Quote of the Day
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The SEC’s ban on short selling is a perfect illustration of the dangers of regulators taking a cartoon view of the world, where evil villains are responsible for all the chaos in fair Gotham. In their monomaniacal focus on the manipulative potential of short selling, Cox and his his minions have completely overlooked its benefits, and implemented policies that have inflicted substantial collateral damage on other portions of the financial market, including parts of the market that could facilitate fixing problems at the institutions allegedly protected by the regulations–banks.
This is particularly tragic given that the rationale for the policy is based on anecdote–to put it as charitably as possible. Remember what George Stigler said: The plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”
~Streetwise Professor
