TheStreet.com's Barry Ritholtz and a Tale of Two Media -02/11/10 at 1:43 PM CSTby Judd Bagley

This is a transcript of the Deep Capture podcast episode published on February 10, 2010. You may: Download the episode in mp3 format. Subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed. Download in iTunes. listen to the episode right here in this handy audio player:  Barry Ritholtz and a tale of two media. [12:35m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup   It...

SEC OIG Investigating SEC Complicity in Naked Short Selling of Dendre... -12/01/09 at 6:35 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

The Office of the Inspector General of the Securities and Exchange Commission not long ago submitted a semi-annual report to Congress. There are two items in the report of interest to those of us who have argued that the SEC has turned a blind eye towards, or even assisted, unscrupulous hedge funds that make their fortunes destroying public companies for ...

TheStreet.com Inc's Jim Cramer Asks Blog to Remove Post, Apologize -11/03/09 at 10:36 AM CSTby Reggie Abaca

Stock newsletter website Wall St. Cheat Sheet received a surprise email from Jim Cramer in response to an article critical of TheStreet.com Inc (TSCM) stock.  Taking issue with author Damien Hoffman's title, "Jim Cramer Says Sell, Sell, Sell His Company TheStreet.com," Cramer wrote the following e-mail to the author, according to the website: Subject...

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...

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer Bizarro World of Short Selling Hedge Funds -08/14/09 at 12:04 PM CDTby Judd Bagley

Within minutes of my introduction to the world of short selling hedge funds, I encountered the analogy that remains the best suited to describe the truth to which they subscribe: Bizarro World. A planet that appears from time to time in the DC Comics universe, Bizarro World is noteworthy for its utter opposition to everything associated with reality on Ea...

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...

Howard Scher's Campaign Against Dendreon -07/31/09 at 12:16 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

As Dr. Scher made clear in his letter, his concern about Dendreon was not, strictly speaking, that it didn’t work, but that it would render irrelevant his work on Novacea’s competing treatment, Asentar. A new phase 3 trial to test the effectiveness of Asentar (referred to in the letter by its medical name, DN-101) had been “designed, in...