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Short Selling: The Free Speech of Wall Street

Let's see if we can do an analogy here.

You walk into McDonald's and order a big Mac, a large fries, and a large vanilla shake. The clerk takes your money and you walk over to the pickup area. In a few minutes the clerk in that area tells you one of three things:

1) Here is your order. Enjoy your meal.

2) Your order was filled by a short seller. They have 13 days to provide it for you. Enjoy your meal.

3) Your order was filled by a naked short seller. They've promised to fill it at some point. Hey, would you like to buy another one. They will be happy to sell you all the meal promises you want. Enjoy your meal.

I think the only ethical short selling would be if the short seller found someone with your order, 'rented' their meal from them, and gave it to you in the expectation they could buy it cheaper than the rent they paid before they had to pay the lender their 'rent' and their meal.

Is it clear now why shorting is fraud? Unless you come to the transaction with shares in your hand?

No??? Then talking about free markets doesn't mask the fact that you're a fraud artist.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to short stocks, just that you shouldn't be allowed to perpetrate fraud to do so.

Finally, if shorting makes markets so efficient and isn't just a mechanism to manipulate them, how did we get in this mess? Why didn't shorting take care of the problem years ago?

In short, give me a reason to believe that you aren't in favor of shorting solely because of your ability to manipulate markets in order to make money. By committing fraud on the counterparty to your trades.