Want the Hairs on the Back of Your Neck to Crawl?

Brent Baker, proud lawyer for slime

If so, read about how ex-Overstock.com legal brain Brent Baker crowed to the Salt Lake Tribune about his poor, downtrodden, misunderstood client, Stanford Financial's CFO Laura Pendergest-Holt.

Hold on to your barf bags, folks. The woman is innocent. Yessir. A victim of overzealous regulators. And that's not all. Innocent people like Pendergest-Holt and Overstock's fabulously inept CEO Patrick Byrne know that they can get great representation at popular prices!

"We took on the representation knowing the assets were frozen but it goes to the reason why I get a lot of national cases," said Baker. "It's because we can take the risk because I don't have outrageously high overhead. I don't have to have to get millions and millions of dollars up front. If I believe in a client, I'll take a chance."

Baker goes on to wax rhapsodic about his former client Byrne, who waxes rhapsodic right back.

I had been wondering why the stock market conspiracy websites, which ordinarily tie in every Wall Street crime into a grand naked shorting conspiracy, failed to lasso in the Stanford defendants. Now I know why. Pendergest-Holt is good people, as are other ex-clients Baker believes in like Byrne and the Universal Express ripoff crew.

Baker learned to "believe in" these nightcrawlers while working for the SEC. Your tax dollars at work, folks, providing training for lawyers of white collar defendants in years to come.

Baker is a real piece of work. He once had a blog called sectales.com in which he said the following in response to a post of mine talking about his role at Overstock and issuer retaliation:

Guess what? Patrick and the DeepCapture folks are all correct. I saw it from within the belly of the beast and I can honestly tell you that "bent journalists" are more of a problem for our capital markets than "retailating issuers." Give me a break.

He signed this post "Fraudstopper." Seriously. This guy views himself as a "fraudstopper" by mouthing crap like this and by charging popular prices to represent the likes of Stanford's CFO, Patrick Byrne and the Universal Express bunch.

Baker (or his law partners) decided to be the ones to give him a break, by nuking these brilliant comments and what would have been a very interesting blog.

P.S. Baker's ex-colleagues feel that Pendergest-Holt is a "flight risk" who should continue to wear an electronic monitoring device, Reuters reports. I'm sure that in a few years they'll be finding a lot to "believe in" when it comes to the creeps and hoods of Wall Street and Corporate America.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

Comings and Goings

A couple of comings and goings came to my attention today.

The first was a press release today from the Securities and Exchange Commission, with good news! Good news, that is, for Debevoise & Plimpton, the hotshot Washington law firm that just hired away the SEC's Associate Director of Enforcement, Paul R. Berger. Mazel tov!

Interesting how the SEC always issues a press release on such occasions, actually proud of the revolving door between itself and the big law firms that defend the people and companies it is supposed to regulate and investigate.

Once hired, these people work very hard behind the scenes, to make life easier for Wall Street and public companies, thereby ensuring that all those years of low-paid service to the SEC don't go to waste.

Stuff like the revolving door doesn't get too much attention because of the media's declining appetite for tough, investigative reporting, as I described in my book.

That brings me to the second coming and going that emerged today, at Time magazine.

It was in the papers today, at the tail end of articles about the new managing editor. If you look deep down in these stories, such as this one in the New York Times, you can see that the famed investigative team of Donald Barlett and James Steele have been tossed out on the Street.

"They're very good but very expensive, and I couldn't get anyone to take them on their budget," the Times quoted Time Inc. editor in chief John Huey as saying.

"We'll miss their work," he is quoted as adding and golly, I sure will miss their work. Won't you?

I don't think that regulatory agencies will miss their work. Pesky reporters are annoying, and can hamper one's quest for what really matters, which is that cushy job at the end of the rainbow.

-----------

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.