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Is the author of this complaint any relation to Madoff. They appear to have the same last name.

Abstract: In September 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) surprised the investment community by adopting an emergency order that temporarily banned most short sales in nearly 1,000 financial stocks. In this paper, we study changes in stock prices, the rate of short sales, the aggressiveness of short sellers, and various liquidity measures before, during, and after the shorting ban. We compare banned stocks to a control group of non-banned stocks in order to identify these effects. We find that the start of the shorting ban is associated with a sharp increase in share prices for affected stocks, consistent...

<p>Forget Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion fraud. The SEC, and the press, should be focused on short-sellers’ attempts to destroy the U.S. banking system, Cramer said.</p> <p>Just in the 12 days leading up to the Nov. 24 Citigroup bailout, short selling accounted for over 49% of the total trading volume in that company’s stock. For JPMorgan Chase , it was 41%. Bank of America : 35%. Goldman Sachs : 40%. Morgan Stanley : 37%. Wachovia : 42%. Wells Fargo : 42%.</p>

Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud is “stunning,” says the SEC. It is a crime of “epic proportions.” But, says the SEC, we have nothing to worry about. The SEC caught the bad guy. It “moved swiftly” to protect the integrity of the financial markets. Nonsense. The only thing “stunning” is that the SEC continues to condone and even fraternize with the organized mob of hedge fund miscreants who have destroyed hundreds of companies, wiped out the jobs of countless ordinary folks, and brought our financial system to the brink of ruin.

Fleckenstein to Shutter Short-Selling Hedge Fund December 8, 2008, 7:25 am Topics Hedge FundsIndustries Financial Services One of the most public defenders of short-selling is closing down his fund. Bill Fleckenstein, the hedge fund manager, wrote in his Daily Rap column that he was closing down his Fleckenstein Capital fund. Mr. Fleckenstein’s column was reprinted on the Calculated Risk blog. In it, the fund manager writes that he always intended to return to the long side of investing, as opposed to the short-seller’s strategy of betting against stocks. He became a short seller in part because of what he described...

There is no other leveraged commodity market where short sellers increase their positions, materially, as the price rises, and increase them even more when prices are exploding, except gold and silver. The reason traders don’t normally do that is that it exposes short sellers to unlimited liability and risk. Yet, in both March and July 2008, and on countless occasions over the past 21 years, vast numbers of new gold and silver short positions were temporarily opened up, with the position holders seemingly unconcerned about the fact that precious metals had just risen exponentially, and that there was a very...

Two days after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sought bankruptcy protection, an explosive rumor spread that another big Wall Street firm, Morgan Stanley, was on the brink of failure. The chatter on trading desks that Sept. 17 was that Deutsche Bank AG had yanked a $25 billion credit line to the firm That wasn't true, but it helped trigger a cascade of bearish bets against Morgan Stanley. Chief Executive Officer John Mack complained bitterly that profit-hungry traders were sowing panic. Yet he lacked a critical piece of information: Who exactly was behind those damaging trades? Trading records reviewed by The Wall...

Reforms are defusing the danger in the credit-default swap market. AS THE GLOBAL CREDIT CRISIS GRINDS ON WITHOUT seeming relief, worries grow that a mishap in the once obscure credit-default swap market could trigger an even more lethal financial meltdown. ..... It's easy to understand why credit-default swaps, which have been called financial weapons of mass destruction, can engender hysteria. These quasi-insurance policies allow buyers to insure all manner of debt instruments, including corporate and sovereign-nation bonds, various bond indexes and securitizations, against any credit losses from defaults. Demand for them grew explosively during the past decade's credit boom. According...

Stockholders and managers of firms, whose interests lie in higher prices for what they own or manage, miss few opportunities to deride short sellers. As Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal put it, "short selling is a business widely unpopular with everyone who has a stake in seeing stock prices go up."Regulators, whose blunders short sellers frequently reveal by discovering fraud that escaped their attention, respond similarly. That combination of interests helps explain why, at various times, short selling has been banned in many countries, including England, France and Japan.Such views are reinforced by accusations that short sellers hope...

Plunge also due to concerns about Mitsubishi investment; 'you can short Morgan Stanley today' The stock price of Morgan Stanley plunged as much as 25% on Thursday. The drop was attributed to the end of the SEC’s ban on short-selling of financial stock, as well as concern about the status of a planned $9 billion investment by Japan’s top bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. “There is continued unease about the prospects of the Mitsubishi deal going through, and that has also impacted (their) credit default spread,” said Matt McCormick, Portfolio Manager and banking analyst at Bahl & Gaynor Investment Counsel...

