MISSING WORD: The Securities and Exchange Commission has weighed in with an amicus brief that further demolishes the insane arguments raised by the naked shorting conspiracy nuts. You can download a copy here.

The brief was filed in one of the several ridiculous suits that have been brought against the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp., which processes trades and is considered the Darth Vader of naked shorting by the flat-earth theorists. This suit was lodged by an innocent little company whose sole problem is not bad sales or bad earnings but naked short-sellers!

The poor dears generously shared the SEC brief with the anti-shorting website called "Sanity Check" (as in "check your sanity before entering.") The brief "raises a host of troubling questions," says the bravely pseudonymous "Bob O'Brien," who runs the site and hides behind a phony name in the best boiler-room tradition.

Yes, troubling questions. One of them is, "Does anyone actually believe these con men?"

Anyway, the Baloney Brigade is upset about the brief, with one "Sanity Check" "blogger" saying the SEC violated some "ethical" rule by daring to side with the DTCC.

Oh, the missing word in the brief: baloney. Why do legal briefs have to beat around the bush? Can't they just simply say, "This is baloney"? Is that against a legal rule or something?

P.S. Yes, as a commenter pointed out, writing about the naked shorting conspiracy nuts is indeed like writing about astrology or palmisty. However, astrologers and palm-readers don't influence regulatory policy, as the naked-shorting lobby has done.