"I agree with your look on shorting but how does increasing the number of shares a company has relate. If there is one share in a company, how does loaning it out to sell to someone benifit the owner of that share."

I agree with you on that. Like it or not, the shares are co-mingled, as much as we didn't sign on for that, and in this environment, it is really not a safe way to operate. In reality, within a particular brokerage, all of the NOT shares are owned by the collective group and some of those shares are loaned out, much the same way as your money in a savings account is, except you are not really getting interest if your shares are borrowed. The above is as I understand it. I think that the shares should only be lent out if the brokerage actually owns the shares on their own, not the shares of their clients.