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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday announced a crackdown on alleged stock promotion schemes in which writers were secretly paid to post hundreds of bullish articles about public companies on financial websites.
Twenty-seven individuals and entities, including a Hollywood actress, were charged with misleading investors into believing they were reading "independent, unbiased analyses" on websites such as Seeking Alpha, Benzinga and Wall Street Cheat Sheet.
The SEC said many writers used pseudonyms such as Equity Options Guru, The Swiss Trader, Trading Maven and Wonderful Wizard to hype stocks.
It said it found more than 450 problem articles, of which more than 250 falsely said the writers were not being paid.
No word on conflicts of interest and misleading information in regard to stock promotion on television news networks.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @01:35PM (4 children)
The republicans have been slowly strangling [propublica.org] the SEC by taking every opportunity to cut their budget. [nytimes.com]
Looks like they haven't cut deeply enough yet.
Don't worry, they've got a plan for that. [barrons.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:05PM (3 children)
Why is the SEC enforcing these burdensome job killing regulations?
These are people's jobs that the SEC is destroying!
and . . .
Isn't it the mantra of the administration and the political party in charge that there should be no regulations on anything? Especially where profits or jobs are affected?
And personal responsibility. And the free market. If people are misled by fraudsters, isn't it their own fault?
/sarc
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:18PM (1 child)
Ah, but see, these are small corporations pumping the stocks of other small corporations. That makes it not OK. For it to be OK, it has to be big corporations pumping the stocks of big corporations.
And if any of the regulators make a really big fuss about the behavior of the big corporations, then you just offer them a really cushy job at one of those big corporations (huge salary, no real job responsibilities) and all of a sudden the problem goes away.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:55PM
You need money above certain thresholds to corrupt the system successfully with the task ;-)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:51PM
There will always be fraudsters. But as long as there's also a continuous negative feedback they won't be around long enough to mess up too much. So if SEC is reduced enough then the system may go into positive feedback. Just ask anyone in control theory how that works out..