Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) CEO Patrick Byrne -- sometimes referred to as the clown prince of online retailing -- has never managed to report a profitable year for his company, in spite of years of optimistic projections.

You might think that a CEO would take responsibility for his company's failures after years of over-promising and under-delivering. Heck, he might even lose his job!

But not Byrne, who is also chairman of the board and owns 28.7% of the company. I would speculate that if he did not have such a large stake, he'd have been pushed out years ago. Instead, he uses his place at the helm of a money-losing company to propagate his theory that there is a vast plot against his company, involving naked short selling (brokerages executing sell orders on behalf of short sellers even though they haven't located any actual shares for sale, potentially (theoretically at least) driving the stock down when shareholders aren't selling -- here's more from the SEC on this stuff), crooked journalists, stock bashers, and a sith lord, although he recently conceded the sith lord doesn't exist.


Yesterday Overstock announced that it had fallen off the Nasdaq's Regulation SHO list (a sign that more sell orders are being settled than have in the past). The press release contained a colorful quote from Byrne:

"While this development is encouraging," said Overstock.com chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne , "I am suspicious that the blackguards are just shifting unsettled trades outside of the DTCC using ex-clearing transactions. I have learned enough about our nation's stock settlement system to understand it is a black hole within which events follow laws understood by no outsiders, and into which journalists daren't peek."

A black hole? I wonder if it's the same black hole where Byrne's past projections of profitability went. Maybe Byrne should spend less time studying our nation's stock settlement system, and try to figure out a way to make money selling overpriced chachkas on the internet.