ANI posting and original evidence. In SlimVirgin's words, "classic sockpuppet mistake".

Who knew that Thatcher131 was cabal?

Are you saying something on the ANI posting has been erased? The first link is the link I posted that MM claimed proved I was a puppet of WordBomb (actually I just found the post looking through TomStoner's contribs).

Huzzah?

Look, folks, at this point, I don't believe there's any more reason to "investigate" this. He's given up the game, as of today:

Gary Weiss has, for all intents and purposes, admitted to being User:Mantanmoreland on Wikipedia.

Not that there was ever any doubt to begin with... I mean, the guy clearly isn't anywhere near as clever as he thinks he is.

So what's next? Are they going to sanction Mantanweissland in any way whatsoever? Probably not. Are they going to unblock WordBomb, or apologize to him, even backhandedly? No. Are they going to stop vilifying Wikipedia Review, for pointing them directly at the freaking truth? No. And how much time did we all spend - or waste, depending on your perspective - on this whole thing? All because some asshole whose views on stock market manipulation are questionable at best wanted to absolutely control his Wikipedia bio, and SlimVirgin not only let him do it, but actually helped him?

What I do expect is that Mantanweissland will continue to edit his own biography, in violation of Wikipedia guidelines and policy, and that he'll be protected in doing so by SlimVirgin, JayJG, and the rest of them, who've been protecting him all along.

And the naked short sellers of the world will continue to look to Wikipedia for moral support as they trash perfectly good companies, and throw more and more people out of work.

These fuckheads make me physically ill...

My initial, first hand exposure to the stunning hipocrisy surrounding and protecting Gary Weiss was similar. Wordbomb told me that the first thing to understand about these people is that they cannot be expected to act like one would expect normal people to act. That's because (something I didn't understand but have come to accept) they are not editing Wikipedia for the same reasons everyone else is...they are manipulating Wikipedia for money. Hence, all the normal rules of behavior and interpersonal relations go out the window.

Keep in mind, this was long before antisocialmedia.net and the revelation about SlimVirgin's espionage background, but all these details seem to fit.

A while ago, Wordbomb gave a link to a presentation that I watched and have been haunted by ever since. There's a lot I still don't understand about it, but one thing is very clear: Gary Weiss works for the bad guys (specifically the guy "behind the red desk"...watch it to understand what that means). Knowing that brings everything else into much clearer focus, even if it makes the solution much less clear.

William Connelley controls his own biography on Wikipedia "to protect it from vandalism", so why can't other subjects of Wikipedia bios do the same?

I think that's a great idea, and let them start with Daniel Brandt.

Well... To be fair, we mustn't forget that Connelley is using his real name, as is Brandt. Neither of them are trying to trick people in that respect... Connelley, of course, is an admin, which means one of two things, depending on your perspective: either that he's earned the right to edit whatever he wants as a "trustworthy editor," or that he's put himself in a position whereby he can use his privileges to his personal advantage. To some extent, both things are true, really.

But if you ask me, the crucial difference is why. Connelley fights against climate-change skeptics, which makes him popular with the younger, progressive, quasi-libertarian, mostly anti-neocon folks who seem to dominate Wikipedia. But Weiss is known for supporting short-selling, and nobody likes a "shorter," except maybe the Scientologists (as we must never forget that shorting was an obscure and extremely rare investment strategy until the Clearwater, FL-based Feshbach brothers, all three of them Operating Thetan Level VIII's, popularized it in the late '80's, forking over millions to L. Ron Hubbard and the gang in the process - and yes, I still have all my old copies of Spy Magazine).

What I'm saying is that at this point, nobody in their right mind could possibly believe that Weiss and Mantanmoreland aren't the same person. Millionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban (another favorite target of both Weiss and "Mantanmoreland") agrees too, judging by this blog entry. I mean, putting aside the obvious similarities in writing style and general sneering attitude, for shit's sake, in Weiss's blog entry (cited above) he actually links to a diff on Wikipedia! Now how many "journalists" are there that link to diffs on Wikipedia, or even know what diffs are? Not to mention that he made a link to WordBomb's sock puppet list both as Mantanmoreland and in his Weiss blog within, what, an hour of each other? And in another blog post dated Oct. 17, Weiss claims he's been "in India for the last few weeks." And sure enough, a look at User:Mantanmoreland's contribs for the three weeks prior to 10/17 reveals a significant dropoff, with the timestamps (the one thing he can't hide or control) all over the place, going against his usual pattern and strongly indicating that he's occupying a different timezone.

