 months from a high of 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000 to 1705.02 on March 23, 2001! As of March 23, 2001, 84 dot-coms face Nasdaq delisting, because they were trading below $1 per share and, in addition, 254 of 369 Internet stocks, or more than two-thirds, were trading below $5 per share. Why isn't anyone using the words, Securities Fraud? Two words, Jew Conspiracy! This wouldn't be the first time that Jew Nasdaq officials were caught participating in insider trading themselves.
Did some people make money off the dot coms? Sure, the Jew inside traders that were in cahoots with the Jew brokerages and dumped their stock on you a year ago when they knew the dot coms were going belly-up! What is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) going to do about the Dot Com scams? Absolutely Nothing! And, it won't be the first time they've done nothing about insider trading and secruities fraud, either. The worst thing is that the SEC is composed of the very Jews that helped ripped you off, like Harvey Pitt! William Lerach said on Bill Moyers' PBS program NOW, 9/27/02, "Do you realize that the companies on the NASDAQ wrote off $148 billion of previously reported profits. The companies that lead the NASDAQ never made an honest dollar of profit in the last five years of the 1990s." Where was the SEC?
Like the producer of Frontline's "Dot Con", Martin Smith, said in a washingtonpost.com online discussion about the government's role in investigating and prosecuting those involved in the dot com scam, "Without vigor from Washington, not a lot will happen." That really says it all! This gigantic Wall Street Jew rip-off is go to end up like the Jew Savings and Loan debacle that Washington was paid off not to pursue.
The Jewish plague is not exclusive to the Dot Coms; it infects large well-established American companies too, like Enron, Worldcom, Xerox, and who knows how many other. The PBS Frontline program "Bigger Than Enron" revealed that corporate CEOs and executives aren't interested in improving corporate performance, but rather in greed and in driving up the price of company stock on paper in order to cash in on their stock options. If the SEC looks at Disney, they'll find the biggest rat of them all, and it isn't Mickey Mouse, but rather Michael Eisner—CEO stock options raider supreme! However, with a Jew as SEC Chairman, aka, Harvey Pitt, that won't happen, since Pitt is a shill for Big Business Jews.
Jewish accountants, like those at Arthur Andersen, that are supposed to report the accuracy of the financial statement of companies, are to blame for the present crisis in confidence along with Pitt. The Jew accountants have destroyed the net eggs of so many Americans, since they are the ones responsible for cooking the books that mislead investors. Accounting is a profession considered to have a public trust. Can you imagine giving such trust to Jews—the most corrupting force that has ever existed on Earth! Americans are getting a taste of the financial and social havoc the Jews caused during the pre-WW II period in Germany! The Jews are going to walk away with the goods and the rest of America gets stuck with the tab—-both financially and socially, since any people who thought they were retired, suddenly find themselves back in the job market looking for work, most often without success.

As The Dot.Com Slump Goes On, The Finger Pointing Has Started —The Guardian (London)
How the mighty have fallen. Little more than year ago, Jeff Bezos was flying high. The price of Amazon.com shares was in the stratosphere and the company's beaming 38-year-old chief executive was being lionised as Time magazine's Man of the Year. Supported by the enthusiam of fawning Wall Street analysts, Bezos - like much of the internet world - could walk on water. But no longer: As the internet economy has collapsed, not even the golden calves of IT are immune to the sour mood of the market. And no one is more out of favour than the Wall Street analysts on whose every pronouncement - buy', sell', hold' - investors once took as gospel. As the Nasdaq dipped below 2,000 this week, more than 3,000 points off its peak of 5,049 just one year ago, the analysts who promoted the tech boom are now being held responsible for the billions lost by investors, many of them individuals seduced into the markets by the lure of easy money. Call it the blame game: the press blames the analysts, the dot.comers blame the venture capitalists, the venture capitalists blame the markets and almost everyone blames the media. But it is the cheer- leaders of the new economy - analysts - who are taking the heat for the collapse of technology stocks. The Age of the Analyst is dead,' proclaims this week's New Yorker. In the last five months the clued-in analyst has been exposed as clueless and the equity-analysis game has proved to be something of a sham. [click here to continue]

