저자: SIMPLE INVESTING · 외국인
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If you know, if you're long and you own a stock, you can go into Barron's, you can get on a rooftop, you can pump how great your company is. And no one for a second looks at you askance But if the same person gets on CNBC, not the same person as David Einhorn is mostly along as opposed to a short he gets on CNBC.
He talks about why he thinks NBC homebuilding company is a great company. No one thinks twice, but if he gets on, he says, you know, look, I have some concerns about Lehman's balance sheet, have some concerns about how they're marking their assets. This is something where The New York Times writes a scathing article about David Einhorn doing this.
And I would think the media of all places, the media, which is the the force for digging up the dirt about what's going on in Washington, should be very interested. And shorts should be the best source for the media. And frankly, they should be. If I if I were, I would have given a slightly different answer than Bob Steel.
If I were Treasury secretary, I would say instead of meeting with Jim Chanos twice a year, I would meet with Jim Chanos once a month, or at least I would have an open door to the short selling community. If you have concerns about companies, the economy, balance sheets, etc., and we want to hear about them, and if it's even if it's just simply, you know what, where you can send your submission.
We'll take it seriously to the ones that are serious. here's an email box Is there not a substantive danger and a substantive distinction between advocating on the up and advocating on the short side? Take Lehman Brothers, right? You can quibble or quibble, but. You can argue with the way they presented the information about their assets, the way they're marking them and so on.
But you also run the risk of putting that company into serious financial crisis, which which has all sorts of effects that you just don't know what's going to end. I mean, Bear Stearns is a perfect example. So isn't there a substantive distinction that is just more dangerous to the economy at large?
Let me distinguish between different types of short-selling and disclosure. I think if someone spreads rumors that are false a person should be prosecuted in order to make an investment gain. A person should be prosecuted. If a person goes on CNBC and says, based on my analysis of the ten Q On page 12, they said that we've got six and a billion of CDOs.
And before they said this was Mortgage-Backed Securities, what's a substantive difference? I think that's that's totally acceptable. No legitimate business, in my view, will go out of business because someone spreads a false rumor about it. I think that know, Lehman is so vulnerable to the criticism of a short seller.
I think it has to think about whether it's it's capitalized correctly. Can you. Is there a room in the world for a 40 to one levered institution which is so confidence sensitive that a 38 year old short seller can get on CNBC and raise a few concerns and it goes out of business. It's a dangerous game to play though especially especially in the especially when it comes to financially center stuff where confidence is the coin of the realm.
Here's what I would say. What I would say is why do we have bubbles? Why do we have financial institutions that with 40 to one levered balance sheets we have them because the people who you know because because you couldn't short. Single family home prices rising That's why there was a bubble in single family home prices.
And interestingly only when there was a mechanism to go short housing basically the B X index did the bubble finally burst. And so if the whole country is only long on margin, we're going to have bubbles after bubbles and systemic risk is created when we have institutions with and I don't mean to pick on Lehman and I'm not I'm not short Lehman and not long Lehman, but we want businesses that can withstand the critique of any investor, you know, whether it's a bank or otherwise.
So by the Ackman plan, what are the other means of injecting the short seller ethos or vibe into the markets? The ways we can institutionalize it to create a corrective force. Look at what happened to me. You know, I wrote a 66 page white paper was reviewed by some of the best law firms in the city.
I released it in the most public way I possibly could. I disclosed my position. It's very important to disclose your position. You can't claim to be independent and put out a piece of paper. That's where you're not. And then I had to go withstand a six month investigation by Eliot Spitzer and a several month investigation by the SEC.
David Einhorn criticized allied capital publicly in 2002 and in turn, he was investigated by the SEC. You know, I've got a thick skin, but if this is the regulatory response to someone criticizing a public company, particularly influential one, I mean, MBIA, the largest guarantor of New York state and city bonds, was a very easy call for them to the treasurer.
And the call from the Treasury to Spitzer's office. What you want is what you should be thinking about as an investor is what are the incentives of the person giving me the information and the incentives of a management team of a public company or in some sense stronger to promote their stock and the incentives of a short seller?
The short seller is short and management is long. The short seller has a choice which companies he shorts. Management doesn't have a choice in which company they're long.
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