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Before reading the following article excerpts, I want to point out a few things that I am in absolutely no way ashamed of (for those that follow me regularly and have this list memorized, please bear with me, I'm trying to make a point):
- My investment performance for 2008, 335% for my prop account, 106% for the blog (think Reggie Middleton, prodigious blogger and entrepreneurial global macro/micro investor)
- My prognostication that Bear Stearn's would fail (in full detail) 3 months before they failed in " Bear Fight - A most bearish view on Bear Stearns in a bear market " and the follow-up piece and seminal "Is this the Breaking of the Bear" (think Alan Schwartz, former C.E.O. of Bear Stearns)
- My prognostication that Lehman would fail 5 months before they failed (think C.E.O. Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers), see Is Lehman really a lemming in disguise? and Lehman, the lying lemon lemming anecdotal timeline?
- My prognostication that General Growth Properties (the nation's 2nd largest REIT) would fail (in explicit detail) 1 year before they failed (think Bernie Freibaum, former CFO of GGP), see GGP and the type of investigative analysis you will not get from your brokerage house and pay special attention to "My Response to the GGP Press Release, which seems to respond to blogs..." and "For those who were wondering what sparked that silly press release from GGP..." for the blow by blog on the company's CFO actually trying to disparage lil' ole innocent me and paint me as incompetant and out for no good. Take particular not of the date of the release and the comments made, then reference the stock chart and the recent news clips warning of bankruptcy.
- My warnings on insolvency of MBIA, see A Super Scary Halloween Tale of 104 Basis Points Pt I & II, by Reggie Middleton
- My warnings on the insolvency of AMBAC, see Ambac is Effectively Insolvent & Will See More than $8 Billion of Losses with Just a $2.26 Billion and Follow up to the Ambac Analysis and Download a "Window" into Ambac's Problems.
- Countrywide and Washington Mutual's early signs of insolvency, see Yeah, Countrywide is pretty bad, but it ain't the only one at the subprime party... Comparing Countrywide to its peers
- My many warnings on the Doo Doo 32 regional banks and the insurance industry (a collapse or two to happen very soon in company near YOU! See
Hartford Insurance Group Forensic Analysis - Pro (619.29 kB 2008-11-22 06:30:43), HIG Actionable Item (189.75 kB 2008-11-22 06:32:24), HIG Actionable Intelligence Update 8-12-08 (49.96 kB 2008-12-08 08:54:33), 
Hartford Insurance Group spreads and counterparty/debt holders - pro (149 kB 2008-11-22 06:31:47), and Principal Financial Group Actionable Intelligence Note - Pro version (252.74 kB 2009-01-15 11:18:50) and As I Continue My Analysis of Global Insurers.(thus far the failures have effectively been limited to AIG and arguabley Ambac and MBIA, but give it time). - I can go on, but its 2 am and I need to get enough sleep to be cheerful when my daughter comes to wake me up in 4 hours, but hopefully you feel the flow that I am trying to convey...
Every now and then I look at comments about me and my work and every now and then there is always someone screaming "Short seller scum of the world" or some similar absurd nonsense. There is still a significant contingent that can't come to grips with the blatant fact that there are a lot of inefficient companies, insolvent companies, and some downright fraudulent companies that are running around masquerading as stock market darlings turned victims of short sellers and a rough economy. When the bull market was in full effect, there was no similar "hating of the hater" for those who profited from going long - and lord knows there was a fair share of pump and dump going on.
Look at the list above, cross reference the dates of the opinionated articles and research with a graph of each companies' share price and tell me, do you really think this was just luck?
Or was I using my blog to manipulate share prices (and at the same time forcing all of the trash, excess leverage, on their balance sheet as well as faulty business models to be perceived as,,,, Well,,,, trash, excess leverage, on their balance sheet and faulty business models!
Okay, let's move on to the excerpt from this piece in Conde Nast's Portfolio.com:
In the view of many C.E.O.'s, short-sellers do more than just profit from corporate misfortune; they inflame it. C.E.O. Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers and Alan Schwartz, former C.E.O. of Bear Stearns, [Hey, didn't I blog and research their companies in the link list above?] in their own recent appearances before congressional panels, blamed rumormongers and short-sellers for the demise of their firms [Hmmm!!! Rumors such as "I have a bunch of underwater assets leveraged to the hilt on my balance sheet", or "we are facing a hell of a liquidity crisi because we financed risky long term assets with fickle short term debt", or "that Reggie guy is a damn pain in the ass!" Rumors like those???].