More Dot-Com Carnage —The Washington Post
Dot-com companies are still failing at the rate of about a dozen a week, with 106 closing in the first two months of 2001 as they ran out of money, according to the research and advisory firm Webmergers.com. Since the start of November, 203 start-ups have closed as they spent the last of the money they raised a year ago, before public and private investors began to turn away from Internet and technology stocks. Recent shutdowns include the marketing site AllAdvantage.com and the Internet access provider ConnectSouth. "February's shutdowns represented well over $ 1.5 billion in investment," Webmergers.com said in a news release. "Many of the shuttered properties are actively seeking to sell their assets or to reorganize through bankruptcy filings." [click here to continue]

The Dot-Com Bubble Bursts —The New York Times
A year ago Americans could hardly run an errand without picking up a stock tip. Day-trading manuals were selling briskly. Neighbors were speaking a foreign tongue, carrying on about B2B's and praising the likes of JDS Uniphase and Qualcomm. Venture capital firms were throwing money at any and all dot-coms to help them build market share, never mind whether they could ever be profitable. It was a brave new era, in which more than a dozen fledgling dot-coms that nobody had ever heard of could pay $2 million of other people's money for a Super Bowl commercial. What a difference a year makes. The Nasdaq sank. Stock tips have been replaced with talk of recession. Many pioneering dot-coms are out of business or barely surviving. The Dow Jones Internet Index, made up of dot-comblue chips, is down more than 72 percent since March. Online retailers Priceline and eToys, former Wall Street darlings, have seen their stock prices fall more than 99 percent from their highs. Unlike the worrisome decline in the stock prices of solidly grounded technology firms due to a slowdown in profits, the sharper plunge taken by some of the trendy Internet companies that had no earnings in the first place has proved comforting to those who believe in the rationality of markets. After all, many of them lacked one key asset -- a sensible business plan. Even the most traditional brokers and investment banks set aside the notion that a company's stock price should reflect its profits and urged investors not to miss out on the gold rush. At the craze's zenith, Priceline, the money-losing online ticket seller, was worth more than the airlines that provided its inventory. [click here to continue]

Ponzi Lives On; Dot.Com Sharpies Are Lurking —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Charles Ponzi wasn't the first to try it, but he has joined Dr. Bowdler and Captain Boycott among those whose names will forever be terms of abuse. And the classic scam that bears his name - using money from new investors to pay off old investors, creating the illusion of a successful business - shows no sign of losing its effectiveness. Robert Shiller's terrific new book, "Irrational Exuberance," contains a brief primer on how to concoct a Ponzi scheme. The first step is to come up with a plausible-sounding but complicated profit opportunity, one that is difficult to evaluate. Ponzi's purported business involved international postage reply coupons. In a more recent example, Albanian scammers convinced investors that they had a profitable money-laundering business. From that point on it's all a matter of timing and publicity. An initial group of investors must be pulled in, large enough to attract attention but not too large; then a larger second group, whose investments can be used to pay off the first, a still larger third group, and so on. If all goes well, stories about how much early investors have made will spread, attracting ever more people. The continuing success of the company will silence or drown out the skeptics. In the United States, regulators - who know very well just how effective such scams often are - do their best to stop them before they get started. So you might think that Ponzi schemes are mainly a historical curiosity. But Shiller is not interested in history for its own sake; he uses Ponzi schemes as a model for something much more important. Imagine, just hypothetically, that a new set of technologies - technologies that are really, truly, deeply fabulous - has just emerged. And suppose also that a number of companies have been created to exploit these new technologies, in the entirely honest - but very hard to assess - belief that they will eventually be able to earn huge profits. For the time being they earn little if any money; even if they make an accounting profit, they must continually raise more cash to pay for equipment, acquisitions and so on. Still, as the evidence for a true technological revolution mounts, the prices of their stocks keep rising, producing huge capital gains for early investors. And this attracts ever more investors, pushing the prices still higher. [click here to continue]

