On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:15:34 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:

Cris Cox (SEC Chairman) has temporarily suspended the practice of selling
short on Wall Street as of this morning. Good move.

Too bad it was he who did away with the long standing "Uptick Rule" last
year that banned naked short selling.
He did so as an "experiment" to see if the rule, in place since 1938, was
really necessary.

The results of his experiment are obvious.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080919/..._short_selling

It was a bad idea, but I don't think it was ill intentioned. I think
it was a matter of bad timing.

The simple truth is that the market needs short sellers just like it
needs speculators - that's how liquidity is provided to keep the flow
of money to banks and investment firms. The problem came when there
was too much money changing too litle profit and it infected the
entire financial system when everybody went totally and completely off
the rails chasing profit.

I think there was a huge reluctance to enter into another RTC solution
to the process, but it worked for the S&L crisis and it will work in
this crisis - a sunsetted GSE which will actually make money for the
texpayers insted of costing them money.

I'm all fot it.