..sorry for being a little out of context, but i think the last statement is overrated, especially if the writer is only referring to the US context…you should see firsthand the impact of the 1997 crisis on the poor in Asian countries…THAT is what “destroyed lives” looks like…

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/sec-backs-down-short-selling-disclosure/story.aspx?guid={1FC46375-2DBA-4C7B-964E-B9D95F78C416}&dist=msr_11

Late Wednesday, the regulator said that institutional investors’ short positions won’t be made public, a major change from an earlier ruling that had upset several prominent hedge-fund managers and short sellers including James Chanos.

http://tinyurl.com/4ssd88

It appears to me that the markets are rigged. All games that can be rigged will be rigged, sooner or later. The Fed, working in league with the U.S. Government, rigs the U.S. markets. But don’t think for a second that the Fed has some kind of monopoly on a situation where rapacity pervades honest reason. All markets are rigged. Central bankers, the world over, are primarily involved in fleecing the people. The fact that the Fed is the most powerful of the Central Bankers, and that they are primarily responsible for perfecting the insidious contrivance called inflation, has not kept the rest of Central Bankers of the world from entering into a game of “catch up”. As far as they are concerned, there is only one motive, and that motive is economic world domination. Which Central Bankers will dominate will depend on which ones end up with the most. That’s just the nature of absolute corruption. That is the reason that whole world is currently strapped with a fiat system. The ability to create money, out of thin air, provides for absolute economic power. Absolute power equals absolute corruption. It’s as simple as that. By rigging the markets, through various forms of intervention, the central bankers have set up a scheme whereby the wealth of the world could be siphoned off at will.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=132199

Bris wrote “Giving pessimists and optimists equal opportunities to commit their capital engenders competition that enhances price discovery.” And while writing this, Bris went out and research short selling from the vantage point of short sale apoligists within his profession. All of his studies center around people of common thought. Doesn’t that make him a hypocrite as it relates to short sale analysis. If price discovery requires views of optimist and pessimist, how can short sale analysis be efficient if all the views being evaluated, and all the data evaluated, is being done by economists in the exact same way.

http://sec.gov/foia/docs/failsdata.htm

On another note, where can I find the fail to deliver list?

And how come no one is pointing out the fact that investment banks running at 30 to 1 leverage is a bad business model and a small hit on their capital is very bad for their leverage/asset base.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7B4laX1E70

James Chanos has direct ties to Yale University.

Prof. Bris was nobody until he came out on his report regarding the mandatory pre-borrow Emergency Order in July. The WSJ and NY Times picked up his comments and ran with it – now he is suddenly a somebody.

The WSJ has published 3 opinion letters on short selling in the past months – such letters were originated by Prof. Bris and James Chanos. All letters have the exact same underlying rationalizations and conclusions. The NY Times ran all opinion letters through their blog.

Are we seeing a pattern here? If Bris is this short sale expert, where has he been these past few years? We certainly never heard his name amongst all those economists that were spouting opinion on teh short sale issues. Is it coincidence that Yale lost Chanos mouthpiece Owen Lamont to a short sale hedge fund and suddenly a new Yale pundit appears in Prof. Bris?

Do Short Sellers Front-Run Insider Sales?

Mozaffar Khan
MIT Sloan School of Management

Hai Lu
University of Toronto – Joseph L. Rotman School of Management

June 3, 2008

MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 4706-08

Abstract:
We find evidence of significant increases in short sales immediately prior to large insider sales, consistent with information leakage and front-running. We examine a number of alternative explanations that the increase in short sales is driven by public information about the firm or about the impending insider sale, but the evidence is inconsistent with these explanations. The result has implications for the enforcement of insider information regulations, and for timely disclosure of short sales information by stock exchanges.

Keywords: Short Selling, Insider Sales, Front Running, Information Leakage

JEL Classifications: G10, G14, G18, G30, M41
Working Paper Series

And not just the 799 stocks.

To my mind, with the spotlight being shone on the FTD problem, this means that the naked shortselling problem has morphed into one of predatory INTRA-DAY shortselling. Since positions are “netted out” at the end of the day, if short positions are covered by day’s end, no locate or borrow is needed — and no delivery is needed in three days. All it takes is wink and nod agreements between one’s best-customer hedge funds and their friendly prime brokers.

Firm borrows must be required on ALL short sales — intraday and including options MMs.

Trading has been at record levels this year and increased after the short ban.

I dropped a blog post claiming that if anything, the market is currently suffering from hyperactivity and not inefficiency.

http://blog.yintercept.com/2008/09/market-hyperactivity.html

These record trading days are on lack of knowledge and not news.

There ought to be a law . . . but fear not, their tracks are etched in digital history.