Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Wrapping Baloney in the Flag

Jeff Matthews has an enjoyable item today on one of the more loathsome conspiracy theories being circulated on the Internet: that "naked shortsellers" are attacking a company called Force Protection, and that by some twisted logic "American soldiers were being punished by naked short selling."

Though not mentioned by Matthews for some reason, the author of the Big Lie described in his item is none other than the most the entertaining CEO in America, the always entertaining overlord of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne. Showing his customary good taste, Byrne illustrated his item with a photograph of flag-draped coffins (above). 

Byrne, when not driving his creepy little company into the ground, spends most of his time writing nutty items for an Overstock-hosted blog called "Deep Capture." His latest missive claims that Force Protection, which makes vehicles for the Army in Iraq, was a victim of naked shorting. 

Matthews notes that the company actually is a victim of itself. Apart from competitive factors:
. . . Force Protection has had a few issues particular to itself.
Not being in compliance with Nasdaq Marketplace Rule 4310 (c)(14) for a period of time, as a result of not filing its June quarter 10Q, for one.
Announcing in August, 2008 that its 2007 financial statements “should no longer be relied upon,” for another.
Announcing it had identified “material weakness in its internal control over financial reporting,” in November 2007, for a third.
Hey, sounds a lot like Overstock.com. The difference is that Force Protection's management has not, as far as I know, endorsed the screwball theories being advanced by Internet creatures like Byrne. (And not repudiated them either, for that matter.) As I pointed out a few months ago, a member of Overstock's somnolent board of directors, Joseph Tobacco, is representing investors suing Force Protection. 

I said at the time that Tobacco has some explaining to do. He still does, in spades. It's hard for me to see how Tobacco can represent aggrieved Force Protection investors while serving on the board of a company that officially sponsors a website publishing crap like this about Force Protection and taking an anti-investor slant in general. 

Byrne's latest craziness is par for the course for naked shorting nuts, but wrapping the flag around their conspiracy theories is especially odious, even by their standards. 

Obviously Byrne is exploiting the Iraq dead as a kind of publicity stunt -- the Deep Capture website, though run by a full-time staff of thugs lead by the nauseating cyberstalker Judd Bagley, has failed to gain much readership despite constant hyping, a "$75,000 contest" that fizzled, and a link on the Overstock site. But I doubt very much that the parents of the Iraqi war dead appreciate this crass exploitation of their tragedy. 

© 2008 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Mr. Tabacco Has Some Explaining To Do

Two of the leading poster children for naked shorting conspiracy theorists are BIDZ.com and Force Protection. BIDZ has claimed that the big, bad naked shorters (and not anything management has done) is the reason its shares are in the commode.

While Force Protection's management has stayed away from the subject, it has been pushed doggedly by Overstock.com's wack-a-doo CEO Patrick Byrne--who has disgustingly wrapped the flag around the issue, because Force Protection is a defense contractor.

Now comes word that Force Protection is the subject of a class action suit. Nothing surprising there, except that co-lead counsel is the law firm of Berman DeValerio Pease Tabacco Burt & Pucillo.

The "Tabacco" in the name of the firm is Joseph J. Tabacco, a member of the Overstock.com board of directors.

When Tabacco was named to the Overstock board, I raised the issue of the conflict of interest--from the standpoint of future plaintiffs--between Tobacco's duties as a plaintiff's lawyer, fighting securities fraud, and his job on the board of a company that routinely violates the securities laws and has no concept of corporate ethics. There may not be a legal conflict of interest, but this certainly raises a serious question about Tabacco's judgment.

According to a copy of the order appointing Tabacco's firm, posted on the firm's website, Berman De Valerio was picked by the Chicago Laborers Group. Seems to me that these good union folks owe it to their members to give this whole subject a close look.

As for BIDZ -- oh, just the usual shaky financials and questionable backers that one expects from companies like this. Sam Antar has been all over the story, and my old colleague Bill Alpert of Barron's ran a good piece. The Barron's article is available by subscription only, but here is a Seeking Alpha summary.

© 2008 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Anatomy of an Overstock.com Smear

Apparently some bad news is en route for shareholders of Overstock.com (NASDQ: OSTK), judging from the depth and depravity of this miserable little company's smear campaign against its critics.