Web Sites Give You Facts To Puncture Dubious Hype —Chicago Sun-Times
You suddenly receive a call from a broker singing the praises of a small technology company that's about to revolutionize e-commerce. You hear a radio commercial promising you can make a fortune attending a seminar about trading stock options or purchasing heating oil futures. In an Internet chat room everyone seems to know about the next dot.com company that will quadruple in price. So is this the road to instant riches -- or instant poverty? The rise of the Internet has elevated stockfraud to a new level, both in the number of scams that are created and the speed with which they can be executed. How can you avoid being suckered into one of these deals?Well, you know I'm going to start with the first rule of avoiding hype: If it seems too good to be true, it's not true! But almost every sector of the stock market seems to have fallen victim to that concept. That's why you missed AOL and Amazon.com, isn't it? You're determined to take the plunge. At the very least you should understand that there are ways to separate the completely fraudulent stock promotions from those technology companies that have legitimate dreams, if no earnings. Before sending a check, you should know if the broker has a long disciplinary record for previous infractions or ripoffs. And before you ante up for seminars, books or tapes you should check into whether previous buyers think they got the same good deal that those midnight infomercial testimonials claim. The best way to check up on small company stocks, which are being touted both on the Internet in chat rooms and by calls from shady stockbrokers, is to use your computer. Just go to to www.stockdetective.com. It is the one online destination that can give you information on hundreds of current stock promotions and promoters. [click here to continue]

Investor's Lawsuit Alleges Fledgling Dot-Com Was A Dot-Scam —The San Diego Union-Tribune
Every day, you read of a dot-com that is running out of cash. In San Diego, there's a legal ruckus about one that never even got off the ground. In U.S. District Court, Daniel Carnow, a stockbroker, has sued Terry L. Spiger and Gene Geiger and their La Jolla-based operations, PMC Partners and California Enterprise Center. Spiger and Geiger had agreed to do the developmental work for ePolite.com, a proposed Internet and phone concierge service. Customers could call a number on their cell phones and get directions to their destination. Or they could get a list of French restaurants. Etc. Carnow, who now works for Mission Capital Investment Group, was introduced late last year to Spiger and Geiger. They sold him on investing in ePolite.com, which had been conceived by Joseph Franklin, who had created other dot-com concepts. According to his lawsuit charging securities fraud, unfair business practices, breach of fiduciary duty and conversion, among other things, Carnow agreed to put up $150,000 in seed money. He would receive a 35 percent return on his principal in 180 days. He would also get 1.5 percent of the 10 million Class A common shares. Carnow could get a 10 percent finders fee for bringing in investors, who would receive 14 percent on their investment. Carnow understood that ePolite.com would either go public, or would be sold to a public company.In a series of bridge loans, he put up $100,000 for the project, and clients of his put in an additional $20,000. "Each of the promissory notes were due and payable in full as of May 31, 2000," says the suit. "I haven't received a dime," Carnow says. According to the suit, whenever he would make a deposit, Spiger and Geiger would pull out money the very same day. Spiger and Geiger "told my client they were using the money for personal survival," says Carnow's attorney, Richard M. Wirtz. Geiger has a different story: "These were fees that were earned," he claims. He adds that only one of the notes is actually in default. "This is a malicious attempt to embarrass us," says Geiger, who doesn't want to answer more questions.Carnow says that when he found out that Spiger and Geiger were spending the money on themselves, rather than the project, "I said that, I will take it over, get it off the ground,'" Carnow says. But he then learned that Joseph Franklin, the project developer, had given up on Spiger and Geiger. [click here to continue]

