The Gullible is a perfect role for one of The Hog’ friends in the world of investment tipping and social media who fell for a forged letter concocted by anti-coal activist Jonathan Moylan.

Moylan himself can have the role of the Guilty.

Speculators who traded shares in reaction to his lies about a cancelled bank funding arrangement are the Greedy.

And someone from the Australian government can have the role of the Gormless following a sluggish response to the situation.

Like the original 1966 “spaghetti western”The Good, the Bad and the Ugly starring Clint Eastwood, which prompted the suggested GGGG title for the Whitehaven movie, there is an incomprehensible plot and plenty of action, all dressed up as a spoof of real life.

For anyone unfamiliar with what’s just happened, Moylan borrowed (or copied) an ANZ letterhead and constructed a phoney statement which claimed that the bank had withdrawn a $1.2 billion funding package for Whitehaven’s new coal mine at Maules Creek.

The letter, which looks good but is obviously a fraud because no bank would ever make such an announcement, fooled a gullible media which has become addicted to a diet of news releases written by public relations spin doctors and government advisers.

No one in the coal world is particularly interested in explanations or excuses as to why this has happened but the dumbing down of mainstream media and the replacement of seasoned cynics with junior reporters was a factor in the success of the Moylan fraud.

Laziness was another factor because it only required one phone call to the ANZ or Whitehaven to discover Moylan’s trick.

As for greedy speculators who traded Whitehaven shares on the early reports carried by the gullible media well, they largely got what they deserved because they were acting on unofficial reports, indulging in a quick trade to try and outsmart fellow investors.

On a more serious note, some genuine investors will have been hurt by what Moylan did in his attack on Whitehaven and the wider coal industry and those people have every right to feel angry about what has so far been a gormless reaction from government and stock exchange regulators.

Rather than doing the right thing and cancelling trades made by investors who lost money selling Whitehaven shares into a demonstrably false market there has been no action at all by either the ASX or the government watchdog ASIC.

Moylan, the guilty, has achieved his short-term objective of publicising his anti-coal campaign and might be seen as a short-term winner from the hoax but over time he too will become a loser for two reasons.

Firstly because the Whitehaven stunt highlights the point that his campaign is nothing but stunts with little substance and each time he stages a stunt the greater the damage to his campaign.

Secondly because his next public appearance should be when he is charged under the Corporations Act with making a false statement and, while that could produce a fresh anti-coal publicity campaign, it will be a sobering experience if he gets the jail time he deserves.

As the headlines fade and before Moylan’s fraud moves into its legal-chase phase there is a case for the gormless (also known as government) to answer because of what appears to be a lack of interest, or understanding, in what it means to create a false market in an ASX-listed stock.

Perhaps the explanation for the decision to not enforce a cancellation of all buy/sell orders during the period of the hoax can be explained by secret support for the anti-coal campaign – not such an outlandish suggestion given the twin tax attack mounted by government on carbon and mining in general.

At least one senior Labor member, Joel Fitzgibbon, has recognised the Moylan fraud was more than an attack on Whitehaven – it was an attack on the entire business community and the people employed by those businesses, a point that the Green Party appears to be ignoring in its support of Moylan.

For the government to have not acted decisively to cancel out share trades booked as a result of fraud because it failed to clear a notional 10% share price fall represents an astonishing failure on the part of government to protect people from illegal activity.