Jun 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From MSN Money:At her Web site, Stewart and her lawyers adamantly deny wrongdoing on her part....She claims she was simply responding to a call from her stockbroker when she sold shares of biotech company ImClone right before news on a setback in approval of a cancer drug sent the company's shares reeling. "I am confident I will be exonerated of these baseless charges, but a trial unfortunately won't take place for months," Stewart writes.
At least one fund manager who holds shares in the company uses some compelling logic to reach the same conclusion. "Everyone knows (that) if she settles the stock goes up," says the fund manager. "Since she owns 30 million shares, the amount she would make on the stock going up would be far more than any penalties she would have to pay. But this woman is not settling because she believes she did nothing wrong. I think this is going to blow up in the government's face."
Good thing the fund manager remained unnamed in the story--we wouldn't want him investigated for speaking against the government.
Jun 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From NY Sun:[T]he military historian Max Hastings spelt [it] out: "The Prime Minister committed British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit." Sir Max's thesis is that Mr. Blair and his American masters lied to the world about Saddam's arsenal in order to justify an invasion that would prove no such arsenal existed and that they were a bunch of liars. [Mark Steyn, "Bush and Blair's War Fates," June 9, 2003, NY Sun]
Jun 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From NY Sun:U.N. member states continue to insist that blowing up Israelis is one thing, terrorism another. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution on April 14 of this year, which affirmed the legitimacy of suicide-bombing -- or in U.N.-speak "all available means including armed struggle" to resist "foreign occupation and for self-determination." All European Union members of the Commission including Britain and France, with the only exception being Germany, refused to vote against the resolution and merely abstained.
So when Egypt's President Mubarak said this past Tuesday, on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, "We will continue to fight the scourge of terrorism against humanity and reject the culture of extremism and violence in any form or shape -- from whatever source or place, regardless of justifications or motives," his language was deliberate sophistry. The Arab Terrorism Convention stipulates their real views, repeated by Saudi officials to the 2003 UN Commission on Human Rights: "We should distinguish between the phenomenon of terrorism and the right of peoples to achieve self-determination." [Anne Bayefsky, "Letting the United Nations Steer," June 9, 2003, NY Sun]
Jun 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes Alan Reynolds in Canada's National Post:...the SEC's complaint effectively refutes both its own charges and those of the government. The SEC says, "Stewart asked Faneuil for the current market price of ImClone shares and was given a quote of approximately $58 a share. Stewart then instructed Faneuil to sell." That is exactly why Stewart said she sold ImClone that day -- the price was falling fast. Faneuil's now claims he told her that the Waksal family was selling, but not why (Waksal did not say). But the SEC refutes Faneuil's new story too by saying, "Stewart then immediately called Waksal [after selling her ImClone shares], and left the following message: "Martha Stewart [called] something is going on with ImClone and she wants to know what." The fact that she had to ask that question proves Martha Stewart did not know what was going on with ImClone after talking to Faneuil and selling her shares. End of story. Case closed...
...It took the government a year to fabricate three new offences, all of which amount to the same charge of giving a supposedly misleading explanation for a perfectly legal stock sale. This newly refabricated case is not about illegal lying at all: Martha Stewart has not been charged with perjury. Perjury is one of the fabled "nine counts" that is not hers, but her broker's. In a more important sense, however, this case has always been about lying. There was Congressional lying a year ago about Martha Stewart's alleged tip from Sam [Waksal]. And what little remains of that discarded case is now based entirely on the testimony of a proven liar, Douglas Faneuil. He says he was lying before (when he supported Stewart's recollection) but has converted to telling the truth now (when he supports the government's story). Yet this is a fellow who admits his past testimony has been for sale, and any gift Mr. Faneuil may have gotten from his boss was token change compared to being offered only a misdemeanor wrist slap and let off without even a dollar fine. [National Post, "The Sleazy Political Persecution of Martha", Alan Reynolds, June 6, 2003]
And from the WSJ:
Prosecutors didn't see fit to bring a criminal charge of insider trading (perhaps because there's no case) over her sale of ImClone shares. Instead, the U.S. Attorney relies on a securities fraud charge to give the appearance of added heft to the alleged wrongdoing. The claim is that because her own company is so dependent on "Martha" the brand name, her alleged lies about the motive for her ImClone sale amount to a material misleading of the shareholders of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia...So all of her "crimes" arise from her fear of prosecution over something that wasn't a crime (her ImClone sale). ["Mayhem Over Martha", June 5, 2003, WSJ]
The op-ed also makes an excellent observation on "insider trading":
...Insider trading traditionally presumed the culprit was violating a duty of confidentiality to a client or employer. The SEC has gradually overthrown this clear-headed definition in favor of one in which the market itself is "wronged" if somebody trades for the "wrong" reason, defined as somebody having information that she was supposed to know she wasn't supposed to have. Presumably a scrap of paper could blow into your pocket and if it contained material nonpublic information, you could be charged with insider trading for acting on it. ["Mayhem Over Martha", June 5, 2003, WSJ]
Jun 10, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
On April 27, 2003, Dr. Yaron Brook argued against an Islamic state in Iraq on At Large with Geraldo Rivera on the Fox News Channel. Watch now (requires Real Player).
