August 19, 2008
Dear sir/madam,
Naked shorting must be the prime suspect in an attempt to bring down a company - Elan Pharmaceuticals - that has worked tirelessly for over ten years in the noble cause of erradicating and/or arresting two notorious diseases: MS and Alzheimers.
(I must disclose that I am a long-time Elan shareholder.)
Three weeks ago, I thought I was witnessing one of the great travesties perpetrated against medical science, as naked shorts induced a precipitous and sharp decline in the ELN PPS, triggering and abeting a full-scale retail panic that brought the stock from $32 to within a few dollars of forcing institutional investors to bail out due to their own minimum price constraints. (Fidelity owns 70 million ELN shares.) For the past two weeks, naked shorts have been playing ping-pong with counterfeit ELN shares, controlling the PPS at intraday volumes far beyond the capacity of Elan's retail shareholders.
Imagine this scenario: Unscrupulous naked shorts think of bankrupting a company as a "home run." Naked shorts triggered an uncontrolled retail stampede that nearly killed the company that has a great chance - their formulation is in FDA Phase III - to mitigate the cruelty that is Alzheimers the same company that has delivered the most efficacious treatment - Tysabri - for MS currently available to this disease's sufferers.
What is Alzheimers costing the US economy? What was the cost of the ELN PPS take-down? Add another $2 billion in evaporated retail investment to the price tag for treating AD.
The practitioners of naked shorting haven't the conscience to feel the pain of Alzheimers victims nor the victims' families. Do you know of anyone suffering from Alzheimers? From MS? Consider the consequences in terms of the human costs of naked shorting.
Sincerely,
M. Baker