Just the other day I posted on an Overstock pretexting escapade, and now there is a new adventure for corporate crime aficonados.

Overstock's in-house stalker, its nauseating director of communications Judd Bagley, launched a vicious attack over the weekend on felon turned crime fighter Sam Antar. As usual, Bagley has started from an erroneous premise and built upon it.

Sam has posted a number of serious questions about this SEC-investigated company's accounting, so Bagley was eager to discredit him. But since he can't counter the accounting allegations -- he hasn't even attempted to do that -- Bagley has resorted to personal attacks. Since there is no dirt to dish up, Bagley just did what he always does -- dished up some baldfaced lies.

Bagley's latest ASM effort deals with a company called Usana Health Sciences. It was the subject of a negative report by another fraud fighter and reformed felon, Barry Minkow. Bagley zeroed in on Sam's funding of Minkow's research into Usana, and says that Sam was serving as a conduit for class action lawyer Howard Sirota. He wraps them all up in a conspiracy to drive down Usana share prices.

His premise is that Sam hasn't got two nickels to rub together, so where does the money come from? The respected class action lawyer Sirota, that's who.

Bagley has been particularly proud of his latest achievement, and has appeared on stock message boards for Usana and Overstock to promote his latest smear.

Bagley's case hangs on the following:

I conducted a deeper search and discovered that unpaid taxes are nothing new to Sam Antar. Indeed, between 1987 and 2007, Antar amassed over $333,000 in tax liens, warrants and judgments on the city, state and federal levels, in addition to just under $60,000 in judgments and liens by private creditors in 1992 and 1993.

None of these debts was discharged by Antar’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in 1998. . . And yet, from Minkow’s deposition, we’re supposed to believe that someone who can’t pay a $500 tax bill is in a position to give Minkow gifts totaling at least $250,000 – motivated by nothing more than the spirit of fraud fighting?
His entire smear is based upon this. He then proceeds on to drag in Sirota -- who has been critical of Bagley, natch --- saying:
The money Antar gave Minkow wasn’t Antar’s at all. I suspect it belonged to Howard Sirota, who used Antar as an intermediary.
Bagley's boss, Overstock.com's loony CEO Patrick Byrne, likes to refer to Bagley as an "investigative reporter" whenever he smears one of his critics. I'm not joking -- he's serious. But Bagley did not even do the elementary research that one would have expected of even a semi-competent corporate shill.

Had Bagley done even elementary digging, he'd have learned that Sam runs a prosperous real estate business. It would have required even less digging, just a click on Sam's website or reading a recent Fortune article on him, to learn that he flies around the country at his own expense, lecturing law enforcement agencies. Obviously this is no pauper.

He could have simply called Sam -- just like they do in the movies! -- and been told that all of that the "$393,000" in tax bills, liens and judgments (actually $345,000) were either discharged in bankruptcy or paid off.

OK, so maybe he'd think Sam was lying. Fine. Sam has documents to prove all the lien releases and every penny he has paid, stuff that looks like this one, which concerned the release of $80,000 in tax liens:



But even the laziest corporate smear-meister could have just stuck the word "income tax bankruptcy" in Google, revealing this bankruptcy lawyer's website as the top link. There it points out that all tax bills over three years old--most of Sam's tax debts back then--are discharged in bankruptcy.

This is more than just the usual mud-slinging that Antar and Minkow have come to expect. It is also a pretty serious -- not to mention false, malicious, and grossly irresponsible -- slander of a highly reputable class action lawyer who also is no pauper.

I wonder how new board member Joseph J. Tabacco, also a class action lawyer, feels about the pig pen to which he has given his name.

I wonder if he has given any thought to Overstock's liability for the actions of Judd Bagley.

I wonder if he has given any thought to the Overstock board of director's liability for the actions of Judd Bagley. Personal liability.

So after all the effort Bagley has invested in his latest smear, all this corporate lapdog has proven is that Overstock has something to hide in its accounting -- probably its inventory accounting. The post was obviously timed to mesh with the company's disclosure of fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday.