In Probe on Sylvan Trading, Nasdaq Looks Inward —The Washington Post
It is not unusual for Nasdaq officials to investigate signs of insider trading, especially when a stock takes off shortly before a company unveils an important corporate development. What is unusual is for Nasdaq officials to find that they also are investigating themselves. In one of the stranger episodes in Nas daq history, market surveillance officials are investigating unusually heavy trading and sudden price changes last week in the shares of Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. of Columbia. But what makes the probe so odd is that the activity in Sylvan's stock may have been caused by an information leak about a lucrative contract Sylvan won from the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc., the Washington-based association that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market. Nasdaq investigators are trying to determine if there was any insider trading and, if so, whether it originated from Sylvan or from the NASD or from somewhere else. And, if not, whether the trading barrage could have been caused by unrelated activity by traders who use Nasdaq computers to launch raids on vulnerable company stocks. At this point, Nasdaq investigators aren't saying what they think happened but they have promised a swift investigation -- particularly because of their own ties to Sylvan Learning Systems. [click here to continue]

Wall Streeters Get Tips Not Available To Public; No Crackdown In Sight Despite Criticism —The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
On April 19, U.S. Healthcare Inc. stock suddenly seemed cheap. After closing at $ 39.75 the night before, the stock could be bought that morning for as little as $ 32.75. U.S. Healthcare's chief executive had given investors invited to a Merrill Lynch & Co. conference a tip no one else had. He told them the nation's biggest health maintenance organization would cut prices to build market share, raising fears of a price war and fueling an assault on HMO stocks. Big sellers knew something most buyers didn't. It was news that fundamentally changed the value of U.S. Healthcare stock. And despite stock exchange rules against selective disclosure, companies often give important information to some investors and not others. On Thursday, UAL Corp. told some analysts early in the day that their earnings forecasts were too high. UAL, the parent of United Airlines, waited until midafternoon to issue a news release that confirmed what some already knew. By then, the stock had fallen 9 percent. In its bylaws, the National Association of Securities Dealers requires that Nasdaq-listed companies "disclose promptly" any information that would "reasonably be expected to affect" their stock price. The New York Stock Exchange and American Stock Exchange have similar rules. But in conference calls with analysts, command performances with high-powered money managers and investment conferences like the one at which U.S. Healthcare's CEO spoke, big investors get tips potentially worth millions of dollars. And seldom, if ever, is anything done to stem the practice. While the Securities and Exchange Commission prosecutes more celebrated insider-trading cases, instances of selective disclosure seldom garner attention. "Nobody (at the SEC is) watching the store," said Louis M. Thompson Jr., president of the National Investor Relations Institute. [click here to continue]

Brooklyn Lawyer Pleads Guilty in Fraud Case —The New York Times
In a case that has roiled Orthodox Jews from New York to Europe, a lawyer who was prominent in Brooklyn's Orthodox community pleaded guilty yesterday to swindling scores of investors out of more than $80 million through bogus mortgage and real estate schemes. Many of the people who invested with the lawyer, David Schick, were also Orthodox Jews in the United States and abroad -- individuals or investor groups and at least one charitable organization -- who relied on Mr. Schick's reputation for investment savvy and good works, Federal investigators said. Mr. Schick, 37, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in two Federal courthouses yesterday -- first in White Plains and later in Brooklyn -- answering charges that had been brought against him as a result of a mushrooming, five-year pyramid scheme. [click here to continue]

Hype --20/20/ —ABC News
JOHN STOSSEL Psst! Want to make some money? Wall Street’s not far from here. It’s home to lots of people with some stocks to hype. (VO) These days, sports bars often find customers demand they change the channel to the new hot sport: the stock market.
MARIA BARTIROMO (From TV footage) We’ll tell you what Wall Street is buzzing about.
GAIL DUDACK, UBS WARBURG (From TV footage) ...appear to be another failing rally.
RON INSANA (From TV footage) ...to be 22 points away from an all-time high.
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) The bartender’s amazed at how her customers’ interests have changed.
SUZANNE AZARBALD They’re walking through the door and they’re like, ‘Where’s the stocks? Where’s the stocks?’
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Many more people watch CNBC and other financial news shows these days. What they get is financial information and plenty of hype. (Clips shown from commercials)
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) In the ads, even the tow truck operator is rich. (Clips shown from commercials)
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) All this hype leads lots of people to think they should trade stocks.
DAVID TALEVI That was my game.
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) David Talevi’s a trailer park manager in Wells, Maine. His poor choices in the market ate up a year’s salary.
DAVID TALEVI I ended up losing just over $40,000.
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) He lost it following suggestions he got watching those so-called experts on TV.
DAVID TALEVI You just took their word for granted and—and figured, you know, ‘This thing is going to take off.’
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) He thought they were just giving dispassionate advice, but now he’s learned something else may be going on. Many work for firms that do business with the companies traded on the exchanges, so they have an incentive to promote those companies. The pros understand that.
JIM CRAMER ...and Wall Street’s a promotional machine. That’s what it does!
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Jim Cramer of thestreet.com, who himself has been accused of hyping, says lots of amateur investors foolishly believe the advice-givers have no motive other than helping you.
JIM CRAMER A guy comes on TV. Thought process at home: ‘There’s a person who has looked at the whole industry and is making judgments about what are the best stocks.’ Wrong! Wrong!
JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Sometimes, he says, they hype stocks only to make it easier to dump them on you. [click here to continue]

