You have to excuse my naivete. Surely it is, at the very least odd, that regulators can ban short selling on just one segment of the market, ie financials, whilst sanctioning it on all the rest.

Does this mean, that at some future date, under circumstances different than the current man made disaster, regulators could place a temporary ban on short selling Commodities? Consumer related stocks? or any other particular segment of the market they felt was under some particular threat?

Isn't this the absolute pinnacle of market manipulation? Shouldn't it be, either, or, for the whole market? Sort of,'what's good for the Goose is good for the Gander.'

I guess the short answer is, they can do whatever they want.

I find it curious that people complain about short selling, but not margin lending. Margin lending is the flipside of short selling. If you ban one, clearly you should ban the other.

Obviously in the case of commodities there has to be a short for every long, so if you ban short sales there, you've effectively banned the futures market. Good luck with that.

How about housing? You can borrow money to buy a house, but you can't "borrow" a house to sell short. Why is that?

So many questions, so little time...

ebear