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June 25, 2002
Walt Brasch
Bush:
the Compassionate Exerciser
June 24, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Talkin'
About the F-Word
David Bates
Portland
Gets Dicked:
Cheney Does Oregon
Jo Freeman
Will
the War on Terror Follow the Path of the Cold War?
Tom Gorman
The Only
Thing "Generous" is the Propaganda
Bezhad Yaghmaian
Caught
Between Borders
in a Borderless World
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
June 22/23, 2002
Douglas Valentine
Sex,
Drugs & the CIA
June 21, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
Over England:
The Gaucho's Wild Ride
John Borowski
Stossel
and Disney's Crimes Against Nature
Chris Floyd
Southern
Cross: The US Takes Aim at Brazil
David Martin
Of Lies
and Oil: an interview with Rahul Mahajan
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations:
Kosovo 2002
June 20, 2002
Chris Kromm
The South
at War: a Tour of the US Military/Industrial Complex
Jacob Levich
The War
on Terror is
Not a Suicide Pact
Mark Weisbrot
What
are They Doing to Argentina?
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
June 19, 2002
Gary Leupp
Red Targets in Terror War
Lenni Brenner
The Road
Forward for the
Palestinian Movement
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Cheney's Diary:
Cakewalking Through Minefields
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
June 18, 2002
David Vest
Raise the
White Flag in Terror War?
Ben White
Is It Possible
to "Understand" the Rise in "Anti-Semitism"?
Edward Said
Palestinian
Elections Now
June 17, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Watergate
and All That
Philip Farruggio
A Maximum
Wage Law
Ron Sullivan
Law
and Orders:
The Assault on Trial by Jury
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Taking
on the School
of the Americas
Joan Smith
G.W. Bush:
The Man is Stupid
Dave Marsh
Corporate
Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive
Robert Jensen
Rhetoric
Distorts Realities
June 15 / 16, 2002
Tanweer Akram
A Review
of Noam Chomsky's 9-11
Daniel Wolff
The Day
They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant
Ralph Nader
A Corporate
Crime State
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
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TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
June 25,
2002
Brokerman
by Russell Mokhiber
and Robert Weissman
So, you want to buy some stock in an American
corporation.
And you go to your broker.
Brokerman, please help me.
I want to buy some stock in an American
corporation.
But here's the thing, Brokerman, sir.
Is Wall Street a safe neighborhood, sir?
Can't safely go into Wall Street, with
executives being led away in handcuffs, can I, Brokerman sir?
Calm down, calm down -- Brokerman says.
It's all media hype.
I'm here on Wall Street, and I haven't
been mugged, have I?
But Mr. Brokerman, sir, I'm watching
television and see these corporate executives being handcuffed
by big burly guys in blue jackets and big yellow letters on
the back that say F-B-I.
Turn off your television. It's all tabloid
stuff, Brokerman says.
Lookee here, Brokerman says -- I've got
these ratings.
I take all the financial data from all
the publicly held companies and rate each one, A to F -- just
like grade school.
Now -- Brokerman says -- here are a group
of stocks that you can buy safely -- because the computer has
rated them A.
Don't worry. Trust me.
Everything is going to be alright.
Trust me.
Yeah right.
Andersen -- guilty, obstruction of justice.
ImClone Systems CEO -- under indictment,
insider trading.
Martha Stewart -- under investigation,
insider trading.
Enron -- criminal investigation.
Or what about Adelphia, CMS Energy, Computer
Associates, Dynergy, Global Crossing, Halliburton, Kmart, Lucent
Technologies, MicroStrategy, Network Associates, PNC Financial
Services, Qwest Communications, Reliant Resources, Tyco International,
WorldCom, and Xerox?
All of them are now facing serious questions
about their business practices.
Three Rite Aid executives -- indicted
for cooking the company's books by overstating revenues by $1
billion.
Trust me.
Trust me.
Remember Merrill Lynch?
Remember the Merrill Lynch analysts who
were telling their customers -- trust me, buy this stock, this
stock is highly rated?
And then they would turn around and e-mail
their buddies -- hey, this stock is crap, why are we recommending
this crap to our customers?
And then New York Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer gets ahold of the e-mails, brings some kind of enforcement
action, and goes before the television, and says the case is
settled, Merrill will pay $100 million.
But Spitzer doesn't get Merrill to admit
wrongdoing. And he signs some kind of agreement that is totally
unenforceable.
He later admits that had he forced Merrill
to admit wrongdoing, the firm would have gone kaput. Just like
Andersen.
And Merrill Lynch isn't the least of
them. Most of the big investment companies are now under investigation
by the states for misleading investors just like Merrill did.
Weiss Ratings Inc. is an independent
ratings firm (<www.weissratings.com>).
Earlier this month, Weiss Ratings released
a study that found that among the 50 brokerage firms covering
companies that have gone bankrupt this year, 47 firms continued
to recommend that investors buy or hold shares in the failing
companies even as they were filing for Chapter 11 in the first
four months of 2002.
Lehman Brothers maintained six buy ratings
on failing companies, while Salomon Smith Barney maintained
eight hold ratings up through the date the companies filed for
bankruptcy.
Also sticking with buy ratings until
the very end were Bank of America Securities, Bear Stearns,
CIBC World Markets, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Goldman
Sachs, and Prudential Securities.
"This analysis shows that Wall Street's
record is far worse than previously believed," says Martin
D. Weiss, chair of Weiss Ratings "Even when there was abundant
evidence that companies were on the verge of bankruptcy, over
90 percent of the latest ratings issued by brokerage firms continued
to tell investors to hold their shares or buy more."
So, what happens when people think that
the Street is being overrun by criminals?
They don't go there.
And that's what investors have started
doing. Pulling out.
As the Dow heads below 9,000 (James "Dow
36,000" Glassman, where art thou?), can anyone doubt why?
Russell Mokhiber
is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational
Monitor, and co-director of Essential Action. They are
co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy
(Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999.
Today's
Features
Walt Brasch
Bush:
the Compassionate Exerciser
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