INTERESTING DIALOGUE: A reader brings to my attention an interesting dialogue in a Yahoo! message board yesterday and today on the subject of naked short-selling. I've posted it at the bottom of the blog, as a kind of footnote, because Blogspot has no way of attaching files.

This exchange illustrates two points:

One is that the anti-shorting Baloney Blitzkrieg is totally detached from any semblance of rationality. Now that's hardly surprising, given that this "movement" is a fraud. As I detail in my book, it purports to be a "shareholder protection" and "market reform" movement, but in reality serves the interests of stock promoters and pump-and-dump scam artists.

The second is that this exchange is a good demonstration of how investors can and should fight back against not just these creeps, but all the forces on Wall Street that hurt investors. I'd like to see this dialogue move from the Internet to where it really counts, which is the regulatory agencies that have, so far, paid little attention to the concerns of genuine investors -- as opposed to the microcap promoters -- in passing misguided rules on naked shorting.

This dialogue focuses on just one element of the Baloney Brigade's argument, mind you. Just one slice -- and we're talking about a five-foot-long slab of baloney.

UPDATE: I've updated the dialogue to include a good exchange on the "stock counterfeiting" canard.

By the end of the day "O'Brien" threw in the towel, refusing to debate any further on Yahoo and "moved" the discussion to his website -- where he controls the discussion, censors opposing points of view, and posts under multiple identities to congratulate himself on his superb debating skills.