Watch Out For the Real Inflation Rate of Seven Percent -09/17/14 at 8:02 PM CDTby Perry Rod

Today, the United States Federal Reserve decided to continue its strategy of aggressive money printing, now in its sixth year after the market meltdown. The government today notes that inflation is low and under control. But here's the fundamental economic reality: The value of cash has been going down by an average of about seven percent per year. Compo...

John Paulson's "Greatest Trade Ever" - Something of a Scam -01/20/10 at 10:34 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

By now, everybody knows that the market for collateralized debt obligations was riddled with fraud in the lead-up to the financial crisis. What is less known is the fact that hedge fund managers helped create and inflate the market for these toxic securities specifically so that they could bet against them and profit from the inevitable collapse. An examp...

New Evidence Raises Questions About Kingsford Capital - Links To TheS... -01/07/10 at 5:20 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

A blog published by the University of North Carolina School of Journalism reported recently that Steve Cohen of hedge fund SAC Capital managed to kill a story by Reuters reporter Matt Goldstein. It seems that Goldstein was going to shed some light on allegations that Cohen engaged in insider trading. Cohen didn’t like that, and got in touch with Gol...

Did The Markit Group, A Black-Box Company Partially Owned By Goldman ... -11/17/09 at 5:44 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

Although much attention has been directed at the contribution made by credit default swaps  to the financial crisis, most discussion has focused on the companies, such as American International Group (AIG), that posted big losses because they sold these instruments without sufficient due diligence. Another line of inquiry has not been pursued, howeve...

Investing in Death and Dendreon -09/23/09 at 12:49 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

When Dendreon’s FDA application was derailed simultaneously with a naked short selling attack that flooded the market with tens of millions of phantom shares, Dendreon’s supporters went berserk. They sent the government hundreds of letters complaining about the naked short selling and the apparent machinations of Michael Milken’s associa...

Michael Milken's Prostate Cancer Foundation vs. Dendreon -09/15/09 at 11:33 AM CDTby Mark Mitchell

In July 2008, not long before Cell Genesys announced that its drug was killing people, CNBC’s Jim Cramer called Dendreon a “dog.” Cramer, of course, did not mention that the illegal naked short selling of Dendreon was continuing apace. Throughout that month, more than 1 million Dendreon shares “failed to deliver” every day, a...

Cell Genesys and Dendreon Inc. - If Only There Was A Pattern -09/04/09 at 11:57 AM CDTby Mark Mitchell

In December 2007, three U.S. Congressmen — Mike Michaud (D-Maine), Dan Burton (R-Indiana) and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) — called on the House Commerce Committee to investigate why the FDA failed to approve Dendreon’s treatment for prostate cancer. Referring to Dr. Scher and his ally, Dr. Hussain, the lawmakers said in a letter that “there...

PIPE Dreams at Dendreon -08/21/09 at 1:55 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

“Black Wednesday at the FDA.” That is how Dr. Mark Thornton, a former medical officer in the FDA’s Office of Oncology Products, described the FDA’s decision not to approve Dendreon’s Provenge.  In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Thornton described vaccines such as Provenge as the “Holy Grail of cancer tr...

Goldman Pillages, Goldman Steals, Goldman Sachs -08/19/09 at 11:07 AM CDTby Judd Bagley

Consider below a simple timeline from one of the strangest periods our financial markets had ever experienced. As you read it, keep in mind that following the demise of Bear Stearns, the strictest interpretation of the so-called investment bank “Bulge Bracket” included just four entities: Goldman Sachs (GS), Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and ...

Dendreon and the Criminal Capture of the FDA -08/13/09 at 9:30 AM CDTby Mark Mitchell

Who in the government helped sabotage Dendreon? Despite the lobbying by the captured doctors, despite the Wall Street whispering, despite the singing Sendek and the media mimics — despite all of this, it still seemed likely that the FDA would heed the advice of its advisory panel. Instead, the FDA told Dendreon that it would not yet approve its trea...

When Dendreon Failed To Deliver -08/06/09 at 2:41 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

On April 20, three weeks after the advisory panel vote, and one week after Dr. Scher’s missive appeared in The Cancer Letter, Forbes journalist Matthew Herper published a story arguing that there was a good chance the FDA would not approve Dendreon’s cancer treatment outright. “If the agency wants to ask Dendreon for more data, it certa...