You know there's another side to this story.<p>The same shorts that have attacked Overstock's CEO similarly attacked the CEO of Fairfax Financial:<p>"According to court documents, the hedge fund
companies allegedly retained an obscure operative named Spyro Contogouris to drive down Fairfax’s share price, a task he went about with alacrity. In 2005, he’s said to have
approached the company’s former CFO, claiming (falsely)that he’d been deputized by the FBI to obtain evidence of financial improprieties. He is thought to be the author of a
widely circulated 30-page letter that, among other things, compared Watsa to the convicted fraudster Martin Frankel. (It was even sent to the priest of Watsa’s church, St. Paul’s Anglican on Bloor.) In 2006, several false rumours began circulating: one claimed that the RCMP were pursuing Watsa; another said that they were about to raid Fairfax’s
office; yet another claimed he’d placed his assets in his wife’s name and fled the country. By then, the company’s stock had tumbled from highs in the $400 range to less than $100 a share."<p>full article: <a href="http://www.grahamanddoddsville.net/wordpress/Files/Gurus/Prem%20Watsa/Prem%20Watsa%20-%20The%202%20Billion%20Dollar%20Man%20-%20Toronto%20Live%20-%2004-2009.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.grahamanddoddsville.net/wordpress/Files/Gurus/Pre...</a>