Low Integrity at The Daily Bell's High Alert?
By Rod Van Mechelen
The Daily Bell website advocates Austrian Economics and is favored by many well respected figures in Libertarian circles. But is any of it real? Are a few hucksters riding on Libertarian shirt tails to profit at the expense of unwary champions of liberty?
The Daily Bell a False Front?
2014 Olympia, WA - For the past few years I've posted links to The Daily Bell on my backlash.com website. These included articles by Ron Holland, who was featured recently in an interview on Doug Casey's International Man website: The Need to Escape Collapsing Empires.
Early in 2014 under the auspices of High Alert, the Daily Bell published a glossy Equity Report promoting Biologix Hair Inc., one of Mr. Holland's projects.
Intrigued, I bought a tiny "bookmark" position in the company, big enough to keep it on my radar, small enough that I would not notice if it fell through. Really, the cost of the transaction was almost as much as the cost of the shares of stock.
A few months later, while people continued to blog in anticipation of buying the company's product, news about the company virtually evaporated. Then the company's website disappeared. No announcement, nothing, yet the analysis promoting the company remains on the Daily Bell website and the company stock continues to trade to this day. (Note: If the promotional document now disappears, I have a copy.)
Companies fold all the time, but when there are investors involved you expect announcements. There were none. It began to smell like a pump and dump.
Mr. Holland's articles continued to appear on the Daily Bell website. The subjects were politics and liberty. I linked to them. But then on November 22, 2014, the Daily Bell posted a new article promoting another of Mr. Holland's projects: A New Free-Thinking Community for Your Life, Safety and Sanity!, by Anthony Wile, the main man behind The Daily Bell.
According to Timothy Gillespie, Mr. Wile has been the subject of an SEC investigation:
Six years ago, would-be financial guru, free market zealot and Austrian economics acolyte Anthony Wile was sitting uneasily in his gated Vancouver mansion reading a sixty-seven page civil complaint filed in Federal Court in New York by seven senior lawyers from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. ... According to the complaint, Wile was at the epicenter of a finely orchestrated con of “pump-and-dump” penny stock manipulation which, if successful could have netted the financial high-flyers $30 million or more, $15 million of that to Wile himself. -- Is Anthony Wile's marijuana plan smoking hot?
While looking for news about Biologix, I came across that article. Maybe the allegations were true, but the web is loaded with articles attacking free market advocates and Austrian Economics, so I just filed it away.
Then the article about Mr. Holland's latest project appeared and I posted a comment expressing my skepticism:
Instead of replying that it was true or things were mishandled or that the analysis should be updated to indicate the company went bust, both the Daily Bell editor and Ron Holland responded with excuses and finger pointing at other markets. When I replied, the Daily Bell editor warned me that (by replying) I was violating their terms of use.
In my experience, this is how people act when they have something to hide. So I began Googling.
B.C. companies accused of rigging stock prices
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, Plaintiff, v. BRIAN N. LINES, SCOTT G.S. LINES, LOM (HOLDINGS) LTD., LINES OVERSEAS MANAGEMENT LTD., LOM CAPITAL LTD., LOM SECURITIES (BERMUDA) LTD., LOM SECURITIES (CAYMAN) LTD., LOM SECURITIES (BAHAMAS) LTD., ANTHONY W. WILE, WAYNE E. WILE, ROBERT J. CHAPMAN, WILLIAM TODD PEEVER, PHILLIP JAMES CURTIS, and RYAN G. LEEDS, Defendants.
SEC halts nephew Wile's Sedona amid offshore RTO
SEC's LOM hearing to include former NASD director
Best Satire of Faux Austrian Economics Ever
There are several other articles that link Mr. Wile to, among others, Bill Bonner, Doug Casey and Ron Paul, men I respect and admire. Politics makes strange bedfellows and, until now, I was inclined to think Mr. Wile was a stand up guy, myself, so I don't fault anybody who is otherwise upstanding for being linked to people who demonstrate a lack of integrity, if not criminal intent.
Are the Daily Bell, High Alert and Ron Holland criminal? I don't know. But responding to skepticism with obfuscation, excuses and accusations are typical of somebody who has something to hide.
Regards,
Rod Van Mechelen
Rod Van Mechelen is the author of What Everyone Should Know about Feminist Issues: The Male-Positive Perspective (the page now includes several articles by other authors), and the publisher of The Backlash! @ Backlash.com and Cowlitz Country News. He is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and served for 9-1/2 years on the Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council.