Sam's numerous blog posts have dealt mainly with Overstock's accounting for inventories -- something about which Sam has unparalled expertise, as former CFO of the Crazy Eddie stock fraud. All those issues are being investigated by the SEC, in its ongoing investigation of Overstock and Bagley.

Does Patrick Byrne really think that SEC investigators will be diverted by this kind of garbage?

Does he think his board of directors is happy with this garbage, or does he have a good supply of pliable, well-paid consultants to put on the board if Tabacco et al leave?

Forensic accounting expert Tracy Coenen opines:

Judd’s primary duty at Overstock.com seems to be stalking and smearing those who ask questions about the company and those who point out “unusual” things in the company’s financial statements. Never mind that the company is a total POS: always losing money and burning through cash faster than Patrick Byrne can say “burn those kids.”
I see that Sam has asked to be allowed on Byrne's conference call on Wednesday. At his last conference call, Byrne expressed disappointment that Sam was not present. Well, now he gets his chance to field a Sam Antar question, officially, with the analyst community and journalists and the SEC paying attention to every word.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Another Road Map For Regulators


Byrne: Has he been managing earnings?

Sam Antar's blog today raises yet more disturbing questions concerning accounting practices at the cretinous Internet retailer Overstock.com -- exploring whether the company has been engaged in the slimy practice of "earnings management."

As he did his first installment, this accounting ace provides a veritable road map for the SEC, which is investigating Overstock and its CEO, Patrick Byrne.

The case is pretty well laid out in black and white. The only question is whether the SEC will act-- or if Byrne's real or perceived political clout will keep the SEC from acting.

Tracy Coenen says it "looks like Byrne and company are doing even more fancy math! Yoo-hoo… SEC… are you listening?"

As I've explored in previous blog items (see items tagged "Overstock.com"), this company has engaged in a wide range of misconduct that includes, apart from its accounting issues, the targeting and stalking of critics, the wives of critics, and even a teenage blogger. Overstock.com and its CEO obviously hate scrutiny, which is why I've been focusing a lot on it and will keep doing so.

These Sam Antar blog items -- there's one more yet to go in this three-part series -- also give the public a unique opportunity to explore, in real time, the evidence of misconduct at a company under SEC investigation. We know what the regulators have in their files, except that they have a good deal more. So we have a right to ask: What are they going to do about it? The ball is in the SEC's court.

That goes not just for Overstock's accounting practices, but for the activities of its nauseating propaganda minister and paid stalker, Overstock.com Director of Communications Judd Bagley.


No doubt in reaction to the embarrassing failure of Bagley's "Omuse" Wikipedia clone -- still in "beta" status after the greater part of a year -- Bagley has lately resumed his harassment campaign against the online encyclopedia.

In recent postings on an anti-Wikipedia website, Bagley zeros in on two Wikipedia administrators and boasts about his use of spyware. This is Bagley's justification for his seeking to extract IP data from websites he does not own:

. . . if Jayjg [a Wikipedia administrator with authorized access to user data] can discriminantly view my IP data, why can't I have access to his? Ironic that the person with greatest access to user's identifying information is the most jealous about safeguarding his own privacy, isn't it?
Wikipedia, of course, has a legal right to IP data about its users. But site users -- particularly officials of companies seeking to compete with Wikipedia -- don't have the right to hijack data from other people's websites. Bagley's comment is about as logical as saying, "If IRS officials have access to my income tax data, why can't I obtain the income tax data of IRS officials?"

Later today, Bagley used Overstock.com's antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site to attack a Wikipedia administrator. "SlimVirgin." Why this particular administrator? Well, it seems that this was the one who had thwarted his persistent vandalism and use of Wikipedia to advance Byrne's agenda. He did this - after joining Overstock.com -- by clumsily using dozens of sockpuppets. Bagley omits that little detail from his item.

O-Smear reminds us that Bagley previously attempted a crude blackmail attempt against this administrator, and notes:
The fact that SlimVirgin has made it difficult for Patrick Byrne's paid PR shill to edit the Overstock.com, Byrne and Naked Short Selling Wikipedia articles has raised their ire to no end. I think that's what Wikipedia admins are supposed to do, so he is proof that she seems to be doing a good job of it. It upset them so much that Overstock burned up a bunch of shareholder dollars to create a competitor site, Omuse (try not to laugh). So now Bagley is not only harassing women he doesn't know, he's intentionally disrupting a competing (try not to laugh) web service.
If Bagley were employed anywhere but Overstock.com, he'd have long been marched out to the parking lot by the guys in security.

