https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/video/fichthorn-herbalifes-business-scam-160000216.html
Contrary to what the 'Herbalife' Ministry of Truth has pretended, John Fichthorn, co-founder and Portfolio Manager of Dialectic Capital Management, has declared that it was he, and not Bill Ackman, who commissioned, and financed, Ted Braun's documentary film, Betting on Zero.
David Brear (copyright 2016)
David could you please give a deeper analysis of this development?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - I'm presuming that you are a journalist or an interested party?
DeleteFor a deeper analysis, please contact me by e-mail
axiombooks@wanadoo.fr
David could you suggest changes to existing US legislation to control MLMs?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - I published the following brief analysis several years ago which could almost have been, and might indeed have been, used as the foundation for the recent FTC ruling concerning the 'Herbalife' racket -
Delete_______________________________________________________________________________
In order for any direct selling legislation to have a chance of functioning and protecting the public, legislators must first demonstrate that they have a clear understanding of the universal characteristic that identifies the presence of fraud dissimulated as 'MLM direct selling.' i.e. An absence of significant, regular retail sales to the general public (based on value and demand).
Thus, any common-sense legal definition of direct selling, must not contain the misleading jargon terms, 'Multi-Level Marketing' and 'customers and consumers,' but should clearly state that :
A lawful, economically-viable direct selling scheme is one sponsored by persons who can (on request) immediately provide quantifiable evidence that the overwhelming majority of the scheme's declared 'sales' have, in fact, always been authentic transactions comprising the regular retailing of goods, and/or services, directly to the general public (based on value and demand) via commission-agents: and not an economically-unviable money circulation scheme, pyramid fraud or closed-market swindle, largely-comprising losing investment payments made by a never-ending chain of ill-informed participants (based on the false-expectation of future reward), but laundered as 'sales' by the sponsors who have arbitrarily, and falsely, defined the never-ending chain of losing investors as 'independent distributors/customers/consumers/end users, members, etc.' and supplied these persons with over-priced effectively-unsaleable commodities (often of a dubious pseudo-medical nature), and/or over-priced effectively-unsaleable services, in order to dissimulate their criminal objectives and obstruct investigation/prosecution.
I have been reminded by Robert FitzPatrick that perhaps the simplest way of tackling the 'MLM' problem would be to make it illegal to sponsor any scheme offering commission payments to participants which are linked to their own purchases.
DeleteI would also like to say that a comprehensive common-sense law is required to make it a serious criminal offence to instigate any form of dissimulated closed-market, but in order to introduce this long-overdue protection for the public, legislators first have to accept that they have failed the public.
One thing I don't understand? Most people know MLMs are cults and scams which destroy families and friendships. MLM recruiters are everywhere on social media and there have been millions of people drawn into them, but the media has rarely looked at them critically or interviewed victims and concerned friends and relatives?
ReplyDeleteAlso why has Mr. Fichthorn's views on MLM only been voiced on financial channels and in financial papers? Where is the media? Why is the real MLM tagedy ignored?
HBO's "Big Love" did run a MLM plotline in it's last season with some miracle juice as the gimmick and the writers properly showed it as a scam.
DeleteAnonymous - Perhaps the answer to your questions lies in the fact that the 'American Dream/ MLM / capitalist' fairy story is quite easy to understand, but the full-explanation of the cultic racket that lurks behind it, requires a considerable effort to understand. The full-explanation of cultism can also be a huge threat to a person's self esteem, particularly if he/she holds a traditional religious belief, and journalists and editors are no exception.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, the FTC has now openly stated that hundreds of thousands of US citizens have been deceived by 'Herbalife' and implied that 'Herbalife' is itself not exceptional, yet only a few people in the mainstream media seem to have taken this astonishing revelation onboard.
One aspect of the 'MLM' tagicomedy which the mainstream media will probably never report, is the fact that for decades, journalists and editors have almost universally failed to expose it even though it was right under their noses.
The reason why most Americans don't want to face the truth about MLM -cognitive dissonance.
DeleteJane Doe - Thanks.
DeleteQuite a number of people have asked me to write an article explaining cognitive dissonance, but I've never done so. Perhaps now is the perfect time?
'Cognitive dissonance' is a phrase which you regularly see used in connection with 'MLM' cults.
Personally, although I agree that the general denial of the nightmare reality behind the 'MLM fairy story is a classic example of cognitive dissonance, I have preferred to use more plain language.
Thus, I simply have said that the truth about 'MLM' has become unthinkable to most people.
Interestingly, after the recent FTC ruling on 'Herbalife' and the showing of Ted Braun's 'Betting on Zero,' some journalists have suddenly begun to face reality. Prior to these developments, reality-inverting 'Herbalife' propaganda sought to paint, and isolate, all persons telling the truth about 'MLM' cults as: losers, and/or crackpots, and/or criminals, etc.