"The shorts and rumormongers succeeded in bringing down Bear Stearns," Fuld asserted. "And I believe that unsubstantiated rumors in the marketplace caused significant harm to Lehman Brothers." [Yeah, okay!] Schwartz gave similar testimony when he appeared before the Senate Banking Committee in April, saying that there was a run on the bank despite a "capital cushion well above what was required to meet regulatory standards." He testified that "market forces continued to drive and accelerate our precipitous liquidity decline." Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd chimed in that "this goes beyond rumors. This is about collusion."[Keep this term, accusation, and concept of "collusion" at the forefront of you thoughts as you read on, my dear followers]
But was it? Chanos, for one, is tired of the blame-the-shorts litany, and he recalls a conversation with Bear Stearns’ Schwartz to make his point.
The day before the Fed’s rescue of Bear Stearns, Chanos says he was walking to the Post House restaurant in New York City, when, at 6:15 p.m., his cell phone rang. He saw the Bear Stearns exchange come up on his caller I.D. and took the call.
“Jim, hi, it’s Alan Schwartz.”
“Hi, Alan.”
“Well, Jim [I'm not calling that rat bastard Blogger Reggie Middleton because the less people know about him, the better], we really appreciate your business and your staying with us. I’d like you to think about going on CNBC tomorrow morning, on Squawk Box, and telling everybody you still are a client, you have money on deposit, and everything’s fine.”
“Alan, how do I know everything’s fine? Is everything fine?”
“Jim [F#ck, that was swift of him, did that damn rat bastard blogger Reggie guy get it him first!], we’re going to report record earnings on Monday morning.”
“Alan, you just made me an insider. I didn’t ask for that information, and I don’t think that’s going to be relevant anyway. Based on what I understand, people are reducing their margin balances with you, and that’s resulting in a funding squeeze.”
“Well, yes, to some extent, but we should be fine.” [Okay, that's it. I'm banning all of those F#@%ing blogs from all of the computers at Bear Stearns for the 24 hours that I anticipate remaining a going concern!]
“This is now 6:15 on Thursday night, the night before the collapse,” Chanos says. “It was after a meeting with Molinaro”—Bear Stearns C.F.O. Sam Molinaro—“who basically told him at that meeting, ‘We’re done. We’re gone. We need money overnight we don’t have.’ So here he is, calling one of his biggest clients to go on CNBC the next morning to say everything’s fine when clearly it’s not. And he knew it wasn’t.” [Nawwwww!!! Get the hell outta here! Seriously????! I am shocked! Absolutely flabbergasted! I mean, really dude... I feel irreparably bamboozled!!!]
Chanos refused to go on CNBC [smart move, my friend!]. By 6:30 the next morning, word was out that the Fed was engineering the rescue of Bear Stearns. Chanos realized that he could have been on CNBC while that was announced. “I thought, That fucker was going to throw me under the bus no matter what.” [You know, if I wasn't so naive, I may - no, I just might, get the impression that the CEOs of the companies that I have covered and blogged about may have colluded with each other, and others in the media and business/finance circles to make things appear just a TAD bit rosier than they really were. That is, if I wasn't so naive. Then again, if I wasn't so naive, I would have believed that that rat bastard blogger guy Reggie just might be a pretty valuable counterbalance for the propagandized, accountant engineered (this is the new financial engineering, if you haven't got the memo!) disfigured trash often disguised as corporate reporting and corporate communications, and often disseminated though the MSM (the mainstream media). That's, of course, if I wasn't so naive...]
“So here it is,” Chanos says. “Alan Schwartz takes the position ‘Short-sellers were our problem,’ and who did he try to get to vouch for him on the morning of the collapse? The largest short-seller in the world. You want to talk about ethics and who’s telling the truth on these things? It’s unbelievable.” [Hey, you should have talked to me my friend. I could have told you they were lying about their financial situation months before your converstaion, reference the links above. I'm shocked you even left your accounts in there that long! It wouldn't have been me.]
Schwartz, not surprisingly, has a different version of events [Now, there's a damn surprise if I ever hear of one!]. “I did not make the statements attributed to me by Mr. Chanos,” he says through a spokesperson. According to someone who has spoken to Schwartz, the ex-C.E.O.’s side of the story is that the conversation took place on Wednesday, not Thursday, and that it was entirely different from what was related by Chanos. His contentions are that the call was an effort to obtain a public statement from Chanos that “a group of short-sellers out there are trying to take Bear Stearns down” and that no information on Bear’s financial strength was conveyed to Chanos. [Yeah, okay...]
