Peter Boone, the economist accused of profiting from a sharp rise in bond interest rates after writing a corrusticating 2010 blog in the New York Times, is to sue the Portuguese State for "trying to silence its critics."
"Dr. Boone is now preparing to sue the Portuguese State for a grossly incompetent and negligent investigation conducted by the Securities Market Commission (CMVM) and the Public Prosecutor's Office," reads part of a statement from Boone’s legal team.
Peter Boone and Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, wrote on the Economix blog of the New York Times in April 2010 that after Greece applied for a bailout, that Portugal would follow and ran the risk of bankruptcy and default, claiming that Portugal would be "the next global problem.”
At the time, the Minister of Finance, Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, sent a note to the newsrooms, referring to "nonsense without solid foundation,” calling the authors ‘ignorant.’
The Portuguese market regulator concluded that the blog was "exaggerated and partial" in considering that Portugal would be the next to need financial assistance and later accused Peter Boone of "trying to manipulate the market".
This is because, after the publication of the article, the interest rate on 10-year Portuguese bonds began to rise sharply, from 4.395% to a 6.285%: a performance caused by the fall in the bond price, with which Peter Boone achieved a gain of €819,099.82.
In response to Boone's dire forecasts for the Portuguese economy, the Securities Market Commission opened an investigation on the grounds that the article aimed to devalue the price of Portuguese bonds.
Boone was linked to Salute Capital Management, a company that provided advice on investment in Portuguese public debt.
In October 2016, the Criminal Investigation Court dismissed the charges against Boone and the Public Prosecutor appealed against that decision a month later.
More recently, on June 21, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the lower court and, on July 12, the decision of the Court of Appeal of Lisbon became final, according to the economist's legal team.
"It is a tragedy for Portugal that prosecutors consider it appropriate to use State institutions to fabricate cases against critics rather than focus their efforts on preventing the cost of the financial crises that emerged under their eyes," said Peter Boone.
The Harvard economist maintains the prosecution was an attack on freedom of expression, "The Court of Appeal's verdict makes it clear that the Public Prosecutor's Office has attempted, illegally, to extend the crime of debt manipulation beyond its legal framework in order to devise a more efficient tool for silencing critics."
Comments
I was born in the U.K. 67 years ago and my parents moved to France 3 years later, my mother was French and my father British and up to the age of 25 when I struck out on my own, I had lived in France, Belgium, Holland, Spain and Portugal, at no time in all those years did I personally come across or hear my parents discuss any problems with us being foreigners in any of the places we lived and I myself having spent most my adult life in the southern hemisphere have never really found integrating into different cultures a big problem, so why should it be such a big thing about peoples rights in other country's when the U.K. leaves the E.U. when years before the E.U. existed we were living with and at least in my family's case getting on very well with our various continental neighbours.
Don't you think that the uk will only agree to equal rights to eu citizens if the eu will agree to equal rights for uk citizens in the eu. I think it would be quite remiss of them to do otherwise. I would be very annoyed if the uk government did not look after my rights in the negotiations. Having said that, if I need to become an eu citizen after Brexit, to ensure that I have full legal rights in the country that I am living in, I will have no hesitation in doing so. If I don't do that then I may have to go back to the uk, don't really want to do that.
Simply google "wealthist economy in the world "
1 USA
2 EUROPEAN UNION
3 CHINA
There are many variations of, what makes an economy rich. But according to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United Nations the above are the top three wealthist economies in the world.
Quoting Neil M:
Define wealth, is it GDP, (a bad joke), employment levels, average wage,etc,etc, I can only assume you've put on your rose tinted spectacles, read the propaganda and not questioned the true substance of this E.U. "wealth", I think that the 42% of under 25 year olds who are unemployed in Spain, or the 37% of under 35 year olds who are unemployed in Italy would disagree with your definition of "wealth" in the E.U.
Would this E.U. wealth you describe also include the "assets"( another bad joke) of the German,French, Italian,Spanish,Portuguese,etc ,etc, banks ?
In reality there is not a solvent bank in the E.U. because in the past they were happy to buy each others speculative bonds having had the nod from the powers that be in Brussels but they have now given that up as too risky and leave it to the E.C.B. euro printing machine.
Just look at the 2010 E.U., ECB, and IMF, (Troika) 110 billion euro bailout of Greece, every euro of the bailout money went, not to the Greeks but to the E.U. banks, who had bought the rubbish Greek bonds on the back of a tacit understanding from the E.U. that they wouldn't lose money on their investment, as I said before it's nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme but you console yourself with your simplistic perceptions, just don't put your lottery winnings into a euro zone bank.
Just to remind you that the European Union is the second wealthist economy in the world.
Since Peter Boone made that statement the euro has been the recipient of massive central bank support, Mr Boone will obviously be correct in the longer term, no fiat currency continues forever, the only reason his euro prediction has not come to fruition earlier is the fact that the Snr Draghi at the ECB has to date electronically created over 2.3 trillion (yes, that is a T) euros which have been spent on his “whatever it takes” euro zone life support bond buying programme, both euro zone government and company bonds are being bought by the ECB in huge quantities because the bond market just isn't interested.
I wonder why ?
Just how long the ECB will or can continue buying what are in a lot of cases very low quality bonds, is anybody's guess and being a bit of a cynic I did wonder why the ECB had changed the rules on senior and junior bond debt to try and ensure that the ECB would be in a better position regarding losses on any bond defaults.
One of the idiocies arising from Brexit is the lunacy that the EU is insisting that the UK continues to treat EU nationals within the UK as equals. Perfectly reasonable and it will happen. Even though hundreds of thousands in the UK are from countries like Portugal that never gave UK citizens 'equal rights' in their own countries.
When does free speech become market manipulation?
Of course he can argue that he simply stated the truth as he knew it, and simultaneously put his money where his mouth was.
Insider trading is often difficult to pin down.
No doubt if the Euro had collapsed, he would be prosecuted for that as well.