SEC Everywhere, Part II
Three years ago I looked at the flurry of SEC enforcement activity at that time and suggested a new tagline for the SEC: "SEC Everywhere". Four days later, as if on cue, SEC Chairman William Donaldson was asked at the Securities Industry Association conference why the SEC enforcement staff did not detect abuses in the mutual fund industry before they were uncovered by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Donaldson reportedly said, "We have had a full plate. We can't be everywhere." (See my follow-up post: "SEC Not Everywhere)".
So we've been in this "SEC Not Everywhere" holding pattern for three years. BNA Securities Law Daily reports that yesterday, however, ironically at the same Securities Industry Association conference, SEC Enforcement Director Linda C. Thomsen said that
she wants the enforcement division to cover all areas and issues--not just those in the headlines. Speaking at a seminar in New York, Thomsen said, "We want to make sure we are everywhere."
Accordingly, SLW is officially changing the status back to "SEC Everywhere". But you might want to check back in four days.
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Tuesday, November 7, 2006 |
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The Twinkie Offense
In his February 2006 speech to the US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, SEC Commissioner Atkins veered way off of his topic of litigation reform to deliver a message to corporations: stop treating the Commission like a rubber stamp by prematurely disclosing your settlement offers to, or "settlements in principle" with, the SEC staff!
He stated:
It has become a common occurrence lately that I see public companies disclosing an agreement, or settlement, "in principle" with the SEC. I can't tell you how frustrated this makes me. To understand my frustration, you must understand the context in which these situations arise.Often in the SEC enforcement process, public companies, or sometimes their regulated subsidiaries such as broker-dealers, decide to pursue a settlement with the Commission. In the settlement process, the settling party deals directly with our enforcement staff, but the staff does not have the authority to bind the Commission to the terms of a settlement. Simply put, the settling party is offering to the enforcement staff to settle the matter based on certain violations of the securities laws, with certain remedies such as bars, penalties, or disgorgement, and in return the enforcement staff is agreeing to recommend to the Commissioners that they approve the settlement as offered.
At this stage nothing is final, and because of that lack of finality I find it hard to believe that the agreement by the staff to recommend settlement to the Commission is, by itself, necessarily an event that must be reported to shareholders. Although we Commissioners have deep respect for the work of enforcement staff, I can assure you that the next step in the process is not a rubber stamp approval by the Commission.
In fact, this Commission has shown that it does not own a rubber stamp! Proposed settlements have been, and will continue to be, disapproved or modified by the Commission when they do not meet the policy objectives of investor protection, as well as other factors. Those of you who follow closely the workings of the SEC or who practice before us know very well what I am talking about.
And yet companies routinely continue to do this, the most recent example being the press release by Twinkie-maker Interstate Bakeries. Interstate announces in its press release that
it has submitted an offer of settlement to the staff of the Division of Enforcement of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in connection with a previously disclosed SEC investigation. On January 28, 2005, IBC announced that the SEC had issued a formal order of private investigation concerning matters related to a previously announced investigation by IBC's audit committee into the manner for setting its workers' compensation reserves and other reserves.The proposed settlement is subject to approval by the Commission. IBC has been informed that the staff of the Division of Enforcement has determined to recommend the settlement to the Commission. However, IBC cannot give assurance that the Commission will approve the proposed settlement.
It is unclear to me why companies continue to do this in the face of the Commission's clear, albeit informal, guidance on this. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
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Friday, November 3, 2006 |
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Make Up Your Mind
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Jefferson's Brother: My brother's gonna kill us! He's gonna kill us! He's gonna kill you and he's gonna kill me, he's gonna kill us!
Jeff Spicoli: Hey man, just be glad I had fast reflexes!
Jefferson's Brother: My brother's gonna $#!+!
Jeff Spicoli: Make up your mind, dude, is he gonna $#!+ or is he gonna kill us?
Jefferson's Brother: First he's gonna $#!+, then he's gonna kill us!
Jeff Spicoli: Relax, alright? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools. I can fix it.
According to several articles such as this one from Bloomberg, the SEC brought 574 enforcement actions in fiscal 2006 (which ended September 30), 9% fewer than the 630 cases it brought in 2005. According to the article:
The drop was largely a result of reduced staff, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in the statement. The agency restricted hiring in 2006 because it had to close a $48.7-million budget gap triggered partly by cost overruns in building a new headquarters in Washington.
