about a smaller company that needs capital and has to access the capital market. if hedge funds gang up and do this. they can interrupt. there's a company called force protection and they make mind resistance ambush control vehicles. real big vehicles that solve the problems in iraq. once they get in one it's impossible to kill them. the department of defense loves them they ordered 12 thousand and this little company couldn't keep up. they wanted to expand they're factory to make more. they're stock instead got ma nip lated down to 4 dollars. they couldn't sell any stocks so they couldn't raise capital or expand they're factory so soldiers have been dying so some hedge fund guy in new york could have a new ferrari.

multiply that by hundreds or thousands. there's a great economist in town here. shapiro says hundreds of countries have been effected or are destroyed. we'll never know. some companies deserve to go out of business, some didn't. >> patrick burn our guest. first call, illinois. mike independent line. >> i have a question for the chairman there. if concerns are with the taxes for the cell-phones for employees since he's an employer. my employer force please to carry a blackberry and cell-phone. how does i think that employee effects that they have to keep my job so i have to do this but at the same time the employee says you have to have the

blackberry but the government will tax me. you think that's right and will have an impact with your employee? >> i don't think it's right and i think it will impact employees. normally the principal is, if your conducting legitimate business expense or that you, that you're not taxed on that. if your you know, flying across country and in a jet and you've got an commercial jet, you're not getting taxed on expenses your incurring in the line of doing your business. so it as very strange time in tax to me. >> north carolina, bernard on democrat line. >> how you doing? i got a simple question. i don't have a lot of sympathy as far as being taxed because the way i look ate. you don't care how many items you get from china but still you

complain about getting taxd for revenues. the states need revenue but i don't see you guys trying to put emphasis on buying american. especially over stock.com people. your bulk people. that's my opinion. i'm sorry. >> okay. any response? >> well, okay. we buy american. we try to get the best price and we buy all over america but it's up to what you the consumers are going to buy. do you want to buy this table american made version for $180 or maybe an alternative made overseas for 107. we'll sell both and it's up to the american people, what is is they want to bye. >> springfield, illinois. jill on the republican line. good morning. >> good morning. >> you're on.

go ahead. >> yeah, my concern is that it may have been addressed. my concern is that we have a small business here and it's difficult to compete with internet because of the tax situation. so, to be fair, it makes more sense to me for internet goods to be taxed as well. again- >> what kind of business t do you run? >> a discount store. springfield. >> okay. well, is it really government's role to say we don't, we think that - um... cable television or satellite t.v. has an advantage over cable t.v. and therefore we're going to put an extra tax on it. it has the advantage of not have to dig up streets and stuff so we'll bring the costs up to the same level. how could there be any progress

and how could there be any innovation. any innovation that strips cost out of the system would be compensated by a government that was constantly trying bring everybody's cost up to the same. that doesn't make sense. the right test is a tax is a price you pay a government for a service and if, do we get the same services? do we demand the same services of a government in springfield, illinois that's - that a brick and mortar store does. we don't demand it and we're not getting same services. we're not putting a load on the water supply and same load on the road or any load on the school system. we're not buying those services so why should we have to pay the taxes. >> states, just those states or are they representative of other states coming on the initial states get there way.

>> there's 6 pse&g 8 eagle to do this. california is one of them. i'm on my way to testify in california a couple of weeks back and somebody pulled the bill. it's so unpopular with the populus. so, what they're doing is sort of 1/2 measure to get there is to say, well there's something called affiliate marketing where we have thousands of people around the country with little web-sites like best bye on shoes.com and they market our products and amazon products and states are saying new york did this if you have any people in the state that created nexus. you're a business doing business for the state and your now getting taxed. the day they passed that role we had to release 300 people in new york. if we had kept them, we would have had to start paying taxes on 60 million dollars in sales in new york and that's taxes we

