Mark Cuban's First Big Mistake...

I love it...I was reading on Huffington Post a post by Mark Cuban yesterday. He was talking about "Obama's First Big Mistake." Oh Cuban says, Obama's relying too much on brain power! The anti-intellectual bent continues, this time on the left. Cuban goes on to state that he is ready to help. BUT: then: BAM, today Cuban is hit with insider trading charges.

Cuban's Post:
President-Elect Obama's First Big Mistake

Its great to see President-elect Obama aggressively taking on the economy prior to his taking office. Unfortunately, the economic advisory team that he has put together looks more like a semester's worth of great guest speakers for an MBA class than an economic advisory team that can truly help him.

There are a lot of great minds on the list:

Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, who served as Clinton's top economic adviser; former Fed Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson; Time Warner Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons; former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson and Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy.


Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Roel Campos, an ex-SEC commissioner, and Warren Buffett are also on the advisory board.

Notice anything missing?

Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren Buffett started a business, but he will be the first to tell you that he "doesn't do start ups". Which means there isn't a single person advising PE Obama that we know of that knows what it's like to start and run a business in this or any economic climate. That's a huge problem.
[read whole post here]

Well, now today, ouch! Now, "That's a huge problem," Cuban!

From Reuter's:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team, was charged with insider trading in shares of Mamma.com Inc, an Internet search engine firm, the Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday.

Cuban, one of the five finalists to buy the Chicago Cubs pro baseball team, faces civil charges by acting on nonpublic information and selling shares of Mamma.com to avoid more than $750,000 in losses, the SEC alleged.

According to the SEC, Mamma.com invited Cuban to participate in a stock offering that would be conducted at a discount to the market price after he agreed to keep the information confidential.

However, within hours of receiving information, Cuban called his broker and told him to sell his entire position in the company, the SEC alleged.

When the offering was publicly announced, Mamma.com's stock price dropped 9.3 percent from the prior day's closing price.

Calls to Cuban's lawyers were not immediately returned.

Mamma.com has since changed its name to Copernic Inc.

(Reporting by Rachelle Younglai, Robert MacMillan; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)