As elaborated on in this Washington Post article,
Cox attributed the decline to temporarily reduced staff levels. The SEC as a whole lost 155 employees last year -- including 43 in the enforcement unit -- compared with fiscal 2005. A total of 3,696 people worked at the agency in 2006, with 1,189 in the enforcement division. The agency is reviewing its staffing levels and plans to restore some of the unfilled positions, officials said.
The message here from the SEC seems to be that its enforcement program suffered somewhat because it was "grappling with staffing cuts" (as the Post put it), but that they are actively trying to restore these positions and this situation will hopefully be resolved soon. That is a plausible response but it strikes me as quite different from the message the SEC sent out in August 2004 when it was similarly reported that the number of SEC enforcement actions in fiscal 2004 would be declining for the first time in many years. At that time, then-Chairman William H. Donaldson took the "half-full" approach, and declared that the decline was, in fact, "encouraging" in that it could indicate that the SEC's efforts are having a deterrent effect. He was reportedly "quick to add that it was too early for the SEC to declare victory in the war on corporate corruption." Chairman Cox could have seized on the continued decline in enforcement actions (down from as many as 679 in 2003) as additional encouraging news, but he seems to have taken the opposite approach: that fewer cases equates to a bad situation that may require a response (i.e., hire more people).
So my question: Is the fact that there are fewer enforcement actions year-over-year a good thing or a bad thing? Or neither?
And to the SEC, guest blogger Jeff Spicoli says, "Make up your mind, dude!"
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Monday, October 30, 2006 |
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Tie Goes to the Fielder?
This article from the Financial Times notes that according to Barney Frank, the congressman "widely expected take over the chair of the House financial services committee if the Democrats retake the chamber," the creation of a global securities regulator should be considered.
Observing the growing need for cooperation between the US and foreign regulators such as the UK's Financial Services Authority, the article states:
"Doesn't that sound like fun," Mr Frank said of such co-operation. "Joint action is theoretically [good] but what does that mean? In American baseball, if the runner and the ball arrive at the base at the same time, the tie goes to the fielder. Who breaks a tie if there is a disagreement over policy between the SEC and FSA?"(emphasis added).
OK, so there is at least the prospect of a global securities regulator down the road, which is interesting. But is it as interesting as Frank's proclamation that in American baseball, the "tie goes to the fielder?"
Anyone who has played or coached baseball has heard the expression the "tie goes to the runner" many times. So what is this new rule that Mr. Frank is making up? Indeed, a Google search shows that there are only 5 (!) reported mentions of the phrase "tie goes to the fielder" in the history of the Internet, or whatever it is that Google scours. That compares to 12,200 mentions of the phrase "tie goes to the runner"
And yet... I think Mr. Frank may actually be right. According to baseball rule 7.08(e),
7.08 Any runner is out when-
(e) He fails to reach the next base before a fielder tags him or the base, after he has been forced to advance by reason of the batter becoming a runner.
Assuming there can be such a thing as a "tie" between the runner reaching the base and the ball reaching the fielder, it would seem to follow in such a case that the runner has failed to reach the base before the fielder tagged the base, and is therefore out.
So, Barney Frank, you appear to be correct. SLW salutes your willingness to buck popular wisdom, coin a new phrase, and tie it all back to securities litigation.
Any reader thoughts on this important issue?
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Tuesday, September 26, 2006 |
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The Butler Did It?
The SEC says the butler did it. Insider trading, that is.
Which raises the obvious question: What's the point of even being a butler these days if you aren't allowed to trade based on confidential faxes coming into your mansion regarding your master's acquisition of a dormant shell company that will be used as a vehicle to acquire and exploit the commercial rights to Elvis Presley's name and likeness?
I mean, once that's taken away from you, what's left?
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Monday, September 25, 2006 |
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Putting It Behind You
Way back in April 2004, I wrote an article entitled "Beware the No-Spin Zone," which discussed the days immediately following the conclusion of an SEC investigation or settlement in which companies must be particularly careful not to "spin" the resolution beyond its actual terms (or risk the wrath of the SEC).
