Jim Bassett's Weblog comments

I swear we heard Andrea Mitchel (sp?) start to break a story last night about an investigation into someone with a massive position shorting reinsurers (is that how you would say it?) One sentence into it (on MSNBC I believe) she was cut off without a word of explanation and they just went to some other story. I can't find anything about this on the web. Very strange. I guess it would be too scary for us to know if they are that sophisticated. (Selling short is basically making a bet that a stock will go down. It involves agreeing to deliver stock that you don't yet own at some point in the future at today's prices. If the price falls between the sale and delivery dates then you buy the stock at the new lower price and deliver it at the previous agreed upon higher price. Reinsurers are the companies that insure insurance companies and are sure to be hit by a massive disaster like this. At least I think I have this right.)

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As I remember it the "someone" of the investigation was Bin Laden.
- steve 9-16-2001 3:10 pm

Were we watching CNN or MSNBC at the time? Do you remember?

And do you know that Israeli guy's name? He sounded like he knew what was going on.
- jim 9-16-2001 6:14 pm

I don't remember the channel or the Israli guy's name.
He's written a book on Bin Laden and was a Friday night
guest on Hardball. Chris Mathews was impressed.
- steve 9-16-2001 6:25 pm

Here's a reuters account of this story in USA Today. Same story also ran in Japan Today.
- jim 9-16-2001 6:44 pm

O.K., here it is:

The Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra reported Saturday that the FBI is looking into possible short-selling of the stocks of reinsurance companies in the four trading days before the terrorist attacks on the United States on Tuesday.

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