Help with blog post about market related wars

Hi,

This is my first post. I'm not sure if this is the best place to post under, sorry if not. I don't play EVE and never have (my computer couldn't even handle it) but I know someone that does and I've always found it interesting.

What I find especially cool, and just learned about tonight, was that you guys have your own stock market.

So that's my main primer; I still find it pretty hard to understand, but I'm still doing research.

Anyway I had a few questions and requests.

1) Can you only trade actual items in the game en masse, or can people set up corporations that make products and provide services and then invest in stock directly? How closely does the market mimic real stock exchanges?

2) My blog post is mostly going to be about market manipulation through military action. First off, is this possible? My friend seemed to think it was but was sketchy on the details.
What I'm wondering is, say somebody owns a corporation that produces Product X, like a fast ship (assuming you can do this, see question 1), could they then assemble a fleet and attack the headquarters of a rival corporation where similar products are produced (if it works that way), thus lowering the second company's supply and stock and benifitting by reduced competition?

3) Perhaps most important, can anyone cite examples of military trade wars? You guys seem to chronicle all your major battles, so can you direct me to some fought over trade, especially where the war was started in order to manipulate the market?

4) Also very important, are there any real life examples of people "cashing out" stocks and selling them for real world dollars? My friend said this is not legal (in the game) but still possible. He mentioned a guy who supposedly make like 150k for his son's cancer treatment in this way, but I couldn't find any links to info on that.


So to sum up the main idea, can anyone provide examples of market manipulation through military action within EVE that could then be used to make money in the real world?

Thanks for anyone who can help on this.