10 Things You Didn't Know About Ben Bernanke
Bernanke has been chairman of the Federal Reserve Board since 2006.
1. Ben Shalom Bernanke was born Dec. 13, 1953, in Augusta, Ga. The family moved to Dillon, S.C., when he was 4 months old.
2. Bernanke's father, Philip, was a partner in a pharmacy; his mother, Edna, was a substitute teacher.
3. Bernanke learned to read in kindergarten and skipped first grade. At age 11, he won the South Carolina state spelling bee.
4. In high school, he taught himself calculus, since his school did not offer the course. He scored a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and graduated at the top of his class in 1971.
5. He received his B.A. in economics from Harvard in 1975 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979.
6. During college breaks, Bernanke worked a variety of jobs, including a summer as a waiter at South of the Border, a Mexican-themed roadside attraction near the border of North and South Carolina.
7. In 1979, Bernanke moved to California, where he taught economics at Stanford while his new wife, Anna, pursued her master's.
8. In 1985, Bernanke moved back east to teach at Princeton; in 1996, he became chairman of the university's economics department.
9. In 2002, he became a Federal Reserve governor. Three years later, he was named chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. In February 2006, he became the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
10. Bernanke learned Hebrew partly from his grandfather. He officiated at the bar and bat mitzvahs of his children, Joel and Alyssa, without the help of a rabbi.
Sources:
- The Wall Street Journal
- The New York Times
- The Washington Post
- Christian Science Monitor
Reader Comments
SEC INSIDER TRADING SCANDAL -
SEC Attorneys Probed For Insider Trading
CBS News Exclusive: Two High-Level Attorneys Under Scrutiny By FBI
The SEC is under fire once again over two employees who are currently under investigation by the FBI for insider trading. Armen Keteyian reports.
CBS News has learned that two attorneys at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are under "active" criminal investigation by the FBI for trading stocks based on inside information.
Accusations against the two lawyers - a man and a woman whose names have not been released - are detailed in a report by the SEC inspector general obtained exclusively by CBS News.
The report, based on a review and analysis of "more than two years of e-mail and brokerage records," puts increased pressure on a commission that has come under fire lately for failing to detect the $60 billion Bernard L. Madoff Ponzi scheme, and turning a blind eye to the Wall Street financial crisis.
"We ought to be outraged if there is one insider trading information that’s leading to personal profit," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, told CBS News.
In response to the IG report, Grassley sent a letter to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro expressing that outrage and requesting detailed information about the stock holdings and trading practices of all SEC employees.
"It’s hard to imagine a more serious violation of the public trust than for the agency responsible for protecting investors to allow its employees to profit from non-public information about its enforcement activities," Grassley said in his letter to Schapiro.
According to the report, the male attorney under investigation by the FBI works in the Office of the SEC's Chief Counsel and "has access to a tremendous amount of nonpublic information."
The report alleges both the male attorney and female attorney - who works in the enforcement division - "traded in the stock of a large financial services company" despite being told by another SEC employee of ongoing "investigations of that company." The report calls this is a direct violation of SEC rules.
In another possible violation, the male attorney was found to have sent e-mails from his SEC account to his brother and sister-in-law "recommending particular stocks." The attorney’s stock portfolio was estimated at one point to be valued at $200,000.
As for the female attorney, the report states that "two months before an investigation of a large health care company was opened" she "sold all of her shares of stock in the company." And "two days before an inquiry was opened" by a colleague who "occupies the office next to her" the female attorney sold stock in an oil company. Investigators say the female attorney traded stocks 247 times between January 2006 and January 2008. At one point her stock portfolio was valued as high as $170,000
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/14/cbsnews_investigates/main5014672.shtml?source=mostpop_story
700 BILLION DOLLAR BAILOUT, CMKX/CMKM SCANDAL.
700 BILLION DOLLAR BAILOUT, CMKX/CMKM SCANDAL.
CMKX-CMKM- At the time of cmkm's revocation, CMKM had 703,518,875,000 shares of common stock validly issued and outstanding.
Then a 700 billion dollar bailout.
My Fellow Americans and Global Investment Community.
The case of the greatest "counterfeit shares." fraud in the UNITED STATES is in my opinion CMKX.
CMKX DIAMONDS, THE LARGEST NAKED SHORTED STOCK IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES/WORLD" Trillions of stock shares traded and changed hands UNTIL CMKX revoked itself and had every stock holder pull stock certifcates out of brokerages out of street name and into Investors name to safely hold in their possesion. CMKX is also the LARGEST STOCK CERTIFICATE PULL IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES"
I Hope the the SEC did not create a regulational rule during this period the above action was commited to absolve them from liability of cmkx "counterfeit shares." from this compnay or anyother company that used this tactic to steal from all markets. This naked shorting fraud rule be passed without a second to lose.
Naked shorts in the United States: "counterfeit shares."
Naked short selling is a case of short selling the shares without first arranging a borrow. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 stipulates a settlement period up to three business days before a stock needs to be delivered, generally referred to as "T+3 delivery".
If the stock is illiquid or simply has a small number of outstanding shares, finding the borrow can be difficult to arrange. In these cases the trader normally arranges for the borrow before making the trade, to ensure delivery. In the case when a borrow cannot be arranged within that time period and the shares cannot be given to the buyer, the trade is considered to have "failed to deliver". The SEC states that "Naked short selling is not necessarily a violation of the federal securities laws or the Commission's rules," and clarifies that in some circumstances, it can contribute to market liquidity.