Again, the ball is in the court of the SEC and other regulators. Which reminds me -- I see from his blog that Sam is giving a presentation to the financial crimes unit of the Utah Attorney General on Oct. 31. They'll have a lot of questions for him, I suspect, as a leading expert on accounting fraud.

But I have a question that he may want to ask them: Will this corporate pariah continue to flout the law?

One thing for sure is that answers to such questions will not come from the lapdog Overstock.com board of directors, even with the addition of a noted class action lawyer, Joseph J. Tabacco Jr., to the board.

Tabacco and the other "independent" directors are fully aware of what is going on at Overstock, and should certainly bear the consequences for their failure to act.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

John Mackey, Patrick Byrne, and a Snoozing SEC

Today the news wires are buzzing about an amazing tale: the CEO of a public company, John P. Mackey of Whole Foods, systematically posted messages under a pseudonym on Yahoo message boards. The media is astonished: "How Whole Foods C.E.O. Led 2 Lives," gasped the New York Times Dealbook. I guess you can call Mackey the Lon Chaney of Corporate America.

Mackey, it seems, posted anonymously on message boards to bash a competitor and boost the company's share price -- amazing behavior that came to light not because of an SEC enforcement action, on any number of possible grounds ranging from securities fraud to Regulation FD, but in a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission. Seems that in those anonymous posts, Mackey bashed a competitor, Wild Oats, which he was going to acquire.

Two things are noteworthy about this:

1. The SEC's inaction.

and

2. The fact that no federal agency, including and most notably the SEC, has taken action against (speaking of horror shows) a far worse Internet-addicted CEO, Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com, whose prolific message board posts, in my view, are far worse than anything Mackey did.


Like Mackey, Byrne posts under a pseudonym -- "Hannibal" -- on stock message boards. As a rule, Byrne does not give his full name, or identify himself as chief executive of Overstock.com, chairman of its board of directors, and, just as importantly, as the single largest holder of Overstock shares.

Yet, as I have documented time and again in this blog, has repeatedly used Internet message boards to smear his critics -- spreading lies about people in the media (myself included) and making nutty accusations such as that the Motley Fool website and some of its analysts are "bent" and corrupted.

He has done so not as some anonymous "basher" but as a message board Big Kahuna -- if, that is, you are among the select few who are aware of the fact that the nutty-sounding, paranoid crackpot posting on various message boards is actually the nutty-sounding paranoid crackpot who runs Overstock.com.

The media, perhaps inured to Byrne's chronic wackiness, has missed this significant point. Andrew Leonard in Salon, in a column entitled "Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's wacky Web rants," said as follows:
One assumes that the CEO of a publicly traded company would not be dumb enough to leak insider information on a stock discussion board, or make unmerited forward-looking statements in an effort to pump up Whole Foods stock. But who knows? It's sure hard to imagine any Whole Foods corporate public relations person being anything but horrified at the news that the CEO is bashing competitors and predicting stock prices under a pseudonym out in the wild Internet.
Guess again, Andrew. Here's one example of Byrne's naked, manipulative efforts to hype Overstock shares -- and the value of his holdings -- on Internet message boards. I've written about this before, but I think a re-run is in order.

On March 12, 2006, Byrne put a tantalizing little kicker at the bottom of a post on the limited-readership, subscription only Motley Fool message board:

PPS Big story breaking next 24 hours. Stay tuned.
I repeat, this is a limited-readership, subscription-only message board, concerning a stock with a wafer-thin float.

It also needs to be taken into consideration that this was done by a CEO who takes message boards very seriously, and who has contended that "paid bashers" are involved in the famous Sith Lord conspiracy.

He really did this. No foolin'.

Here's a screen shot of the relevant portion of the post:



Here's a link to this historic post, which you can access if you are a paid member of the Motley Fool website.

