Krempasky.com

One of the main reasons I spent so much time following the Byrne vs. Business Week story was exploring Patrick Byrne’s crusade/conflict/passionate campaign against certain practices and institutions on Wall Street. In short, Byrne believes that our capital markets are at great risk from the practice of “naked shorting” or purposefully (“strategically”) failing to deliver stock once a trade is made – taking advantage of lag-compensating features in our stock market system.

Words like “rogue” and “maverick” seem often applied to Byrne, but what got me was his use of the web to push his take on the problem. First – a blog, SanityCheck. (where the aforementioned reporter/ceo exchanges were posted) Simple enough. But then he’s also got a series of very well done primers on the topic, the history, even a bit of public choice theory thrown in for good measure. (don’t mind the very ugly front end landing page, the presentations are very slick)

Now, not to say that Byrne is gospel. He’s clearly the head of a company whose stock hasn’t done well over the last year, so maybe the dog he has in this fight clouds his judgement. But his little webcast primers got me to learn about something that, 12 hours ago I would have told you I’d prefer a flogging to. And that’s not insignificant.

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