Mark Mitchell started out writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, but has posted his most provocative writing on Deep Capture, where he has a 15 part series on the history of Dendreon explaining in great detail how Michael Milken operated, at times in conjunction with Bernie Madoff, to manipulate the market in emerging pharma companies to the profit of those involved. Seems that legitimate companies that might produce genuine advancements in areas where Milken's spawn were scamming were deliberately tanked. This includes Dendreon, which is the focus of his series. Lots of names are named, some with ties to organized crime, who are part of the "new elite" that emerged in the 80s and 90s. It is surprising that Mark Mitchell is still alive.

I would expect that much of the material cited by NBBooks will collaborate Mark Mitchell's work, which is, unfortunately, too easily dismissed as "conspiracy theory". When someone commits crimes causing as much damage as the Junk Bond fiasco, as Michael Milken did, and ends up doing a short time in jail and emerges with $600,000,000 in "earnings" safely stashed in "The Milken Family Foundation" you can see just how rotten the finance system in the US has been for how long. Alan Abelson of Barron's was one observer who got it right in his weekly columns back then.

Madoff had a hedge fund back then, along with his pyramid scam fund. One of the things Mitchell shows is that, due to the rules of the SEC and other regulatory bodies, hedge funds can legally sell naked shorts on stocks. Whenever the involved players needed to tank Denderon, like after a favorable FDA ruling, Madoff's fund would sell a massive naked short on the stock. It is likely that much of the money for these operations came from the other Madoff fund.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."