I mean, you'd almost have to be operating at some sort of submoronic level to think Weiss is telling the truth about not being Mantanmoreland, what with all this in-your-face obviousness going on.

My question, of course, is why is Jimbo Wales himself lying for this guy? Does he have money invested with him or something? I'm usually the last to go in for nutty conspiracy theories, but this is simply getting ridiculous.

I would take issue with the idea that Connelley is, or has ever been, a "trustworthy editor". He has gamed the system from Day 1. More importantly, whichever way you see the debate on climate science, Connelley can't write for toffee.

What he is, and the reason for his success, is a political propagandist and he's on a mission.

In this way, Wikipedia's failure is a massive failure to not defy the mob, and enforce its byzantine rules impartially. Connelley has clearly broken rules where others have been suspended or banned, as has Slimvirgin, Mantanmoreland, Jayjg and others.

This lack of consistency has just snowballed the sense of injustice at an inceasingly tilted playing field. For propagandists of all kinds from neo-Marxist to anarchist, to neo-conservative and fascist, from internationalists to ultra-nationalists, Wikipedia is a golden ticket to rewrite history according to their purblind points of view and propagate them worldwide at no cost other than time.

And people on missions have plenty of time.

Two things to keep in mind on this topic:
1- Remember that while Gary's nothing too impressive, he works for the man behind the red desk, if you know what I mean.

2- It's very possible that the two of them bonded in India recently. Apparently, they were there at the same time at the end of September. Big country, yes, but hey...could happen.

Are you saying someone offered him some toffee just to write something, and he refused? What a dumbass! I mean, free toffee!

Anyway, I'm sure he has gamed the system, and that he's very much a propagandist... All I'm saying is that it's their system, and he's preaching to a very large and enthusiastic choir. "Neutrality" just doesn't apply when the clear majority wants things a certain way... and I think you put a double-negative in there, btw, as it should just be "failure to defy the mob," as opposed to failure to not defy the mob? I'm just sayin'.


I'm not sure I do! That's a 16MB download, TR... (FYI: I think it's probably the naked short-selling slideshow thingy, in case y'all want a copy for your very own.) If you keep linking to things like that, I'm gonna have to start calling you "Tabby"!


It's not just a big country, it's an enormously huge country. There are like a billion people in India, and it's much more likely that someone like Weiss would be there as a consultant for a fund-management firm or something, whereas Jimbo was just there to promote WP (supposedly). I could go for "not totally impossible," but "could happen" seems to be giving the idea more credence than it should have. Just my opinion, though!

Fred Bauder has now confirmed he warned Mantanmoreland about sockpuppeting in July on Jimbo's page. He won't say that MM is Weiss, but says that it is only discouraged, not prohibited to edit your own biography.

I have no idea what that means and I'm not downloading that large thing that probably won't answer it.

Search engines for "the man behind the red desk" aren't helpful, either.

I think Tabula was suggesting that is Wales.

The large thing is a Shockwave-based slideshow detailing how short selling works. Personally, I prefer Spy Magazine's simpler and more understandable explanation from the September 1991 issue (reproduced without permission, sorry E. Graydon):

Now, I should again point out that there's nothing illegal about short selling in itself, as long as the shorter can, and actually does, honor his agreements. However, a naked short seller is someone who can't honor his agreements, i.e., cover his risk - if the stock doesn't take a nosedive, and in fact goes up in value, then such a person has to declare bankruptcy because he doesn't have the money to buy back the shares at the higher price.

Tabby, am I fairly close on the mark here? Presumably the "man behind the red desk" is the naked short seller depicted in the Shockwave presentation, as this person is depicted as sitting behind a red desk, though it's really more like a filled rectangle.

Okay... so we might now ask, what's the big deal? Well, we have two sides to this issue. On the one hand, you have folks like our very own Mr. Patrick Byrne. He's the CEO of Overstock.com, apparently a major target for short sellers. They believe Byrne is a "wack-job" who doesn't know how to run a business properly, and that Overstock.com is essentially doomed to "penny-stock" status. This is, in fact, what they want, so that they can make money off of the company's failure. And so they spare no effort in attacking Byrne at every possible opportunity.