To recap that article, on Wednesday, March 10, 2004, a company called AGCO Corp., which had been the subject of an informal SEC inquiry into its accounting practices, received great news in a letter from the SEC that stated: This [the previously announced] inquiry has been terminated, and no enforcement action has been recommended to the Commission. We are providing this information under the guidelines in the final paragraph of Securities Act Release No. 5310. Later that same day, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that AGCO had publicly announced the end of the SEC's inquiry. The newspaper quoted the company's CEO as stating: "It's a good day…. When you're sure that you haven't done anything wrong--but to the outside world it looks like you're guilty of something--it's a real relief to be vindicated from any accusations." The CEO reportedly added that although AGCO was not going to make the SEC's letter public, "They confirmed that all procedures are accurate and in accordance with prescribed accounting procedures…. The issue, as far as we're concerned, is closed and we can now devote more time to the management of the business and the company." It is unclear what communications, if any, occurred between the SEC and AGCO following the Wednesday publication of the article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. By Thursday afternoon, however, AGCO had issued what must have been a painful press release titled, "AGCO Corrects Reports Regarding Letter Received from SEC." This press release included a very different quote from AGCO's CEO: The termination of the SEC inquiry does not indicate that our accounting procedures or disclosures are correct or that we have been vindicated. That is not what the SEC letter said, and I want to correct what was reported in the media. All the letter said was that the inquiry was terminated. Neither that letter nor anything else said by the SEC staff in any way suggested that AGCO's accounting or related disclosures are correct. Painful lessons such as this one have led corporations to respect the "No-Spin Zone" in recent years, and helped them to avoid turning what should be a positive development into a negative one. Indeed, a "default" corporate statement seems to have evolved in the past couple years in response to notice from the SEC of the termination of an investigation: companies now simply say that they are pleased that "the matter is behind us." For example, consider these four statements from the last 12 months announcing that the SEC had terminated investigations: Years later, the lesson still seems to be that if a company really wants to put an SEC investigation "behind it," it must respect the No-Spin Zone.
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Thursday, September 21, 2006 |
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OK... Pretty Please?
Really? The answer to my request to the SEC back in July for an RSS feed on its Investor Claims Funds page is just "No"? Or maybe you're just still thinking it over? Maybe the RSS feed guy has been on vacation?
C'mon, SEC! It'll just take you a minute. Slap that RSS feed on there. Pretty please?
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Tuesday, September 19, 2006 |
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Fortune Article: "Partners in Crime"
"The correlation of volatilities, historical and implied in terms of the S&P and just a general strong dropoff in the five-day volatility, making new highs, so those are all things I look at."--David Pajcin, November 22, 2005
Barney Gimbel has an excellent and quite thorough article in the current issue of Fortune ("Partner in Crime," Oct. 2, 2006) about the exploits of David Pajcin and Eugene Plotkin, the brain trust behind "Insider Trading, Inc."
The article includes information from a Fortune interview with Plotkin (the first interview with him to date), as well as some priceless material from the SEC's questioning of Pajcin. According to the article, the SEC brought Pajcin in for testimony on November 22, 2005, and asked him, among other things, about the purchase by numerous people connected to him (including his Croatian aunt) of out-of-the money call options in Reebok. Although Pajcin did not know it at the time, the SEC had already figured out that the securities Pajcin and his contacts purchased were consistently either (1) merger or acquisition targets in deals worked on by Merrill Lynch (a Merrill Lynch analyst has already pleaded guilty to insider trading in this case) or (2) companies that were about to be profiled in Business Week's market-moving Inside Wall Street column.
The article states that in response to the SEC's question, Pajcin
admitted advising many of the people involved in the case to buy Reebok, but only because he thought the stock was a bargain, not because he knew anything about a pending merger.
Plotkin held forth for the better part of seven hours on that subject, talking at mind-numbing length about the metrics he said he had applied to the stock. The SEC's Black then summarized this at length, concluding, "Have we covered all the components of your analysis with respect to Reebok specifically that you can remember, sitting here today?"
Pajcin added a few things: "The correlation of volatilities, historical and implied in terms of the S&P and just a general strong dropoff in the five-day volatility, making new highs, so those are all things I look at."
About half an hour later, Black changed the subject to Business Week. Pajcin said he didn't read it often. His answers became short. When he was shown some copies of the Inside Wall Street column, he said he wasn't familiar with it. Then when he was shown articles that had appeared the day he had sold stocks of the companies mentioned, he looked like "a deer in headlights," according to a lawyer who was present. His explanation? He had probably gotten the tips from two guys he had met in Croatian nightclubs, whom he knew only as "Carlo" and "Vladimir."