would have had to pay on so we cut people making part of their living from affiliate marketing. so, there's other states considering just the same rule. california was and then they found out they have something like 300,000 people that make some income from this from this business and they rea liez they passed it. they'd have 300 thousands that would start taking paychecks from firms so they pulled it. >> independent line. mark? >> how are you? >> well, i think this is an essence a mission by the politicians that they really don't want to live within their means or within a budget that doesn't expand every year. and i think ro nold reagan said it best. you used word friction less,

that when if it moves, taxes and keeps moving regulate it and if it stops, subsidize it. thank you guys and have a good day. >> well - that guy will go places. we have a comment from twitter. somebody says the delivery companies use the local roads and ups et cetera. >> well, the delivery company should be taxed rather than the internet companies. that would be an argument. my guess is that they don't use for the same amount of goods. i wonder if they use the road as much as the 18-wheelers pulling up to the back of a target and customers who are driving in and picking up. the one local service we do use i think is the roads. they said that the ups and post office uses the roads. probably not used as intensively

as a brick and mortar store but there's a range of other services like electric system. >> how many employees in your company? how are they broken down with those who take orders and processed orders. >> broken down to 500 at corporate and those are computer programmers. accountants and people that work in marketing and such. there's 250 people customer service agents and 250 people that work in the ware house and i'll give them a shout out. we've recently been voted number two in customer satisfaction in american. second only to,ll been. >> as far as that's concerned, how much is dependent on technology and how's that work with with your human resources. >> started off very low-tech as we could. we didn't have the massive

amounts of capital some competitors did so we kept thinses manual and then we applied technology and now we've turned into, well our ware house and customer services. ware houses appropriate tech or customer c service tech. there's a company now with the number one software with that that we have a great partnership and the stuff we're doing on the website. personalization is leading edge too. >> chicago, illinois. go ahead please. >> hello. i don't think our several governments are really doing anything to help us, and i sometimes wonder since they gave away all this money if we left and stopped paying taxes at all and did our own businesses if they would even miss us since they can just make their own

money. it just - you know i'd like to give them a pink slip. i'd like to close the facilities in washington. i don't think we can afford for them to go to work anymore. >> i think they would miss you if you stopped paying taxeses, but i agree, that well, taxes are the prices we pay for civilization but are we getting good value? are we getting as - the value that um... for how much we're paying which is now 6 trillion dollars in fed, state, local taxes. are we getting as much civilization as we think we're buying. my big pet peeve is education and i'm, i'm the cochair of the milton and rose friedman foundation for the school choice because i think the way to solve

social problems at this point is through education and i think that can only be done with some fort of school choice. >> evans, georgia. you're on with over stock.com. al on the republican line. >> good morning. >> good morning. it's a privilege to talk to you mr. burn. appreciate your comments on naked short selling. i have two questions. what exactly was the volume of failures to deliver and f c-spac-spccs response and aren't internet sales taxable in just about every state and they're looking at you as the low-hanging fruit rather than audit their own tax?

>> this thing called naked short selling created iou's and those are the technical name, failure to deliver. the government was very, when he or we got into this they were loathed to disclose how big those were and turns out there's an iceberg of them and they wouldn't tell us how big the iceberg is but they have disclosed it in the tip above the water and turned out it got to about 2 billion share as little over a year ago. 2 billion fake shares. merrill lynch statements and goal man sachs saying they had stocks they never really did. that's tip. no one knows how big the rest is. but it's probably multiple, maybe it's twice or fifteen size the size. what the respond from the,fcthe they stone walled and slammed

the door. i have a website called deep capture.com that explores my fight with wall street. basic investigative journalism and because we became convinced they were a captured regulator when a regulator forgets to protect mainstream from industry and they think about the million dollars a year jobs waiting for them to be a good boy. people used to think i was crazy talking about that but with the last year it's an obvious truth that, the fcc forgot to do its job. i'm a fan of the new people that have come in and the internet taxation point, you made an interesting point. the truth is, that if somebody orders from us in madison,

