May 11, 2009
It is my strong belief that the deregulation of the uptick rule AND the lack of enforcement of finding a legal "borrow" of shares to short has caused catastrophic financial damage to the financial indusrty and ultimately the American taxpayers. The surgical obliteration of equity in our nation's largest financial companies was obvious to anyone who has been involved in the stock market for any period of time. Bank stocks and investment banking equities do not normally drop 50% in value in a period of hours. This was something far more sinister than typical shareholders deciding to sell their shares over the course of a few days.
We must make sure that the power is not available in the future to allow a group of institutional investors to bring our financial system/economy to its knees via unethical and illegal activities. We are paying a very dear price as American taxpayers for the calculated, destructive actions of the greedy few who mercilessly attacked one financial institution after another until they successfully destroyed our financial system.
This was not the act of capitalists seeking profits from an inefficient market, rather an act of financial terrorism against our financial institutions. Those who perpetrated these "illegal" short sales (sales without legally located borrows) should be brought to justice. We should do anything in our power to assure these activities can never happen again. The cost is simply too prohibitive.