UPDATE: The Fortune article is available online here.
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Thursday, September 14, 2006 |
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Must Be a Technical Glitch
Hmphhh.... Now this certainly is odd.... For some reason, when the SEC wins a case on summary judgment (like this one against Paul R. Johnson), the decision shows up on the SEC Litigation Releases page. But when the SEC loses a case on summary judgment, and in the process has its misuse of quotation marks compared to Britney Spears, the decision does not show up on the SEC Litigation Releases page. Very curious.
I think it must just be some kind of technical glitch. Yeah, the server must be down. I'll keep checking.
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Thursday, September 7, 2006 |
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SEC and Britney: Not So Good on the "Quotations"
There's simply no way to sugarcoat it. It's just a reeeeeeeeeaaaallllllly bad day as an SEC attorney when:
(a) you lose your insider trading case on summary judgment because the court finds that the SEC's complaint fails even to raise a genuine issue of material fact worth taking to a jury, and
(b) a federal judge writes (see footnote 3 in this opinion) that your inability to use quotation marks properly is "not unlike Britney Spears...." According to the Honorable C.N. Clevert, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin,
By putting the word “tour” in quotes, the SEC indicates that Krueger used that word in his testimony – a misleading indication, at best. Perhaps the SEC is not unlike Britney Spears in its inability to use quotation marks correctly. In her now-infamous interview with Matt Lauer, the erstwhile pop star said, “I think 90 percent of the world agrees that the tabloids have kind of gone a little ‘far’ with me lately.” Interview by Matt Lauer with Britney Spears in L.A., Cal. (June 15, 2006) (putting the word “far” in air quotes). See also US Weekly Magazine, http://www.usmagazine.com/blog/category/air-quotes/ (“As evidenced in her Dateline interview, [Britney Spears] has a knack for misusing air quotes, placing them in between words or around the wrong ones.”)
Thanks to the WSJ Law Blog for tracking this down.
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Monday, August 14, 2006 |
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What is "Nonpublic?"
Several of the comments piling up regarding my Sharesleuth.com/Achilles' Heel post take issue with the notion that the pre-publication trades made by Mark Cuban are based on "nonpublic" information. The gist of these comments is that the information assembled by Sharesleuth.com is all from the public domain, based on Sharesleuth.com's own due diligence, etc. so how can it be "nonpublic?"
The answer to that question is that the nonpublic element of this plan relates to which company Sharesleuth.com will be writing about. Assume that Sharesleuth.com generates enough of a following that its investigative reports are able to move the market--which will be the likely result if Sharesleuth.com proves that it can expose previously unknown fraud within public companies. Does anyone not associated with Sharesleuth.com know which company the next Sharesleuth.com report will be about? Of course not--that's not public information. Would you like to know which company the next report is about in advance so that you could take advantage of the imminent decline in the price of that stock? You tell me.
The nonpublic element, therefore, is knowing the specific company about which a market-moving publication is going to issue a report or article. This is exactly what was involved in the Winans (WSJ) case, as well as in the numerous cases involving people who begged/borrowed/stole pre-publication copies of Business Week so that they could trade in advance of the market-moving information in its "Inside Wall Street" column. There was no specifically "nonpublic" information contained in the actual WSJ or Business Week articles, either.
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Tuesday, August 1, 2006 |
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'Bout Time!
The SEC announced today that on July 28, a federal court in Georgia ordered Arnold E. Johns, Jr. to pay $372,578 of disgorgement, plus prejudgment interest of $399,209, for insider trading. To which all we can say is... it's about time!!!
Suffice it to say that the insider trading at issue occurred many, many moons ago. How long ago? Without looking at the release, see if you can guess. Here are your clues:
1. As noted above, the prejudgment interest now actually exceeds the amount of the disgorgement.
2. ER was the top-rated TV show.
3. The #1 song on the pop charts that month was "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey and Boyz 2 Men.
4. Dallas beat Pittsburgh to win the SuperBowl.
5. At least where I worked at that time (the SEC), you needed to go to a special room and terminal to use the Internet.
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Friday, July 28, 2006 |
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WorldCom Update: SEC Sues Former WorldCom Accountant
Just when you thought that the WorldCom case was dead and buried, it appears that the SEC is still plugging along. Despite the fact that all of the key players in the fraud have now been prosecuted and sentenced (some, such as Betty Vinson, have actually already pleaded guilty, served their entire sentence and been released!) the SEC announced a new civil case against Mark Abide, the company's former director of property accounting.