wisconsin. what's supposed to have happen is they have a duty to collect that tax on themselves and turn it into a county or the tax jurisdiction. turns out almost nobody ever does that. but the proper way for if the states want this revenue they have the legal right to turn to their own constituents saying you have to give us a report of how much you bought on-line and give us a check for six percent. they don't want to face the people that are their actual, the people that have the actual tax liabilities. >> california? patrick burn. carol, independent line. >> good morning i'm honored to speak with patrick. he's been working so hard on naked short selling. i've been gravely concerned about this in our country. i

think it's in a ruins. all of the markets. what can we as stockholder, what can we as small, really nobodys in the united states do about this problem? it's very concerning? >> well, carol, first of all thank you for your kind comments. the truth of it is, nothing. there's nothing you can do. this is the perfect crime. most people don't know. it's economists have a phrase called the problem of dispersed cost and concentration benefits. these folks figured out how to drain tens and hundreds of billions and maybe more, maybe one or two trillion out of the system. out of your saving as count and everybody else's and most people never even understood this was going on. now that it's broken through,

and that gave them the clout to come and hire lobbyists. they're extremely powerful here in town. i fight with them all the time. as soon as i leave the manage hedge funds lobby is sending people in pulling other way. there's very little you can do. sorry to say it's the perfect crime and it clearsly. there's been re importance it was around the collapse of bare and lehman bros.. people will find if time this is intertwined in this entire crisis. not saying it's the whole crisis and there were clearly problems but people figured out how to take fire insurance on somebody's house and then go burn it down. maybe it would have burned down any way but it's wound, the in crowd or the smart money on wall street all understands this is part of all the issues your

reading about. in fact what's really funny is last summer the,f fcc wall strt came for protection against the crime who's existence they denied and the,fcc granted them a 30 day emergency order to protect the center of our financial system from the crime they all said wasn't going on. so, we're saying the thing that they gave them which is called pre bar requirement they ought to give to all publically traded companies in america. so, what can you do? the best you can do and i have learned this makes a difference. write your congressional representatives and senators. there's a site called congress merge.com making it easy to write represents and tell them you support pre borrow. there's a bill from ted in

delaware that he's getting prepared to do a bill that the demand of this certain technical thing. >> does over stock.com pay federal corporate taxes? how are they calculated. is it based on sales volume and isn't that taxation? >> not volume but they're based on income. and like - we've actually been for about three years now- a nice positive cash flow and it's accelerating but we have all start ups, sort of a start up here where you lose money and amazon lost 3 point 9 million i think as it got going. we've turned profitable and we have nice cash flow but the first thing you do is you get to fill in the pothole you built in the earlier days before you have to start paying tax. >> couple of policy things going on in d.c..

obama wants to expand broadband in the united states. how's that impact your business? >> well, first i should say if we're talking about obama. i like him and i this is great we have a president, intelligence, educated and with a judy house temprement but i disagree on some of the policies. this is america, i can do that. this whole stimulus packet we can go into but this little angle. the people getting that money it's quite questionable whether they even want it and two companies have announced they're spending 17 billion each. the private sector is doing 35 billion dollars of what obama is doing with 7 billion dollars. i think that's more of a political pin to stick in the wall than actually going to

contribute. >> how behavorial are the adds on google that hold information and target you with certain searchs? >> we use that kind of technology and i actually don't understand and would be happy to hear from a listener, what would be so offensive about that. when you walk into nordstrom the guy knows you and remembers you and says i remember those shoes you were looking at this other guy came in it may seem like when you go to google and see adds relevant to what you search for gives you a big brother feel. there's no big but there it's computer matching electrons trying personalize the experience. some people like it and i would have to hear why. >> mississippi. democrats line. >> i'm a huge on-line shopper. mostly through amazon. never tried your website but i

think it or i will. sounds good. about this thing, i don't really pay attention to the taxes. i order on-line because the inventor is so deep. stuff i can't find anywhere else. so, i don't know how the tax thing will effect you that much, however, as an argument against the person that called up and said, you know the ups guys are using roads and so forth. you can counter argument with that saying that, well when you pay the shipping and handling and in directly all that money comes through other taxes. employee taxes and so forth. thanks for the great topic. >> thank you all, rick, i want you as my lawyer. good response. georgia. bob on the republican line. >> hi. my question is that if you sell an item for $100 and i as a small business person in my area sell it.

