Making the agrument that short selling somehow helps truly value a company is ludicrous. Nothing more missvalues a company than a bunch of computer generated market sell orders every time a bid comes in. This is the biggest sham since the guy in the corner with the shells. Short have to be monitored and stopped from wrecking the entire economy.

This anti-short selling rule is ridiculous.  Must stocks always go up?  Even when terrible business decisions are made?  Should the government guarantee people a profit?  If we start doing this, as the Bush Administration, in concert with Congressional Democrats is now trying to do, we are socializing the economy, and tying our fate to the policies of the old Soviet Union.  That was a failed state, and the United States will be a failed state soon, since we are emulating Soviet ideas of centralized control, guaranteed employment & profits, socializing losses, and allowing a privileged few to reap outsized gains.  

The course into which we are being steered, forbidding short selling, guaranteeing profits to incompetent businessmen, and supplying taxpayer money to prop up the stock market, is the exact wrong direction.  We are headed, unfortunately, for a Weimar Republic style hyper-inflationary depression, akin to that now being suffered by Zimbabwe.  You simply cannot guarantee success to incompetent players within the system, and then print dollars to bail them out when they fail, without this result.

I don't know of any game played,that doesn't have referees,umpires or judges to control fair play and rules. why in the world would we let wall street play with all the people of the United States , (worlds) money with no one watching. After all the first sin was greed, when Cain killed Able. You may as well leave the Vault door open, layoff the guards, and walk off to wait and see what happens. But, after this has happened once,let's not be so anxious to put tax payers money back in the vault again.

I was getting a little worried about my social security and medicare benefits,but I know now that the government will help when it goes broke. After all i have done my part, Surely if they will bailout a bunch of rich people on wall street and ceo's that bankrupt company's the plain old worker or retiree has nothing to worry about

The only people seem to have any sense of what is happening in this mess are Bernanke & Paulson. Unfortunately, truly getting to actual villains is not possible. The structure of the mortgage market itself allowed for capitalistic innovation which generally is a good thing as it incentifies people to find a way to make money. Unfortunately, in this case, it led to a widespread knowledge that there was easy money to be made. Millions of people tried it from under qualified poor home buyers themselves, flippers, mortgage brokers, inventors of exotic mortgage loans, real estate agents, banks, mortgage packagers at investment banks, credit rating agencies, fund managers reaching for extra returns, inventors of insurance to make subprime bundles pass as good credits, and the government regulators & politicians for not seeing what was happening. And yes, even the lobbyists who kept the regulators & politicians from looking too hard. And yes, even the short sellers on Wall Street who began to see how it was all unraveling and took advantage of the weak rules to drive BSC, FRE, FNM, LEH, AIG, MER down. In a perverse sense we should thank them for bringing it to our attention. But they too were driven by capitalistic incentives to make money and therefore keep it a slow deteriation so they could reap profits as long as possible before calling undo attention. As the famous 1970's line goes ".... Happens". Time now to arrest the decline, clean up the mess the best we can as there won't be many people to arrest, much less indict for any criminal behavior.

DWB    

Long overdue on short selling.  We have enough casinos.  I'm tired of seeing my 401k yo yo.

Legitimate short selling is essential to the market. Naked shorting should be banned, even for market makers. Letting the markets work on their own is paramount to the system functioning properly. Placing bets on a stock price falling is not a criminal offense & does not drive the price of a stock down.

The up-tick rule should only be reinstated if there is a a down-tick rule for long poistions. As a short seller myself, I welcome an up-tick rule as it will insure a better price for me to place my short bets.

The bail out of banks is a foolish move that will have long lasting effects on our entire economy for many years to come. The US is headed for a severe downturn and our once great country has been pileaged by our government. The Republicans are acting like Democrats to win an election- Let's not forget that there has not been a true Republican in office for decades. This is due to the bleeding heart liberals who want too many social programs instead of working harder and EARNING their take!

The average US citizen is a fat lazy "big-screen" watching pig. What ever happened to our countries work ethic? Oh yeah, the unions taught everyone that they are entitled to high pay for less work! Shame on all of us!

GIMME A FRIGGIN BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GS CRIES FOUL WHEN THEY GET HAMMERED BY THE SAME FOLKS THEY TOOK A STICK TO???????????

utter and complete crap-they are getting what they deserve-they are part of the cause of the whole market decline-they were short in the back room while-SELLING CDO/SIV in the front room last year!!! the wall street journal says they made BILLIONS ON THE WHOLE THING! and they were not done either with the markets i am sure-they have been one of the biggest short accounts in the WHOLE MARKET!

it is a shame that all that money siphoned off of the markets the last few years is going right back to ISRAEL so they Re-build Solomon's temple on the dome of the rock in Jerusalem !!!

this is all a crime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i agree NAKED short selling is wrong-especially the market makers playing games with stock prices-players should determine a stocks price(buyers and sellers) not MM and buyer, MM and seller-everyone needs to see that the MM controls the stock unless there is too much volume-so MM can now manipulate a stock to their whim depending on the parent companies decision on where they want their stock price to go to?????????-how will MM generate money for their firms if there is no volitility???-AAAARRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

make em all walk the plank to davey jones locker!

i think it was a necessary evil what they have done-almost too complicated to expound upon-they saved us-the little guy from having to live thru a depression now-thing is, eventually it will happen, because it is a fiat money system and you cannot get rid of greed-now... the little guy will not see equality with ones who were once rich-think 1929 souplines(even then though you did not see Jp Morgan and other tycoons in the lines)they have staved off finacial armegeddon so the show can continue on,rich get richer-middle class shrinks-either you get rich or decend into being poor-if there are no more bubbles to ride-i know many how have gone to cash after taking a loss-they are not able to join in on the rally because confidence has ben destroyed by the market players-now the short thing is meant to keep bulls from getting out of control-too bad too many have used it as a strategy to manipulate stocks(naked shorting and MM getting greedy-there is that greed thing) who knows if the markets need retail investors playing in their world(they have siphoned off a lot of wealth from us) we dont move the market really-only the professional outfits can do that, think GS for example-all of this disgusts me-bitter tast in my mouth-30k lost last year i am sidelined and refuse to play in these waters-the big outfits are recapitalized to drive the markets higher (they all buy eachothers shares) and the USA govt is the bagholder-WE ARE THE BAG HOLDER'S NOW-will probably lead to one world currency though

Short selling is a necessary investment tool that should not be banned but it could be better regulated.  Short sell with your own individual money cannot hurt financial markets but when huge investment banks employ short selling the result can be disasterous to individual investors who are not made keenly aware of the potential loss.  Finally, I do know how to spell and use proper punctuation but this site makes it virtually impossible to make corrections.  Fix it!  You make a mockery of modern technology.  Thank you!