The SEC moved yesterday to ban the short-selling of 799 financial stocks. I have mixed feelings about this, because I think that the entire market should be disbanded and made illegal. If you examine all the major scandals and failures of big companies like Enron and now AIG, Lehman, et al, their problems can all be traced back to corporate greed fueled by the stock market. It's because the top execs are all worth far more  with their stocks than with their exaggerated salaries, and the mantra is to keep that price going up. How do you do that when your expansion hits a wall? You lobby to relax the rules so you can keep that annual percentage increase rising.

The money quote for me in this article is this:

 But a recent wave of the maneuvers — profiting by selling unowned shares of companies in the anticipation their prices will drop — has been blamed in part for the demise of venerable investment firm Lehman Brothers and other big financial companies.

 How outrageous it is that some unscrupulous traders would want to sell stock when they think the market is about to take a down-turn! What do they think this is, a free market, Capitalism?! What the market wants - what it loves - is that continuous influx of 401k money, no questions asked, and it's there for the long term. But all this "profit-taking" just must be stopped, that's only reserved for Big Oil.