Follow this link to see how David Letterman has rated Dick Cheney’s performance as VP.

Follow this link to the AP story about SEC Chair Mary Schapiro saying new short-selling rules are a priority.

What a difference 100 days make.  It was in 2007, that the Bush appointed SEC chairman helped rescind the 60 year old uptick rule that some want to see re-instated.

The article is careful to point out that short selling is legal.  What I find odd is that there is no mention of enforcing rules about naked short selling.  This practice is supposed to be illegal, but breaking of these rules is widely flaunted.

Schapiro says that there is no “specific empirical evidence” that the absence of the uptick rule fueled abnormal market volatiliy.  However, abnormal market volatility is not the only ill that brings forth calls for enforcement of the rules.

Even if a small number of viable companies were driven out of business by naked short selling attacks, then the law ought to be enforced and the violators punished.  This is a completely different issue from statistical measures of the overall volatility of the market as a whole.