January/February 2009 Issue

Conspiracy Watch: The Wisest Guys in the Room

Did the Mafia kneecap Wall Street?

Illustration: Peter Hoey

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the conspiracy: In the 1970s the Mafia started laundering its dirty money on Wall Street. With the help of unscrupulous hedge fund managers, the Mob gutted companies whose stock it had sold short, making a killing—the high-finance equivalent of taking out an insurance policy on a grocery store and then torching it. This “financial heist of monstrous proportions” eventually got so big that it triggered last October’s stock market collapse.

the conspiracy theorists: In 2007 Patrick Byrne, ceo of Overstock.com, launched DeepCapture.com to expose “a scandal that may make Enron look like an afternoon tea.” The site recently posted a nearly 40,000-word treatise exposing the alleged conspirators, who go beyond mafiosi to include former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, Mad Money host Jim Cramer, and Wikipedia, which has rubbed out entries that reveal details of the scheme. DeepCapture readers can support Byrne’s “investigative reporting” by shopping on Overstock. And he’s offered a whopping $75,000 to those who can “Crack the Wall Street Cover-Up.”

meanwhile, back on earth: Byrne is part of multiple lawsuits charging that naked short selling—investors selling stocks they didn’t own or intend to buy—cut into Overstock’s share price. Naked short selling didn’t affect only Overstock, and while it didn’t help the ailing economy, it probably didn’t kill it. (Regardless, the sec banned it in September. Byrne’s response: “There. Was that so hard?”) And that stuff about the Mafia whacking the world financial system? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Kookiness Rating: tin foil hattin foil hattin foil hattin foil hat (1=maybe they’re on to something, 5=break out the tinfoil hat!)

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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