The SEC announced that
The Commission's action against Abide is its seventh civil action related to the WorldCom fraud. The complaint filed today alleges from the first quarter of 2001 through the first quarter of 2002, Abide made, and directed others to make, improper accounting entries into WorldCom's depreciable asset accounts in order to conceal improperly capitalized expenses. In January and February 2002, while the fraud was being carried out by Abide and others, Abide sold 6,728 shares of WorldCom stock (99% of the WorldCom stock he owned), avoiding losses of nearly $58,000.
Abide has agreed to settle the matter by consenting to pay $128,806: $57,947 in disgorgement, prejudgment interest of $12,912 and an insider trading civil money penalty of $57,947. Abide also has agreed to be suspended from practicing before the Commission as an accountant with the right to request his reinstatement after five years.
Oddly enough, Abide appears to be the only one of the seven SEC defendants to date (Ebbers, Sullivan, David Myers, Buddy Yates, Vinson, and Troy Normand) who will actually pay a fine to the SEC. The SEC said yesterday that Sullivan and Yates are "unable to pay" the fines/disgorgement previously imposed upon them (Sullivan already forked over his sweet house in Boca Raton as part of the securities class action settlement), and that no such penalties were imposed on Vinson and Normand because they also were unable to pay anything. The SEC had previously indicated that the same was true of Myers. Ebbers' SEC settlement did not include any fines/disgorgement.
Wait a minute--The last we read, Vinson was gainfully employed as a controller at a KFC. I guess the SEC can't work out some kind of payment plan?
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Thursday, July 20, 2006 |
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From the Smoking Gun Dept.
The SEC announced the filing of a case yesterday against Steven Misner, the former CEO of now-bankrupt Southwestern Water Exploration Co. According to the SEC, Misner tried to inflate Southwestern's stock price by creating the false impression that Southwestern owned water of great value.
The SEC alleges that Misner made false statements in Southwestern's July 16 and November 4, 2002 press releases, claiming that Southwestern owned rights to, and was developing, a large freshwater underground reservoir worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The SEC alleges that in fact, however, Misner knew or should have known that Southwestern did not own any rights to the water, that the press releases grossly overstated the value and amount of water in the reservoir, and that Southwestern had made no effort — and did not intend — to develop the reservoir.
Not helping Misner's case one bit is an email he allegedly sent 3 days before the November press release stating:
If this project blows up in our face . . . we, the company, need to ensure that we have taken every step possible to both maximize the return to the company and limit our liability. . . . [R]emember that everyone, including [our large investor] and the majority of our shareholders, think that we have at least 100 million of water for sale which is not the case . . .
UPDATE: In this article on Stockwatch.com, Mr. Misner states that the SEC has gotten its facts wrong. He also states that the email quoted above is taken out of context. According to the article,
Mr. Misner says he was referring to inflated figures issued by the company's then president, Tom Lenney. He claims he was trying to release accurate figures, but nobody, including Southwestern's largest shareholder, believed the engineering report.
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Spread the RSS Love?
Now that the SEC has embraced RSS technology for publicizing key events such as additions to its Litigation Releases webpage, may I make another suggestion? One of the most important pages on the SEC's website for our clients at ISS' Securities Class Action Services is the Investor Claims Funds page, which is the only real information source that lists "the SEC enforcement cases in which a Receiver, Disbursement Agent, or Claims Administrator has been appointed." This page is critical to us because SCAS files claims for its institutional clients in securities class action and SEC settlements.
The Investor Claims Funds page currently has no RSS feed, however, so users of that page have no easy way to see if any new cases have been added to the lengthy list (currently over 150) of cases listed simply in alphabetical order. If the SEC was to spread the RSS love and add a feed to the Investor Claims Funds page, users would know immediately when a new SEC settlement had reached the stage at which claims could be filed.
So can we have an RSS feed on that page? Please?