On the other hand, you have Mantanweissland. His argument is that short sellers actually do a public service for investors, by counteracting what he calls "pump and dump" schemes - i.e., attempts by less savory brokers and entrepreneurs to hype the stock offerings of "microcapitalized" or "no-business-model" companies that have no real chance of success (such as, say, Wikia Corporation). If handled effectively, the hype drives up stock prices early on in the selling cycle, so that the unsavory types can sell off their shares quickly and laugh all the way to the bank while the company disintegrates.

Also, remember that the short seller's risk is theoretically infinite. While you can only lose 100 percent of your investment in a normal stock transaction, in a shorting transaction you can lose far more than that, because the stock's value could, theoretically, increase by a thousand percent or more. Critics of the practice claim that this is why people like Mantanweissland do things like try to bad-mouth and denigrate target companies on public websites: They live in perpetual fear of ruination. It's a pretty good motivator!

To me, the essential question is this: Can you believe that someone who actively seeks the downfall of certain publicly-traded companies, along with their employees, vendors, and contractors, in order to make a profit, would do so out of a genuine desire to protect other investors?

I can't, but I'm just a cynic, I guess!

Your description of "short selling" is fine, but there is another dimension to "naked short selling" that isn't clear from your description. From listening to Patrick Byrne and reading about "naked short selling," there's an aspect to it referred to as "failure to deliver." This is somehow connected to the several-day float in the U.S. system of loose regulation of financial markets. Bad short guys borrow lots of stock without really borrowing it, by taking advantage of regulatory lag and regulatory loopholes. The effect this has is to drive down the stock of small-cap companies, which suits their purpose.

If and when the bad short guys are required to settle, they end up settling when the poor small-cap has turned into a penny stock. They walk away, laughing all the way to the bank. At any given moment in the U.S. financial system, some observers claim that there is a huge amount of "phantom" shares floating around inside of the various regulatory loopholes.

Can you explain that better, Dam?

That's a great explanation, Daniel.

As far as Gary Weiss is concerned, he works for the people perpetrating this fraud. He's the only one of them foolish enough to defend the practice in public, so he's like the fraudsters' PR arm, hence his blog and the inordinate amount of time he spends anonymously hovering over and skewing the Wikipedia article about naked short selling and bashing his clients' naked short targets on various finance-related message boards.

The presentation I linked to earlier shows how naked shorting is done, and to differentiate the crooked broker/dealers and hedge funds from the rest when showing how stock and dollars are affected by their actions as they course through the system, the crooks' desks are painted red.

Hence: Gary Weiss works for the man behind the red desk. And while Gary might not command much on his own, his patrons do because under those metaphorical red desks, they have billions of dollars.

Really, watch the presentation...it'll open your eyes.

As Mr. Brandt has partly pointed out, it is a nuance of "failure to deliver" that is at issue here, and distinguishes regular short selling from the naked kind. Regular short selling is a normal part of an efficient market (and, full disclosure, I have made many hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it, including to OSTK). Short selling require that you borrow the stock you're going to sell, which means that there is stock to borrow, which means someone has that stock and is willing to lend it, though this is normally transparent to the end-user.

Naked shorting involves selling stock that is theoretically borrowed, but for which an actual borrower has not (yet) been located. If, during the settlement period, a combination of the selling itself and any bad-mouthing the buyer does (and if done with the intention of moving the market, is strictly illegal) drives the stock price lower, then the naked shorter can "settle" (in effect buy back) the position without the stock ever having been borrowed from a legitimate owner. This is what happens when shorts target a thinly-traded or closely-held stock: they borrow and sell a stock that they cannot legitimately borrow. Repeat this process every few days, taking advantage of the settlement lag, and you can drive a company into the ground.

As Somey points out, shorts can get caught. If someone (or someones) who believe in the stock has the wherewithal to keep buying it, the shorts get squeezed, the stock goes up, and they lose their shirt (but not bankruptcy-driven failure to deliver -- there are margin rules out there, and the middle-man brokerage isn't going to get left holding the bag). But the argument is that naked shorting is, in effect, illegal market manipulation.



