shorting and the entire futures market, dirivatives, hedging and so on ... should not have been allowed to evolve over the past many decades.
the 'big board' in NYC was created in the spirit of public companies and a free market and capitalist way of democratic life for the purposes of investment and economic growth through to main street (not just wall street or bay st)
that was all well and good.
unfortunately, it slowly turned into an abortion of something else, giving way to all kinds of fancy trading mechanisms, which primarily serve only the very rich and privaliged few on the inside.
the melt down today is the result of a deteriorating and obscene market system of trading (...falsley called the 'investment market') which has been slowly getting worse over almost a century.
cheers ....danny