Short-selling on U.S. states can pay off By Mary Williams Walsh Friday, October 3, 2008 While regulators were sprinting to save the financial system last month, someone was making a lot of money — by betting against the State of New Jersey. It is not clear who. But trading records suggest that in the panicked days when exotic derivatives were bringing the American International Group to its knees, traders were using the same kinds of derivatives, called credit-default swaps, to profit from New Jersey's rising tide of red ink. Speculators have long been able to short-sell stocks, making money when...

Short-sale ban disrupts trades for hedge funds Short sellers, convertible arbitrage, relative value managers hit hardest By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch Last update: 6:54 p.m. EDT Sept. 26, 2008 Comments: 86 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The short selling ban has boosted shares of many financial companies, but it's roiling the $2 trillion hedge fund industry. That's because managers have been left with limited access to one of their most important investment tools. Short sellers, who specialize in betting against shares, along with convertible arbitrage funds and so-called relative value managers have been among the hardest hit, investors said this week. "If...

How did America get Screwed? Forgive me, this is long, complex, and all of it can be backed up by real events and real numbers. This is where it starts. The SEC rules state rather clearly, and have for some time, that transactions have 3 days to clear (SEC Rule 15c6-1). And that’s all it says. It does not specify what you cannot do, which in this case, is fail to deliver the stock in 3 days. It also does not specify that there would be PUNISHMENT for failing to do so. However, last week the SEC stopped short trades...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- A group of the world's biggest hedge funds are planning to sue the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority for millions of British pounds in losses from the regulator's ban on short-selling, the Sunday Telegraph reported late Saturday, citing unnamed fund managers and lawyers. The FSA announced a ban on the short selling of financial stock Thursday. See full story. The action was followed Friday by a similar move from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Telegraph said hedge funds felt the move unfairly impacted on their trading business. "It's too easy to blame hedge funds," the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Institutional money managers will not have to disclose their short positions to the public immediately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Sunday.

Reuters - Saturday, September 20 US SEC STAFF RECOMMEND EXEMPTION FOR MARKET MAKERS IN DERIVATIVES COVERED BY SHORTING ORDER

Forget short-sellers, Pollyanna creep could be the culprit Richard Siklos: America Inc There is no shortage of villains being accused of igniting the financial brushfire raging across Wall Street: the housing bubble, misguided interest rate policy, poor regulation, numbskull credit ratings agencies, vicious short-sellers and out-of-control personal greed are a few suspects. Maybe they're all to blame. But what if the underlying problem goes far beyond the financial sector? What if the US economy has just been a lot worse than was thought for a long time and now the chickens are coming home to roost? That's the dark thinking...

SHORT SHRIFT: CRITICS BLAST SEC TRADING BAN By KAJA WHITEHOUSE Posted: 3:26 am September 20, 2008 The Securities and Exchange Commission's temporary ban on short-selling took down the good with the bad. Several groups yesterday said they took a beating as a result of the ban, which forbids short-selling of 799 financial stocks. Among those sideswiped by the ban were hedge funds and traders who legally shorted financial stocks, as well as businesses that deal in so-called stock options, that saw trading dry up yesterday as a result of the SEC rule. Prices were so out of control yesterday that...

Hedge funds scramble on shorting ban By Joanna Chung in Washington, Henny Sender in New York and James Mackintosh in London Published: September 19 2008 19:40 | Last updated: September 19 2008 19:40 Hedge funds were forced to scramble to unwind trading positions on Friday after a massive assault by global regulators on short selling aimed at calming the turmoil in global markets. The US Securities and Exchange Commission joined top market watchdogs in the UK, France, Portugal and Ireland to temporarily ban short-selling and other investors from engaging in trades allowing them to profit from falling share prices of...

The damage being done to stocks through short selling, where Wall Street’s most legendary institutions are losing value at alarming rates, could be the work of financial terrorism. Cramer’s been talking to the short sellers he knows, and that’s the theory they’ve been putting forward. His sources said that it’s doubtful that the market’s traditional short sellers are behind the negative action we’ve seen lately. So there is the possibility that someone else has been trying to wreak havoc in the markets rather than just profit from the problems of Goldman Sachs [GS 108.00 -6.50 (-5.68%) ], Morgan Stanley [MS...