From the Horse&#8217-s mouth (Max Keiser):

Max Keiser is a financial engineer who likes to turn things into markets. After working on Wall Street during the eighties, Keiser turned his hand to Hollywood, where, rather than chase starlets as every other man in Hollywood was doing, he began commoditising those same starlets by trading them on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a virtual market in celebrities that he created long before the BBC ripped his idea off with Celebdaq. The starlets loved him for turning them into the commodities they always wanted to be and Keiser was awarded three U.S. patents for the virtual specialist technology on which HSX runs. During his weekly NBC appearances on &#8216-Access Hollywood,&#8217- Keiser became the first person since the days of McCarthy to be boycotted by every major Hollywood studio at the same time. When Keiser accurately predicted weekend box office gross for nine weeks running on his HSX segment of NBC&#8217-s &#8216-Access Hollywood,&#8217- the major studios decided that free markets were not so great after all and called for NBC to remove the heretic in their monopolistic midst or lose access to Hollywood &#8216-talent.&#8217- HSX was sold to Cantor Fitzgerald and Keiser moved to Europe where he created Karmabanque, a virtual market in monetising dissent.

Addendum (November 16, 2006): I received this disambiguation note from someone who knows the HSX history&#8230-

Max Keiser was not involved with HSX at the time of the acquisition nor was he part of the process.

Addendum (February 23, 2007): Max Keiser replies&#8230-

To say that I was not involved with the sale of HSX to Cantor is incorrect. I did not endorse the sale of HSX to Cantor – I voted against it – because the deal with Cantor was not, in my opinion, above board.