Could we try to steer this back towards something mathematical? We're also failing on the "try to say something new" metric -- the story of investors being hoodwinked by what usually turns out to be bogus science is (too?) oft-told. --Rich -----Original Message----- From: math-fun [mailto:math-fun-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Henry Baker Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2015 7:36 AM To: math-fun Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [math-fun] EM Propulsion At 03:44 PM 5/20/2015, Eugene Salamin via math-fun wrote:

I believe there is an SEC regulation that allows wealthy investors to buy unregistered stock, on the grounds that they presumably understand their risk.

If Randy Mills tried selling stock to the general public, indeed he would end up playing golf with Bernie Madoff.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of the SEC is that _so long as you disclose everything_ to potential investors, you can do almost anything you want with the money. If you disclose the fact that you're going to take the money, spend it all on a big party, and give the rest to the CEO for a bonus, that's completely OK with the SEC. Indeed, this is precisely what happened with many of the "dotcom" companies in 2000. If you go to the SEC.gov site an actually _read_ the IPO documents (which I often have to do for my living), you will be shocked by how much is really disclosed -- e.g., the most recent Fitbit IPO document. Outside the U.S., these types of disclosure are unheard of. Where Madoff went wrong was in lying to his investors about what he was "investing" the money in; in reality he was running an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme. _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun