http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2005/09/bill-frist-insider-selling-and-doing.html

Frist's been useless as leader anyway. This is a good excuse to kick his ass out and get Kyl in.

Btw, anyone watch the LARP-mocking commercial during football?

Wow, Doc-- keep up this kind of excellent in-depth analysis, and Ace could get jealous.

I'd watch my back if I were you.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

I'll be following the left's interest in this case as soon as I'm satisfied they've fully explained the actions of Teddy K re: Ms. Kopechne's last breaths. Hoo-ah!

You don't need "insider information" to time a lot of this stuff --- unless there is blatant MCI type fraud going on internally. Just pay attention to trade rags, rumors, and such and apply some experience in the way the world really work as opposed to how people with it worked.

Years ago I predicted the Lotus 3.0 ship date slipping by a year. I predicted the dBase 4.0 quality fiasco. blah, blah. Most recently I predicted Taser Intl to take a modest hit.

A lot of US hospital related stocks are going to be tanking soon. People are starting to get savy to the fact that they can take their business to India, Singapore, or Thailand and have a whole major medical procedure performed (including air travel and expenses) for less than a co-pay for the same procedure here in the US.

The PacRim doctors/hospitals are glad to have the business, and the US customers are glad to be pocketing the significant difference. ~$20,000 for an invitro fertilization in the USA versus ~$2,500 in India. That's a no-brainer.

My understanding, admittedly limited, of a blind trust is that is allowable for Frist to know what it contains, just not how much, and he can instruct the trustee to make a change. In other words he can tell the trustee to sell all of his HCA stock but he doesn't know if he's selling 10 shares or 10.000.

http://www.legal-explanations.com/definitions/blind-trust.htm

The administrator could do something like invest everything in a hairbrained scheme to do tunnel excavations using anti-matter particle beams, or revolutionary non-surgical breast enlarger for porn stars. Most won't.

Most will pretty much keep the portfolio pretty static unless something dire is occuring, so the settlor in most cases could speculate (probably accurately) the trust still contained what it did when created.

I would think the 1st amendment would protect discussions like : "if there's anymore of XYZ, now might be the time to unload it". The trustee would be free to ignore this of course.

Well why not just say that? Why the lame ‘avoid the appearance of impropriety’ excuse?

It brings up the "damned if you do, damned if you don't excuse". Using it makes it seem like he was trying to do the right thing, but is being punished anyway by the people that are looking for any reason to attack him. Even if it doesn't work, it still throws some confusion into the chase, which is good when you're facing an investigation.

After saying that, if he has done something illegal, we should hang his ass from the nearest tree. I don't care what party is listed after a politician's name, a crook is a crook. Winking and saying "everybody does it" does not help win elections. It convinces the undecideds and the luke warm Republicans to skip the polls on election day when it appears there's no real difference between our crooks and their crooks.

This is just the next 'shiny thing' for the Democrats. Damn that Rove is good!

Symes, you worthless creature, you promised me Transformers.

I question the timing.

No one is cheaper than many rich people are. I am not at all surprised. The fabulously wealthy will often cheat to preserve every penny. Hello Martha!

Let's not forget that "the rich" pay for everything in this country, including the vast majority of tax revenues and almost all of the employment. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs!

Can we schedule the hearings on First's trades right after the one where Hillary explains how she managed to double her money on cattle futures the first time out?

Can we schedule the hearings on First's trades right after the one where Hillary explains how she managed to double her money on cattle futures the first time out?

THANK YOU! Sheesh, if people are going to crap themselves about this, then where's all the defecation over Hillary's "LUCK?"

Or am I being silly to believe that Democrats won't be scum-sucking opportunistic hypocrites?

Later,
bbeck

I'm betting this was all a programmed trade, if anything, Frist probably was asked if he wanted to sell based on a fundamental stock event.

Check the charts.

When his sale was initiated, the stock had just converged on it's fast moving average, after a long period of growth. That is a very good time to sell a stock. It shows a fundamental weakening in price-performance and a possible downturn in the stock's momentum.

Frist isn't interesting enough to do something as devious as he's accused of. I expect this will go nowhere, alongside Rove-Gate, TANG and countless other Really Big Scandals.

SomeJoe: you may be right about the issue of secuties law violations. I wouldn't know where to start to check if you were right or wrong about Frist's timing, and I'll assume you're spot on.

So why can't Frist just say that? Everyone's eyes would have glazed over and no one would be talking about Frist's stock anymore. But no. He went with the really kinda absurd "I sold it to avoid a conflict of interest."

Frist, even if he broke no security law, is also facing dire political consequences. I don't know Senate rules, but is that really how a blind trust works? (I'm not even sure if a trust was required by Senate Rules however)

Also political: why'd he lie about his knowledge of the trust? The AP interview is damaging stuff. He knew he still had HCA. Captain's Quarters points out that 2 weeks before the interview, the trustee even told him they'd added more. This lie, if it is a lie as it appears, may cost him his position.

Additionally, he screwed himself. The Blind trust works in two ways - to two parties' benefit.

The buyer of the Senator's stock is protected in that the Senator isn't selling them something with the unfair advantage of inside info he gained in the Senate.

The Senator is protected in that no one can come back and question the sale or its odd timing should fate conspire against him and coincidentally render the sale's timing or whatever dubious. He's got cover. He can say, "Hey, I don't know nothing. It's all handled by some trustee somewhere."

Frist screwed himself by obviating the point of the blind trust. A smart politician wouldn't have taken the chance. Certainly not a Republican looking for his party's next Presidentail nomination.

Frist isn't interesting enough to do something as devious as he's accused of.

I'd see you, and raise you thusly: Frist isn't stupid enough to do something as obvious as he's accused of.

He may be a moron, but he's a functioning moron, and anything related to HCA was going to have to stand on its own, stench-wise. Tigerhawk's analysis of the likely truth of the matter is the best I've seen, and would indicate this should be a tempest in a teapot, at worst.

So why can't Frist just say that? Everyone's eyes would have glazed over and no one would be talking about Frist's stock anymore. But no. He went with the really kinda absurd "I sold it to avoid a conflict of interest."

He went with the "instinctive lie" rather than the truth - people do this all the time.

Seriously - would you trust a politician who couldn't whip off a lie instinctively? Its a mandatory job requirement. The "thoughtful pause" can only be played so many times before people start to think you a dull moron rather than "thoughtful"

I can't stand Frist.

I'm a doctor, so I need to go help the poor in Africa to keep up appearances while Arlen Specter is shaking things up in the Senate, lying his brains out, and making a monkey outta' me.

After all, I am a doctor. So I must be transported to New Orleans at tremendous public expense to make myself look really good and use my doctor's hands doctoring all the poor, hurting people who need a doctor, because I am a doctor.

DAMMIT, I'm a doctor, not a Senate majority leader!

Hey, you're cutting into my doctor face-time with all this politics shit.

I put my doctoring in front of the majority's business, because people's lives are more important. And I'm the only doctor with the skillz to save anyone. All the others are shit. They don't know nuthin'. Plus, they don't need to look good. They're aren't running for president.

And when I'm president, I promise to leave the White House totally un-manned when I get the urge to go do some doctorin'.

You know that big, hole-digging pizza in Star Trek? McCoy didn't know shit. I would have used portland cement and a glucose drip. Fucking McCoy. What an idiot. I should have got that job too.

It's the attack of the italics!

Someone help us!

Murrow, you're an idiot. Because you're not a doctor.

Dammit, rd! I'm a hard hitting ink-stained wretch, not a doctor!

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