Yesterday evening, I discovered that David Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Cumberland Advisors, plagiarized over fifty paragraphs of my recent post “The Second Leg Down of America's Death Spiral”, where I discussed the Mortgage Mess.
My post appeared in my own blog on October 12. The link is here.
Then the post ran on Zero Hedge on October 14. The link is here.
Mr. Kotok passed off my piece as his own writing in his “Market Commentary”, on October 15. The link is here. He posted no link or mention of my blog, or Zero Hedge.
David Kotok olympically tried passing off my work as his own.
It shouldn’t need stating, but Mr. Kotok is not the sharpest knife in the drawer: Only a fool plagiarizes something that has already gotten such intense exposure, as most posts in Zero Hedge tend to get.
But then, instead of just coming clean about his plagiarism, Mr. Kotok began to lie.
Once people realized what he had done, he altered his “market commentary” page, inserting a disclaimer at the top, claiming the post had been written by “an anonymous source”—then claimed the disclaimer had been there all along, and that readers simply hadn't noticed it.
To prove that he is now lying, attached to this post are two screen shots of his “market commentary”—before he inserted his disclaimer, trying to hide the fact of his plagiarism.
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| Top of plagiarized page. Please click to enlarge. |
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| Bottom of plagiarized page. Please click to enlarge. |
David Kotok is a plagiarist and a liar.
The plagiarism—and the lying to cover it up—are in and of themselves trivial. After all, this isn’t life and death—it’s just a silly column that I wrote. On a blog. For free.
But Mr. Kotok’s behavior points to something very troubling:
David Kotok obviously plagiarized my work so as to look good with his clients. You have to wonder what else he’s doing—or will do—so as to look good with his clients. After all, Bernie Madoff looked good with his clients, too—until they discovered that he was a fraud.
Morality is the template of a man’s soul—he applies that same template in all situations, large and small.
If Mr. Kotok would so foolishly plagiarize from an obscure, insignificant blogger in order to look good—and then lie about it to cover his tracks—then one has to wonder what other actions he would commit, in order to look good.
This is all I have to say about this matter—all I will ever say about this matter.
Actually, the whole subject bores me—I slept like a baby last night. After all, I authored the piece, so my conscience is clear. And I don’t have any of my money with Cumberland Advisors, or with its Chairman, Mr. David Kotok.
Thank you for your attention.
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