SEC Bans Short Selling Financial Stocks
The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced a ban on short-selling financial stocks over the next two weeks. Short-selling is essentially betting that a stock's price will go down. The SEC hopes the ban will reduce downward pressure on the market, but some think it will backfire. Wall Streeter Barry Ritholtz tells Madeleine Brand that the SEC action reverses 1,000 years of theory about how free markets should work.
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SEC Temporarly Bans Some Short-Selling Sept. 19, 2008