you charge hundred dollars on the credit card. i charge 107 dollars. you have a 7 dollar advantage over me in prices. >> yes. >> that's my question. where do you say that's fair? >> well, that 7 dollars is you're paying as your paying state in return for the services your taking from the state. you've got a store front that's police protected road and roads your employees are driving on. employees with children in school so you're getting all these services from the local state. i would say those are income prabl or greater by the services like giving a package to fedex delivering to a customer down the street from you. a tax isn't just some mandate from god. the price is the name of why the government charges you for it's services. well, your demanding many more

services from your government than i am. why would it be fair for me to pay the same amount for the same amount as you pay for the services that i don't actually use? >> on the subject of behavorial ads the problem is it's usually done without knowledge of the user. permission should be required. >> i think that's fair. allow or don't. we started something with face book where you came to over stock and if you're a face book user it popped up a message and said would you like us to tell your friends what you bought on face book, and you had to check yes. and then we had this deal with face book and it went out and the friends see you just bought a new pair of skis. you had to on face book as i recall you actually had to on ttpt

out. offer there they assumed yes and there was quite an outcry and as soon as the happening occurred you have to deliberately allow it in both places and so there are nuances like that that have to be determined of what people think is fair, but i think that writers solution is great. if you can, opt in and if you do, as you surf the net your google results will be smarter. msn responses will be smarter. when you come to over stock and you go to the "new york times" you'll see products related to what your looking in over stock. only if you opt in. >> washington. independent line? >> they should use the tax thing between i don't know start

the biggest companies because they got money. and then when they use all this stuff and then they don't use the tax thingy. they're ripping the state off and not getting states not getting their priority because obama wants to know exactly what's doing on with that company and he doesn't know unless we pay taxes and then we need questionnaires on all the people. - because there's good and bad and the streets need to be done. it all costs money if we use that for an option of how paying back bills and then volunteer the times paying off the back balance. there's a lot of homeless people and there's a lot of low income people that can't really pay off their back bills because we can't afford it. >> well, how would it help, if

somebody starts taxing your internet purchases so when you buy that hundred dollar item you spend $107. the government gets 7 and then can use the 7 to come back and pay off your bill. i don't see other than the friction cost of it all going through the government and creating programs that don't go away and is such, i don't see how that helps. it's taxing you more. and you have to always ask, what is the value of what it is you're getting from government? i'd say people might look around and say i'm not sure we're getting full value for as much as we're spending on government. >> let me head - quick. go ahead. >> we spend as a country. a total federal state and local expenditures on kindergarten through 12th gr grade education.

600 billion dollars on 50 million children. that's 12 thousand dollars per child. if you take the total government expenditures and divide it by the number of kids it's 12 thousand dollars per child. that should be amy any harvard education in my mind are we getting that? in washington d.c. it's 17 thousand. we i don't think the answer is throwing more taxes into that system. how we start figuring why aren't we getting 12 thousand dollars of education for each child in school? >> our guest founded 19 schools internationally. why did you do that? >> well i'm a bachelor and i don't have much to do, society is rewarded me far in access of anita lent or me right so i use my money to build schools overseas and i have a wonderful partner from the, mgo community.

a guy that grew cynical about some of the things we saw over zoos and he and his wife build schools. many are schools for just girls. some are both have wonderful business model as attached so it's a school and or fan age and they raise boiler check ins and they sell a crop and that supports the schools on-going. there's actually about 21 now and 10 to 12 thousand children in them. cross afghanistan, in the pal and africa. we're starting to move to latin america up and i name them all dorothy burn after my mom. >> republican line? >> thanks for taking my call. mr. burn, thank you so much for being on the forefront of naked shorting an and greatest ponzi scheme this nation