May 15, 2009
Bringing back the uptick rule ( or any other restrictions on short selling ) neither adds nor subtracts from the eventual result: if a stock is going into the toilet or into a period of low volume, it is going there anyway. Short selling just makes the mark-to-reality process faster.
In other issues, let me say I am distressed by the SEC's abdication of the iron scepter of regulation. One of the prime missions of the SEC should be to provide more information to investors on products, not to regulate the transactions themselves ( if it wanted to regulate transactions, there are far more risky instruments and transactions that shorting a stock ).
More specifically, mortgages and their tradable derivatives ( MBS, CDO etc. ) need more transparency such as distribution of income statements of underlying debtors.