I’m Mark Latham, author of this blog. It’s part of the larger project presented in the VoterMedia.org website, which advocates voter funded media to improve the governance of democracies and corporations. I also write the VoterMedia Democracy Blog, which talks about ongoing implementations of this idea in democracies since January 2007.
I started the VoterMedia Finance Blog in October 2008 because of the U.S. financial crisis and bailout. The crisis was caused in large part by poor corporate governance and poor democratic governance, so voter media reforms can help prevent such disasters in the future. Meanwhile I posted some ideas here in fall 2008 about how to achieve short-term and medium-term stability of the financial system.
Although my work for the past 13 years has focused on governance, before that my specialty was investments: financial economics, derivatives arbitrage, risk measurement and control etc. I worked for Salomon Brothers (now part of Citigroup) and Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America) in New York and Tokyo. Before that I was assistant professor of finance at U C Berkeley. My résumé and contact info are linked here.
Now that I’m a member of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission Investor Advisory Committee (SECIAC), I should make this standard disclaimer: This blog expresses my own views, and does not necessarily reflect either the views of the Committee, or the views or regulatory agenda of the Commission, the Commissioners, or Commission staff.
Votermedia Finance Blog 
Hello Mark,
I have a little over 100,000 shares of Ont2 Technologies which I bought over two years ago.
The process of the merger sure needs looking at, and someone in your position and with the
knownledge you have, would not take you long to determine if this needs further looking into.
With Thanks, John
Comment by John M, Ruzicka — December 25, 2009 @ 10:59 pm
Dear Mr Latham,
I am writing to you with the hope that you might take a moment of your valuable time to look at the grave injustice unfolding as Google Inc attempts to absorb On2 Technologies, a small but rising star in the field of video compression software. In short, a corrupt Board of Directors and interim CEO at On2 Technologies coupled with the hegemonic goals of Google Inc have placed the legality of the entire merger process in question and cast a dark cloud over the investment community. One need only look at the recent vote by shareholders against the merger and the questionable actions by On2 management to ascertain gross impropriety and fiduciary negligence. Though you may lack the influence at this early stage of your SEC membership, I do believe you posses the requisite knowledge and experience to set the wheels in motion and bring purposeful scrutiny to the entire merger process.
Kind Regards,
Bruce Dalusio
On2 shareholder
Comment by Bruce Dalusio — December 25, 2009 @ 11:01 pm
mark i am writing you about on2 tech(ont) and google merger scam. on2 and google started their relationship in 2005 and sometime in 2007 or later they started their scam to defraud on2 investors to the benefit on a few on2 employees and google. starting in 2008 on2 mgnt and board have lied to investors many times, hidden our technology from the public, participated in the illegal naked short selling of their own stock, done everything they can to subdue the stock price and devalue the company so they can sell it to google for only $.60 a share. please do all you can to get this investigated so we investors dont end up like the bernie maddoff/enron/worldcom investors. i have and so have many others written the sec and n y attn gen and everyone else we can think of and no one seems to give a damm about us on2 investors. the proxy vote to approve the sale did not get enough votes for a quarum so the vote has been extended and so has the cut off time to vote shares owned. this almost completely takes this sale out of the hands of the long time on2 investors who have suffered over the last several years from the illegal naked short selling of the stock and into the hands of the arbitrage holders that have recently bought and are willing to sell for just a few pennies profit while we lose our life savings not because we made bad investments but because of crooked mgnt who lied and sold us out for their own gain.
Comment by sammy braswell — December 26, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
Dear Mr Latham,
I am writing to you as other ON2 shareholders have done in the hope that you might be able to further champion our cause for justice against Google Inc and On2, whose corrupt Board of Directors and interim CEO have placed the legality of the entire merger process in question and cast a dark cloud over the investment community. One need only look at the recent vote by shareholders against the merger and the questionable actions by On2 management to ascertain gross impropriety and fiduciary negligence. Though you may lack the influence at this early stage of your SEC membership, I do believe you posses the requisite knowledge and experience to set the wheels in motion and bring purposeful scrutiny to the entire merger process.
Kind Regards,
On2 shareholder
Comment by Bill — December 28, 2009 @ 9:28 am