May 6, 2009
Shorting stocks without having to borrow them first (naked short selling) is equivalent to printing counterfeit shares and selling them in the same market as genuine shares. There is no counterbalance to the flood of worthless paper when the shares are sold. Naked short selling could imperil any company's value to the whims of unethical stock mongers and their self serving institutional business partners. The only ethical difference between Iranian made counterfeit US Dollars and a naked short selling is that Iran did not promise to buy back the dollars and was not politically connected enough to have the SEC dub the transactions legal.