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Newly-installed SEC Chairman told a public round-table meeting that she has "made it a priority to evaluate the issue of short-selling regulation, and ensure that any future policies in this area are the result of a deliberate and thoughtful process."The SEC has floated a number of potential proposals for dealing with the short-selling "problem," including making it illegal to short sell stocks that are down 10% or more. One popular "solution" is to bring back the recently revoked uptick rule that required short sellers to execute trades only on an uptick -- if the last trade was at $20.00, you could only sell short at $20.01 or higher.
What's fascinating about all this short-selling hoopla is that Ms. Schapiro admitted that, oh by the way, there is no "specific empirical evidence" that the end of the uptick rule contributed to the recent market rout. But hey, who needs empirical evidence when you have mass hysteria and conspiracy theorists?
And what about naked short selling? Floyd Norris and Gary Weiss recently reported that that "problem" is mostly gone.
Either way, I love the idea of convening public round-table meetings and proposing five possible solutions to a problem for which we have "no specific empirical evidence."
But hey, it's not like the SEC has anything else to deal with. With the exception of short-selling, financial markets have been running rather smoothly. Oh wait. No, they haven't.
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