Dot Con Transcript —Frontline
NARRATOR: Buried in the debris of September 11th are the case files of a wide-ranging investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission involving some of the biggest banks on Wall Street. Now those cases are being reassembled and pursued. Tonight on FRONTLINE, the story of a scandal, an investigation delayed but not destroyed. There's hope on Wall Street that the worst is over, that last year's market collapse and the September 11th attacks are history, that in the new year, investors will forget the past, regain their faith and come back strong. But a shadow still hangs over Wall Street. For the last year and a half, both government regulators and private attorneys have been investigating whether the go-go markets of recent years were steeped not just in excessive speculation but fraud, whether investment bankers and brokerage houses concealed conflicts of interest and deliberately manipulated stock prices. Did the biggest names on Wall Street violate the public trust?
MEL WEISS, Attorney: CS First Boston, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch- I mean, these are the biggest players. And that's what makes this so shocking, that it could infect even institutions of that size. These are revered institutions in Wall Street.
ARTHUR LEVITT, Former Chairman, SEC: A bubble environment brings out the basest qualities of all the players. The kinds of guidelines that monitor corporate behavior tend to be more flexible at a time of excess, and it feeds upon itself. [click here to continue]

Dot Con - Producer's Chat —Washinton Post Online
washingtonpost.com: Good morning, Martin, and welcome. With the bankruptcy of Enron grabbing the headlines recently, people's minds are on investing, business and their personal portfolios. When the Internet boom came on, people jumped into the market and on IPOs at an unprecedented rate -- average folk got on board more than ever before. Then the spectacular implosions of some Internet companies left many investors holding the bag. Were things that badly mishandled, or did the investors simply not keep in mind that this was a crap shoot?
Martin Smith: I think things were badly mishandled by the banks and the venture capitalists, because never before have so many unprofitable companies been offered to the public as good investments and touted by so many stock analysts. The financial media explosion of recent years added to this, and the public was woefully misinformed. Ultimately, the public has to take responsibility, but the people who knew better weren't helping educate the public. They were exploiting them.
Lynchburg, Va.: If you were to compare the extent of public (governmental) versus private investigation of the bubble exploitation what observations would you make? Are they comparable in vigor, in motivation, in their potential for reform?
Martin Smith: Initially, the government investigation was quite vigorous. It's unclear whether it will continue to be. The private attorneys are more like opportunists who come to the table when they know that Washington is on the case. Without vigor from Washington, not a lot will happen.
Scottsdale, Ariz.: Having been an investor since 1998, we have thoroughly taken the ride. My husband and I have lost our entire life's savings to the tune of several million dollars and can never hope to recover at this age. Your program has put to words the innuendo, the wink, the conspiritors "edge." There seem to be many laws to "protect" the investor, but no "policeman." Now it seems, they want to close the barn doors after the COW has left. We, the public, the citizens, have been screwed again -- with our government's help. So, will you be doing a follow up program with the remedies or "medicine" that exposes the harder issues? Who is going down? Or can you only go so far -- fearing your own professional financial censorship? Will you find the governmental collusion and show it? Our tax deduction for loss is $3,000 a year -- carry over. At that rate it would take a thousand years -- an example of government consideration? There is much more to be revealed; don't stop. You are doing an excellent job. And luck has little to do with it.
Martin Smith: Thank you for the compliment. But I'm very saddened by your tale. I have received many e-mails this morning describing similar woes. Frontline will continue to cover this and similar stories.
The government regulatory agencies don't have a lot of muscle, and that's by intent. Our system of capitalism is founded on the idea that the free and unfettered markets are best. They are, however, disastrous for investors who don't fully understand the risks that they're being sold. [click here to continue]