I repeat: you can access this only if you are a paid member of the Motley Fool website. (I'm repeating myself, and putting the relevant passages in boldface, because I sometimes think that the SEC has either eyesight or reading comprehension problems.)

Note that this CEO and largest shareholder of a public company is not identifying himself as CEO and largest shareholder of a public company. I repeat..... OK, I made my point.

It so happens there was some activity within the "next 24 hours" -- an idiotically bullish article by investor Arnie Alsin.

The Alsin article caused the stock to explode. The shares, which traded at 22.85 on March 10, climbed 12% to 25.55 on March 13, and another 25% to 28.50 on March 14l, on massive (for Overstock) volume of more than 2 million shares each day. Nice! Until you consider that Alsin was dead wrong. The shares have since skittered down to 19 and have traded at a lot lower than that. Note the link in the comment to this article by the proprietor of the O-Smear blog.

Confronted with this blast from the past in April on the Investor Village Overstock message board, (perhaps inspired by this Motley Fool article by Seth Jayson) Byrne tap danced and pirouetted -- and came forth with the following cock-and-bull story:


"Odd that you don't quote from that one"? You might find it even odder that Byrne did not "quote from that one."

Or at least it would be odd -- if that post actually exists. As best as I can tell, it does not. In the three months since I originally posted on this subject, it hasn't emerged. No loyal member of the Byrne Fan Club has brought it to my attention.

So I think it is fair to assume that Byrne was lying in a public forum. Say, doesn't the SEC have a word for that?

Seth Jayson of the Motley Fool (Byrne's bloviation venue in the Spring of 2006, until critics there bruised his fragile ego and he sulked away), observed as follows:
Where, I wonder, is this face- (or neck-) saving "disclosure," as to what Patrick was talking about. I haven't seen a single clarification from Hannibal100 in any of the posts made under that user name on this board subsequent to the original "big news" post -- and I just read every single one of them
Further proof that the "clarification post" dwells only in Byrne's vivid imagination can be found in a June 2006 post on another Motley Fool board from a Byrne supporter. One user had pointed to the "big news" comment, and the Byrne defender responded, "Nonsense. I forwarded your post to Dr. Byrne. He replied that the big news he was referring had not happened yet. "

I've reprinted the past few paragraphs from my April 23 blog post on Byrne's deceptive conduct. What's even more amazing is that the SEC is aware of this, and is of course aware of similar if less troublesome sliminess by John Mackey, and does nothing.

The famously passive board of directors of Overstock.com has also been made aware, including its "independent" board members, who now included a noted class action lawyer, Joseph Tabacco.

I wonder about Mr. Tabacco. Is he in the chicken coop to guard the birds, or to leave the door open for the fox?

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
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Monday, June 18, 2007

Does Overstock.com Have a Board of Directors?

Warning: This item is not recommended for pregnant or nursing women, children under 18, persons with high blood pressure or heart disease, or anyone with a weak stomach:

Reading the latest atrocity by the nauseating (and I do mean nauseating) Judd Bagley, Overstock.com's Director of Communications, official spokesman and resident stalker, has gotten me wondering: does Overstock.com have a board of directors?

Not "does it have a competent board of directors?" or "does it have independent board members who care about their jobs?" -- the answer to those two questions obviously being no -- but whether there is such a thing as "corporate governance" at this chamber pot of a company.

What got me wondering about this was an act of blackmail, signed proudly by Bagley, directed at the proprietor of the O-Smear website, which has exposed this SEC-investigated company's unethical conduct.

You can read about the blackmail here, but I think the letter is worth replicating below:


From: Judd Bagley
To: scipioafricanus_iv@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 11:51:26 PM
Subject: just thought I'd ask...

I thought I should tell you that I've have known your real identity for a while now.

Up until last week, it appeared that you'd grown tired of o-smear and all the games (which would make "outting" you unnecessary) but lately it appears that's not the case.

I don't want to cause anybody unnecessary harm, but I'm beyond tired of the lies.

If you choose to continue as you have been, I will write about you on AntiSocialMedia.net. In doing so, my goal is not to intimidate, but to let you own your words; under those circumstances, I think the lies will take care of themselves.

