January 25, 2010
You have been finding all kinds of reasons to delay this issue. The fact is short selling is doing more damage to the market and therefore damage to the confidence of the American people than you are willing to hear about. It is about time that you act on the issue and simply outlaw short selling in its entirety. The argument about betting the price will go down can be handled by option trading. The "naked short selling" is not controllable by you or any government agency because they don't even know it still exists. You cannot and do not track such sales. The best solution is outlaw short selling completely.
There are sufficient arguments that you are not able to effectively control short selling through the various suggested methods. After the 1930's the "uptick rule" was put in place to control exactly what happened in 2008 and 2009. With the myriad of trading platforms that exist today and the inablility to effectively oordinate them the obvious solution is to outlaw short selling completely.
I am confident that simple, clear, and stong penalties will stop "naked shorting" and calm much of the manipulation and volitility that is obviously going on in the market at the present time because of short selling.