Accidentally Released – and Incredibly Embarrassing – Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-20120515
I haven’t heard this activity being called ‘naked short selling’ but I have heard about the activity for many, many years. Long before my brief tenure at FINRA (the brokerage cops) where I got a crash course on securities trading, I had heard that under certain circumstances companies were ‘selling short’ (meaning selling shares they didn’t own in anticipation that the price would go down, something that might sound nonsensical but is actually critical to the smooth functioning of the equities market) stock they didn’t have the right to. As mentioned in the above article at one point 107% of the outstanding shares of Overstock was shorted, something that is impossible to do legally.
That this is only discovered by accident during a civil suit instead of broadcasted by our government investigators goes to show how deeply the government and regulators are in the pocket of Wall Street. This sort of crap should cause executives to go to jail and the companies they work for to go bankrupt. Instead they get billions of dollars of taxpayer cash and not even a slap on the wrist.
Your oligarchical police state at work!