As I noted above, short-selling by itself is the product of an efficient market. There is a difference between "actively seeking" the downfall of a company from predicting and profiting from an over-inflated stock price. I have, in my career, successfully shorted the stock of OSTK, Whole Foods (WFMI), Google (the timing was right), and my employer. On the other hand, I've tried to short certain stocks, including Netscape, that just couldn't be borrowed. If I had shorted it anyway, (as opposed to the trade simply being unwound), I could have made a lot of money, but not ethically or (some believe) legally. I never wished for the downfall of any of those companys, but did think they were overvalued.

Ugh. Enough stock trading tips. You'll have to pay from here out.

This post features the entire array of rationalizations that are customarily trotted out to attempt to justify activity that is entirely parasitical.

Futures trading, of which all of this crap is the bastard offspring, was supposedly necessary to protect farmers from risk after the demise of the Agricultural Parity policy in the 1950s (signicantly, Wikipedia, with its millions of articles, has no article on Ag Parity.) Thus, futures trading was justified as a necessary evil, when in fact, it were not necessary at all -- the parity policy should have been continued.

But, once that piece of sophistry was accepted, similar sophistical arguments multiplied like vermin, until we have reached a point where, as Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan has belatedly pointed out, the banks are carrying $119 Trillion of financial derivatives on their books. As a point of reference, the annual output of the world economy is about $45 Trillion. The world financial system is in fact bankrupt. The mentality that Gomi defends is responsible.

Patrick Byrne on naked short selling

Let's at least say welcome to Gomi. Nice to have a millionaire among us!

I believe Jimbo made his money (with which to fund WP) on the Chicago futures exchange.

Here's an anecdote from my ancient history. When I was in high school, there were two guys who graduated one year ahead of me, who were widely regarded as the brainiest guys in the school. They were accepted at the University of Chicago. A couple of years later, I ran into them again back in my home town. I asked them what it was like, attending the U of Chicago. They told me, "we got busted." I asked them, incredulously, why? "Selling heroin." I asked for more of an explanation. They said many of their classmates were dealing smack, but it wasn't a big thing, it was just a stepping stone toward trying to get a seat at the Chicago futures exchange.

That may be, but there's a difference between "parasitical" and "malevolent," isn't there? I mean, to some extent, you could say the entire system of stock trading has become parasitical. What was supposed to be a centralized, efficient way to provide capital to businesses, in exchange for taking on some of the risk involved, has become a minefield of shady manipulators and backroom deal-makers - and it isn't just the short-sellers who are doing it, either.

Also, it's true that I failed to include anything about the "Failure-to-Deliver" problem, and to some extent I didn't really understand the real meaning of "naked" in that context... Sorry about that (I'm not much of an investor - I even bought Tyco at the worst possible time, for shit's sake!) Still, people sell things they don't have possession of (or title to) all the time, and it isn't always illegal or even immoral, as long as they can produce the item sold within an agreed-upon time or provide a refund if they can't. But Weiss (and the people he works for) don't necessarily do that, and that seems to be the key difference here.


Interesting... But to be fair, heroin dealing is probably a good way to get your foot in the door with all sorts of professions.

Didn't he make it from BOMIS?

His pr0n site was after.

I can't imagine he and Tim Shell ever made much money from Bomis.com... There's just too much competition in the soft-core porn link-farming industry. That was just their way of trying to gain more social respectability, after having been options traders and all.

Mr. Krustofsky is certainly entitled to his opinion about the ethics of world financial markets, but if you're going to succesfully argue with Gary Weiss/mantanmoreland, it is important to know the difference between (legal) short-selling and (illegal and unethical) naked short-selling.

Thank you. Somehow I feel I've been here forever ....

Yes. That's why financial transactions of all sorts should be regulated up the wazoo, as they once were. Taxed up the wazoo, as well.



I see your point, although I think that there are a lot of financial machinations that manage to be both legal and unethical. Didn't Al Capone make the argument that if his activities were simply legalized, the crime rate would drop dramatically? And while we're on the topic, did it strike anyone else as a bit eerie that a commentary by Milton Friedman appeared in the Wall Street Journal just around the time that he kicked the bucket? As a friend of mine noted, it gives a new meaning to the expression "ghost writer."

We're not off-topic, are we?