By the thinnest of margins, the SEC just voted 3-2 to institute the short-selling rule which will put curbs on shorting individual securities that fall over 10% in any one day. Dow Jones points out that even market decisions are now split according to party lines: "Republican Commissioners Kathleen Casey and Troy Paredes said Wednesday they would vote against the proposal. Democratic Commissioners Luis Aguilar and Elisse Walter signaled their support for it, along with SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, who was appointed last year by President Barack Obama." Paredes was further quotes as saying that the rule is "rooted in conjecture and too speculative." Not surprisingly, Aguilar and Walter, both likely reading from the party lines said that this would "help bolster market confidence."
At this point we are too lazy to pull the S&P chart of what happened in 2008 when shorting in select stocks was proclaimed verboten for a certain amount of time. We fail to see, however, how eliminating this critical piece of market testing will do anything but further increase speculation that the entire market is now a sham, propped up by various regulations and money printing practices.
At least the SEC can now go back to doing what it does best, which is not enforcing the law against blatantly obvious instances of insider trading and market manipulation.
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