Naked shorting to drive down share prices violates US law. In recent years, a number of companies have been accused of using naked shorts in order to make profits at the expense of share prices. To do this, the trader simply enters a naked short with no intention of ever delivering the shares. A large enough short sale could cause the price to fall, as is the case with any stock being sold, so as long as the trade is large enough to move the share price, the short is likely to be profitable. Normally this would be risky if the price did move back up for other reasons, the trader would be driving the price up with every purchase, a condition known as a "short squeeze". But as long as the buyer turns around and shorts it back into the market, the price continues dropping, making the trades profitable even though no one actually holds any of the shares.
"Legal" naked shorting would normally be invisible in a liquid market, as long as the short sell is eventually delivered to the buyer. However, if the covers are impossible to find, the trades fail. A sudden rise in number of fail reports will alert the SEC that something irregular is going on. In some recent cases, it was claimed that the daily activity was larger than all of the available shares, which would normally be unlikely.
The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) held a conference on naked short selling in November 2005. An official of the New York Stock Exchange stated that NYSE had found no evidence of widespread naked short selling, and alleged "fear mongering that there's this rampant naked shorting that's gone unregulated." Cameron Funkhouser, NASD senior vice president of market regulations, noted that although companies have alleged stock manipulation through the Berlin stock exchange, the NASD has seen not one instance of naked short selling on the Berlin stock exchange". Ralph Lambiase, head of the Connecticut Securities Agency and the NASAA, declared his disappointment at how the industry was handling the issue as a whole.
A report issued in early 2006 found no evidence of naked short selling in US markets, despite allegations from many companies. The SEC's short selling FAQ also cites common misconceptions about the practice, such as the belief that naked shorting causes "phantom" shares to enter the market, as one source of confusion over the practice's market effect. Naked short selling, the SEC said, would not increase a company's shares outstanding shares nor result in "counterfeit shares."
Statistics on failures to deliver securities are sometimes used as evidence of naked short selling in specific stocks. However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stated in January 2008 that "fails-to-deliver can occur for a number of reasons on both long and short sales. Therefore, fails-to-deliver are not necessarily the result of short selling, and are not evidence of abusive short selling or 'naked' short selling."
Current legal naked shorting rules allow brokerages to make large profits doing "bona-fide market making" while stock markets are falling. The market maker exemption to the rules governing the practice is intended to allow market makers to naked short sell on a very temporary basis, in order to increase liquidity and stabilize markets.
However, Robert J. Shapiro, former undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs, has claimed that naked short selling has cost investors $100 billion and driven 1,000 companies into the ground.
The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation has been criticized for its approach to naked short selling. DTCC has been sued with regard to its alleged participation in naked short selling, and the issue of DTCC's possible involvement has been taken up by Senator Robert Bennett and discussed by the NASAA and in articles -- disagreed with by DTCC -- in the Wall Street Journal and Euromoney Magazine.
While there is no dispute that illegal naked shorting happens, there is a fight as to the extent to which DTCC is responsible. Some blame DTCC as the keeper of the system where it happens, and say DTCC turns a blind eye to the problem. DTCC says naked shorting is not widespread enough to be a major concern. "We're not saying there is no problem, but to suggest the sky is falling might be a bit overdone," DTCC's chief spokesman Stuart Goldstein said. DTCC General Counsel Larry Thompson calls the claims "pure invention." The SEC, however, views naked shorting as a serious enough matter to have made two separate efforts to restrict the practice. And in July 2007, Senator Bennett suggested on the U.S. Senate floor that the allegations involving DTCC and naked short selling are "serious enough" that there should be a hearing on them with DTCC officials by the Senate Banking Committee. The committee's Chairman, Senator Christopher Dodd, indicated he was willing to hold such a hearing. The North American Securities Administrators Association, representing state stock regulators, filed a brief saying that if the claims were correct, its shareholders "have been the victims of fraud and manipulation at the hands of the very entities that should be serving their interest."
Critics also contend DTCC has been too secretive with information about where naked shorting is taking place. In 2007, WayPoint Biomedical sued DTCC for DTCC's refusal to comply with a subpoena request for documents Waypoint needs to track trades in the company's shares. Ten suits concerning naked short-selling filed against the DTCC were withdrawn or dismissed by May 2005.
A suit by Electronic Trading Group, naming major Wall Street brokerages, was filed in April 2006 and dismissed in December 2007.
Two separate lawsuits, filed in 2006 and 2007 by NovaStar Financial, Inc. shareholders and Overstock.com, named as defendants ten Wall Street prime brokers. They claimed a scheme to manipulate the companies' stock by allowing naked short selling. A motion to dismiss the Overstock suit was denied in July 2007.
Why has everyone tried to COVER UP NAKED SHORTING, is it because all the Wall Street banks have naked shorts in Level 3, and hidden in derivatives where there are Trillions of fake shares?
The illegal practice of short selling shares that have not been affirmatively determined to exist. Ordinarily, traders must borrow a stock, or determine that it can be borrowed, before they sell it short. But due to various loopholes in the rules and discrepancies between paper and electronic trading systems, naked shorting continues to happen.
Naked shorting is illegal because it allows manipulators a chance to force stock prices down without regard for normal stock supply/demand patterns.
This Rule must be passed and not covered up. As it looks today on Wall street the word is out on naked shorting and must be stopped , and all who profited from stealing trillions be put in jail.
Thank you.
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