Bad Apples Turn Confidence Sour —Financial Times (London)
American capitalism may not be rotten to the core, but in the wake of WorldCom's accounting revelations, it has become difficult to believe that there are not more bad apples. Friday's bigger-than-expected mis-statement of revenues at Xerox suggests investors are right to remain fearful. Optimists might say that WorldCom was a one-off - already under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and close to bankruptcy. Its shares had dropped almost 99 per cent from their peak ahead of the discovery of a Dollars 3.8bn (Pounds 2.6bn) hole in its accounts this week. But one of the few things expanding rapidly in the current environment is the list of SEC investigations into corporate governance irregularities. From investigations of off-balance sheet loans at cable company Adelphia to revenue inflating schemes at Global Crossing and Dynegy the SEC is very busy - and that is without Enron. Each additional company name added to the list eats away at investor confidence in the reliability of corporate earnings. Previous market crises have, in time, come to be viewed as one-off climactic events. For example, the Russian debt crisis and the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund in 1998 were events that were effectively dealt with by Federal Reserve interest rate cuts. It is very tough to believe WorldCom marks the end of the potential scandals. And how can you expect a rapid market comeback when you cannot trust the earnings the rebound should be built on? [click here to continue]

Pitt Bull —St. Petersburg Times
Americans can only hope that Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt's efforts to clean up the spreading Wall Street scandals will be more honest than his efforts to deflect blame for them. In a Monday interview with Today's Matt Lauer, Pitt claimed the accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other former darlings of Wall Street are "unfortunately, a mess I inherited from the prior administration. We're very actively cleaning it up . . ." That is a cynical and self-serving distortion of recent history, and it only adds to the growing perception that Pitt is unfit to lead the effort to enact needed reforms. Here are the facts: Pitt's predecessor as SEC chairman, Arthur Levitt, pushed strongly during the Clinton administration for major accounting reforms, including a ban on the lucrative conflicts of interest Arthur Andersen and other firms created for themselves by serving simultaneously as auditors and consultants for businesses such as Enron. Those proposed reforms were blocked in Congress - thanks in large part to the efforts of Pitt, who at that time represented several major firms regulated by the SEC. In fact, Pitt wrote a white paper, submitted to the SEC by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, arguing against any effort to crack down on auditors' conflicts of interest. Since taking over as SEC chairman, Pitt has done little to suggest that he has suddenly become the "very tough cop on the beat" he claimed to be Monday. He and other Bush administration officials have opposed Senate legislation that would institute reforms similar to those blocked during the Clinton administration. Pitt's own proposals in the wake of the accounting scandals are watered-down alternatives that are overly reliant on voluntary compliance. [click here to continue]

Pitt In Hot Seat: Lax Regulation Blamed For Financial Scandals —Montreal Gazette
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle blamed the Bush administration yesterday for fostering a "cozy, permissive relationship" of lax regulation toward corporate America that he said had led to the recent wave of business financial scandals. Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, made clear that he believes the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt, must go. "I have to say that at this point, we could do a lot better than Harvey Pitt in that position today. That cozy, permissive relationship has to end, and he, in large measure, has orchestrated that over the last 18 months," Daschle said. Pitt represented Wall Street financial and accounting firms as a Washington lawyer before Bush put him in charge of regulating them at the SEC. [click here to continue]