Having said that, I'm also very much aware of the impact this could have on your reputation, especially where you live, and I feel obligated to offer you a way out. So, if you're ready to set things right, I'll keep your name to myself and figure we'll both be karmically better off for it.

I look forward to your response (and will be PMing this to your IV account, as well).

--
Judd Bagley
Note the dictionary definition of blackmail: "to force or coerce into a particular action, statement, etc."

This may go down in history as the first blackmail letter written in smug corporate P.R. doublespeak. ("I'm beyond tired of the lies"="I'm beyond tired of the truth." "My goal is not to intimidate"= "My goal is to intimidate you and every other critic of Overstock.com") I say that because Bagley was, of course, aware that his letter would be made public. He's proud of it, you see.

Note the similarity in wording to the threat that he made against a Wikipedia administrator in late August, shortly after going on the Overstock.com payroll in his initial title of "director of social media."

No other company in the U.S. would sanction such disgusting, unethical, and legally questionable conduct by a corporate official, made doubly odious by the fact that Bagley was hired to do the bidding of CEO Byrne, and his actions have a long history of being supported and promoted by Byrne.

Any other corporate board would discharge both Byrne and Bagley -- something obviously inconceivable for the laughingstock, lapdog, functionally nonexistent Overstock.com board.

Reading this email from a corporate thug to a private citizen also makes me wonder: Is there is such a concept as "SEC enforcement" when it comes to the misdeeds of Overstock and its CEO Patrick Byrne? Or has Byrne's ancestral wealth and political influence makes that concept moot as well?

This latest episode in the Bagley-Byrne saga is a test of Overstock.com's board of directors as well as the Enforcement Division of the SEC.

The board's independent members, I understand, have been advised of Bagley's latest actions. Ditto for the SEC.


If they do nothing in a reasonably brief period of time, then the answer to the question that I posed above will be answered. It will mean that Overstock.com, for all intents and purposes, does not have a board of directors.

As for SEC enforcement -- well, just read my book and you can understand why nothing has been done. If anything is done, I would surmise, it would only happen long after Ovestock is a wretched memory.

Also today, Sam Antar has a revealing, detailed post on how Bagley and Byrne have used anti-Semitism as a tool of corporate intimidation. It makes for fascinating reading.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: O-Smear did not respond and Bagley carried out his threat on Overstock's antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site. By so doing, Bagley showed that he is as much a schmuck as he is a blackmailer.

Bagley's "revelation" is that O-Smear is run not by the Sith Lord but by some guy in Indiana -- a private citizen who is disgusted with corporate creeps like Judd Bagley.

To make the slimy picture complete, and thumb his nose at Joseph J. Tabacco Jr. and other independent directors, Bagley put a spyware bug in his ASM post, so as to track people distributing the item via email.

The onus is now on Tabacco and the other independent board members. By serving on the board of this company, they have a moral and, I suspect, legal obligation to register strong and public disapproval of the activities of Bagley and Byrne. If they don't, their silence would be tacit approval of Bagley's and Byrne's disgraceful behavior, and they will bear full responsibility for their neglect of duty.

Quite frankly, I wonder how reputable people like Tabacco could allow their reputations to be sullied by associating with a company such as Overstock.com.

Some reaction:

The Motley Fool's Daniel Rubin calls Bagley's blackmail adventures "the most incredible thing I've seen in my seven years of following the market. "

Says Rubin:
Is there ANY oversight of all this filth? Any at all? To see this mockery go on right out in the open, and involving an American public company is starting to genuinely challenge my faith in the integrity of the system. As I've said, this is the cruelest irony of this debacle. This pitiful, puke-inducing chapter of American business never ceases to turn the stomach - cyberstalking, anti-Semitism, Sith Lords, international mobsters, conspiracies, and enough message board animosity to fuel a space shuttle.
Rubin added in another Motley Fool post: "The question is when will all [Byrne's] railing and false accusations and seemingly blatant illegal activity result in his removal and legal action? This man has left a trail of animosity and denigration of the human spirit that is awe inspiring in it's scope."

That's the question. The answer is with Joe Tabacco and his colleagues.

More reaction:

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© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.

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