Give me a break. Check this story out from Bronte Capital! Now that those short are going bust it's supposed to hurt the system? Make me gag!
Last I looked when I was short a stock the broker borrowed the stock (yes, Virgina you do get a borrow) and sold it. They then had cash.
That cash was not available to me - it was pledged to whoever provided the stock to remove or reduce the risk that the stock won't be returned.
That means it is generally available to the broker (who will generally lend me the stock from their inventory or margin or prime broker clients).
Now there are a few hundred billion of short-sales out there. Probably more than normal - but a lot in almost all markets.
And those short sales produce cash balances of a few hundred billion, most of which are available to Wall Street brokers.
If you ban short-selling those balances will taken away from Wall Street brokers.
That would be rather unpleasant. Last I looked the debt market was skittish and was hardly going to replace that money.
So I conclude that the SEC in their "infinite wisdom" are going to stick the knife into Wall Street and bankrupt the lot of them. For political optics. So they can be seen to be doing something about short-selling.
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2008/09/sec-tries-to-bankrupt-wall-street.html
The only thing I have in common with his thinking the colors of our blogs!
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