Bigger Than Enron —Frontline
ANNOUNCER: It was a meteoric rise.
VOICE: We will become the world's leading company.
ANNOUNCER: And a devastating collapse.
VOICE: Enron is a corporate Chernobyl.
VOICE: You had the entire system playing fast and loose.
VOICE: It is not just Enron, it's an industry problem.
LYNN TURNER, SEC Chief Accountant (1998-2001): It is real, real damage to the country.
ANNOUNCER: Why didn't anyone sound an alarm?
VOICE: The watchdogs work for executives and Wall Street. They don't work to protect shareholders.
ANNOUNCER: Correspondent Hedrick Smith investigates how greed and politics undercut America's financial watchdogs.
HEDRICK SMITH, FRONTLINE Correspondent: Is anyone protecting the public?
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE, Bigger than Enron.
HEDRICK SMITH, FRONTLINE Correspondent: Everything about Enron seemed larger than life, from its glittering Houston headquarters reaching to the skies to its spectacular downfall. But Enron's collapse was more than the shattering of one American success story. It was a warning of a far wider malaise in the marketplace. Enron was the climax of an avalanche of American companies that cost investors as much as $200 billion by issuing deceptive financial reports. The roots of the Enron debacle stretch to Wall Street, where the accountants and other watchdogs were supposed to keep score on corporate America and make sure the market is honest. The trail leads also to Washington, where Congress weakened the protections and tied the hands of regulators, making it easier for aggressive companies like Enron to push the envelope.
ARTHUR LEVITT, SEC Chairman (1993-2001): Enron's collapse did not occur in a vacuum. Its backdrop is an obsessive zeal by too many American companies to project greater earnings from year to year. When I was at the SEC, I referred to this as a culture of gamesmanship, a gamesmanship that says it's OK to bend the rules, to tweak the numbers and let obvious and important discrepancies slide, a gamesmanship where companies bend to the desires and pressures of Wall Street analysts rather than to the reality of the numbers.
HEDRICK SMITH: But where were the watchdogs who were supposed to warn us when companies were playing fast and loose with their books, the stock analysts, lawyers, bankers, Securities and Exchange Commission? Above all, where were the accountants? By law, auditors have the official responsibility to insure that corporate financial reports are honest. They are the first line of defense. But in the booming '90s, the big accounting firms like Arthur Andersen, which audited Enron's books, failed to protect us. And what happened at Arthur Andersen illustrates the wider story of how our watchdog system broke down. [click here to continue]

Risky Business —NOW
MOYERS: Stock prices in free fall and business titans in handcuffs. What's happening in corporate America?
JOHN BOGLE, VANGUARD GROUP FOUNDER: I've read a dozen times there are only a few bad apples in the barrel but my own fear is that the barrel itself is bad.
MOYERS: Our panel of corporate critics and Wall Street insiders debate what should be done.
WILLIAM LERACH: The accounting in this country has been phony and false and it's misled investigators and cost them millions of dollars.
MOYERS: Can corporate America police itself? Or is it time for a fix?
STEPHEN MOORE: I believe if you have us back we'll look at this and say there was a down turn but the market will go back on its merry way.
MOYERS: A freewheeling debate on corporate accountability in the age of Enron. "Risky Business," tonight on NOW. All that tonight on NOW.
MOYERS: Welcome to NOW. It's called a 'perp walk': "perp" as in "perpetrator." As in he perpetrateda foul deed. And it's become almost a daily routine: a pack of news cameras surrounding a former business titan as he is marched around in handcuffs. But what's happening in corporate America these days goes far beyond a few bad apples. In fact, if it can be said a barrel of apples smells fishy, this one really does, and it is forcing America incorporated to face some fundamental questions: Are companies going to be run for insiders? What about the investors? And what about those executive stock options? Should the board of directors really govern, instead of acting as a well-paid rubber stamp? We'll hear some strong opinions about all this tonight. And we'll start by looking at the deep fault lines running through corporate america. This week, the dow hit its lowest point in 4 years. The NASDAQ its lowest in 6 years. Investor confidence has plummeted. The reason in large part...high-profile revelations of billion-dollar corporate scandals.