San Diego Union-Tribune – It didn’t take long once Utah’s Overstock.com became a publicly traded company for Patrick M. Byrne to show he is no ordinary company president.

He quoted Chairman Mao in a letter to shareholders. He said investors should think of “cash and inventory as a physicist thinks of mass and energy: one is a form of the other.” He compared growing Overstock.com’s business as an online retailer of closeout merchandise to “building the Ark.”

But the voluble Byrne’s chatty discourse took an ominous turn in early 2004.

Taking offense at a couple of negative business stories about Overstock.com, Byrne responded in corporate statements that scolded hedge funds for spreading lies about the company.

“This is the second time in as many months we have seen a hedge fund ‘tip off’ a reporter,” he said. “I urge reporters to question the intentions of their sources.”

Since then, the 43-year-old Byrne has mounted a self-described “jihad” against a loosely organized confederacy of short-sellers and their allies. Byrne says it is a war between Main Street and Wall Street – between publicly traded companies and traders who bet against them.

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