'Naked Shorting' Crackdown Exposed as Another Failed Effort to Prop Up Stocks

The Hedge funds are to blame and have destroyed the financial markets of this country and the world. It's like the Titanic sinking.

People have been calling for a crackdown on the illegal shorts and it took this to fix it. The problem isn't shorting the problem is naked shorting. Its the same as creating counterfeit shares thereby diluting the number shares even more and depressing the price even more. When you short you have to borrow existing shares - when you go naked its all hocus pocus. This isn't the only problem out there but is symptomatic of all the illegal and corrupt practices that the govt has looked the other way on. Its funny to hear Goldman complaining about the shorting against them when they were reputed to be one of the biggest facilitators for the shorts out there. LOL!!! this is only the beginning of the fallout. The derivatives market is going to bury all the Wall Street crooks who came up with that scam. The rush must be on for tickets to Brazil or somewhere else that they can't be extradited from! Unfortunately we're going to be paying for it for years ala a Japanese style slump. We're following their script to the letter. They failed there and so it will go here.

People have been calling for a crackdown on the illegal shorts and it took this to fix it. The problem isn't shorting the problem is naked shorting. Its the same as creating counterfeit shares thereby diluting the number shares even more and depressing the price even more. When you short you have to borrow existing shares - when you go naked its all hocus pocus. This isn't the only problem out there but is symptomatic of all the illegal and corrupt practices that the govt has looked the other way on. Its funny to hear Goldman complaining about the shorting against them when they were reputed to be one of the biggest facilitators for the shorts out there. LOL!!! this is only the beginning of the fallout. The derivatives market is going to bury all the Wall Street crooks who came up with that scam. The rush must be on for tickets to Brazil or somewhere else that they can't be extradited from! Unfortunately we're going to be paying for it for years ala a Japanese style slump. We're following their script to the letter. They failed there and so it will go here.

None us us likes "rules & regulations"......few of us can live without them...including the clowns on Wall Street!

I disagree. Naked Shorting has easily destroyed well over a Trillion dollars of stock market wealth, and destroy many sound companies. The uptick rule needs to be in place, and strict naked shorting prosecution enforced by the SEC, Treasury, or FBI if neeed. People who conduct these operations should spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

Looking at how the market is behaving today, I'd say the government's "good intention" on tightening short selling rules to smooth out and calm the market action has had a totally OPPOSITE effect. Amateurs...

We all know that for every three dollars hedge funds have spent on a stock, they've spent a dollar shorting that same stock--in order to "win" whether the stock goes up or down. Again and again, when a stock's price has stalled or not risen quickly, we've seen hedge funds crush that stock's price down--no matter whether the company was good, bad, or simply not in that week's most-favored sector. Naked short selling is against the law. Because we're supposed to still be a nation of laws, then that law should ALWAYS be enforced. If a hedge fund or anyone else finds that following the law is too difficult, then it, he, or she should find another line of work; e.g., robbing banks. swindling retirees. It's time Wall Street was cleaned up. Enforcing the law against naked short selling is a start. John McCain also wants the uptick rule to be reimplemented. Another fix McCain has called for: fire Christopher Cox, head of the SEC.

No they aren't. There is enough blame to go around. It was a massive industry failure in proper governance.

Bill Clinton ought to be tared and feathered for signing into law a bill repealing the Glass Stegal Act. Cox ought to be fired for being fixated on break-points insted of the more obvious problems like naked short selling.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered!

Since August of 07, the world central banks have put out roughly $2 trillion and counting if you add up everything they are doing, in essentially bailout out all this bad paper. There is only one problem. There is $1000 Trillion of it out there. And it’s going bad very fast. And, the central banks realize there is NOTHING they can do to stop this. Now, I don’t want to scare you, but the entire point here is that this deleveraging problem is insoluble. At some point, the end comes, and the Fed and ECB and BOJ and everyone else knows it. The party is about done. The only question is when.

who cares??? this market is being manipulated by the hedge funds and the multi national corporations. theyre driving the market to incredible lows whilst lining their fat grizzly pockets with the profits. Naked Shorting will lead this market straight into a crash and the Cox gas been Johnny-come-lately at every step of the way. It is no surprise, he's got his hand in the til and is getting paid watching this country spiral out of control. The average American who bought into the "Dream" will foot the bill when the smoke clears.Who can we count on to pull us through? Neither Obama nor McCain have any solid answers and will lead us no where!!! It's time to seriously consider a third party.

Hear hear! Is it too much to point out that various econobloggers have been calling a spade a spade for months or even years now? http://market-ticker.denninger.net/ http://lenderimplode.com/ http://itulip.com/ http://financialsense.com/ and so on.

Yes. Fire Chairman Cox and put the uptick rule back in place. The up-tick rule was created in the aftermath of the 1929 crash. Will it take a 2008 crash to get the SEC off their hands and put the rule back in?

The dow is heading to 5000 folks. Baby boomers can forget the tv commercial retirement.

Todd Harrison doesn't seem to mind illegal naked short selling. Maybe because he used to run a hedge fund. What a scumbag.

Naked short selling is a despicable practice that should have been stopped long ago. It is abused by malicious greedy individuals trying to "game" the system. Short selling is not the problem, but not delivering the shares by the required deadline should have been more strictly enfoced long ago.

"It's globalization stupid." Kind of like it as, it's the economy stupid; remember. We are over leveraged in every venue. Bail out's to save the massive derivatives, inflation on a massive scale. The political stance of deregulation and leveraging at all levels translates from buy, buy, buy at any cost. It was a house of cards. A finite world cannot be treated as infinite purchasing power all at the expense of others. We are now a debtor nation. I for one am looking for ways to solvency. Is it too late? So much wealth has been lost that middle class savers counted on, like this old dinosaur.

Hedge Fund Bear Raids have ripped our 401(k)s to pieces this year! It's way past time to put some brakes on their wild-eyed, destructive, self-serving practices. - The Little Investor

It happens every time - the moment you allow trades with "virtual" money/bonds/stock, the market always bites back. Every time! You would think brokers would study up on stock market history.