Red Herrings & The Blue Sky

[John Bailey]

In business speak, that most perfidious of dialects, 'blue sky
thinking' also has a positive connotation - ideas that aren't grounded
in reality, hence are visionary or creative or whatevz. Another buzzy
phrase like 'thinking outside the box' that probably earned the person
who coined it a whole bunch of dollars on the speaking circuit, and is
endlessly repeated in management meetings in lieu of any real change
in thinking or practice. So much of the business of business in the
late capitalist era seems to involve dressing 'fraudulent
exploitation' in an ever-changing array of linguistic petticoats.

On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 8:17 PM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> Definition of 'Blue Sky Laws'
>
> State regulations designed to protect investors against securities
> fraud by requiring sellers of new issues to register their offerings
> and provide financial details. This allows investors to base their
> judgments on trustworthy data.
>
> Investopedia explains 'Blue Sky Laws'
>
> The term is said to have originated in the early 1900s when a Supreme
> Court justice declared his desire to protect investors from
> speculative ventures that had "as much value as a patch of blue sky."
>
>
> The SEC directly, and through its oversight of the NASD and the
> various Exchanges, is the main enforcer of the nation's securities
> laws, each individual state has its own securities laws and rules.
> These state rules are known as "Blue Sky Laws".
>
> Justice McKenna of the United States Supreme Court, in 1917. Justice
> McKenna wrote the Court's opinion in Hall vs. Geiger-Jones Co., 242
> U.S. 539 (1917), which was three cases, all dealing with the
> constitutionality of state securities regulations. Justice McKenna
> wrote
>
> The name that is given to the law indicates the evil at which it is
> aimed, that is, to use the language of a cited case, "speculative
> schemes which have no more basis than so many feet of 'blue sky'"; or,
> as stated by counsel in another case, "to stop the sale of stock in
> fly-by-night concerns, visionary oil wells, distant gold mines and
> other like fraudulent exploitation." Even if the descriptions be
> regarded as rhetorical, the existence of evil is indicated, and a
> belief of its detriment; and we shall not pause to do more than state
> that the prevention of deception is within the competency of
> government and that the appreciation of the consequences of it is not
> open for our review.
> -
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