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Thursday, July 6, 2006 |
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SEC Provides RSS Feed
Back in November 2005 when I learned that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland had begun offering an RSS feed to publicize its new cases, I wrote:
"SEC, care to follow suit? It seems like a no-brainer to have an RSS feed of the SEC Litigation Releases, etc. I'll be your first subscriber.
Well, the day has finally arrived--the SEC's Litigation Releases page now sports the familiar shiny orange "XML" button and SLW is officially on board as a subscriber. Thanks, SEC!
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SEC May Sue Mercury Interactive Directors Over Options Backdating
This press release attached to Mercury Interactive's Form 8-K dated July 3, 2006 states that
On June 23, 2006, the SEC Staff, as part of the “Wells” process by which the SEC Staff affords individuals and companies the opportunity to present their views regarding potential action by the SEC, advised counsel for directors Igal Kohavi, Yair Shamir and Giora Yaron that the SEC Staff is considering recommending that the Commission file a civil enforcement proceeding against each of these directors under applicable provisions of the federal securities laws. The directors have advised the SEC Staff that they intend to file a Wells submission arguing that they did not violate the federal securities laws, that they did not participate in or know of option backdating and that the charges under consideration are legally and factually without basis.
As I have written here and elsewhere, it is quite unusual for the SEC to pursue a public company's outside directors for financial shenanigans or fraud at the company. But that appears to be the direction in which this case is headed.
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Monday, June 19, 2006 |
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Always the Maverick
mav·er·ick n. One that refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adherence to a group; a dissenter. adj. Being independent in thought and action or exhibiting such independence....
How appropriate that the NBA team owner Mark Cuban purchased years ago was called the "Mavericks." Whether it is his unique style in owning the team, the ideas that he posts on his usually provocative Blog Maverick weblog, or the businesses that he pursues (which range from High Definition TV to the Swash), Cuban is himself a true Maverick (for the record, I'm a Wizards fan rooting for the Mavs for no particular reason, and I don't see how the refs could call that ticky-tack "foul" on Dirk at the end of OT to basically hand the game to the Heat last night).
So why is Cuban appearing on the pages of SLW today? Let's back up a bit first to put this in context. There have been many, high-profile insider trading cases brought through the years against people who traded based on non-public information concerning what would be imminently published in influential (and market-moving) newspapers or magazines. The case against R. Foster Winans, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was sentenced to prison for his part in a scheme to trade stocks based on advance information about WSJ's "Heard on the Street" column, is a prime example. And please don't even get me started on the Business Week cases.
These "trading in advance" cases, however, have always depended on a curious fact that allowed the SEC or prosecutor to allege that the "breach of duty" required to prove insider trading existed: that the publication whose information was stolen or misappropriated considered the information to be confidential and had a policy in place to protect that information pre-publication. Indeed, I recall reading a court opinion in one of the Business Week criminal cases years ago and wondering to myself: "So if there was no confidentiality policy then this would be legal trading?"
Enter Mark Cuban. As discussed in this article, Cuban is an investor in a new website called Sharesleuth.com that will employ investigative journalists to ferret out and blow the whistle on corporate fraud. Certainly a worthy endeavor, but the story does not end there. Cuban is quoted in the article as stating, “there are a million ugly stories in the financial underground.... We plan on finding and sharing and profiting from them.”
Did you catch that last "profiting" part? According to the article and Cuban's own blog, Cuban plans to buy and sell the stocks of the companies the Sharesleuth site writes about in advance of the publication of these Sharesleuth stories. As Cuban writes in this post on his blog,
I just hired a young, award winning journalist to partner with me on a blog that will do nothing but try to uncover corporate fraud. Young, energetic, fired up and damn the stuff i have seen so far is good. Will the payoff be about accounting gone bad ? Will it be a Skilling and Lay standing in front of the mike picture with accompanying text ? No chance.
If we found the enron scam, I would push to tell the story with a flash animation parody of Skilling and Lay to Shaggies “It wasnt me” along side a Bethany McLean/Peter Elkind quality story. Just as the movie “Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room ” told the story in a detailed and entertaining way, our goal will be to do the same.
Business is an easy place for me to start because the fraud and sithlord wannabes uncovered can not only create great stories of interest for the webite and HDNet World Report, but also allow me to buy and the sell the stocks of the company. A journalistic conflict you say ? Not any more. Not in thi