Adventures in Shortdom

Yes, those terrible, terrible short-sellers who do nothing but ruin the financial markets with their bottom-feeding. You know, short-sellers like the guys who exposed the Enron scam:

In January 2001, we began contacting a number of analysts at various Wall Street firms with whom we did business and invited them to our offices to discuss Enron. Over the next few months a number of them accepted our invitation and met with us to discuss Enron and its valuation. We were struck by how many of them conceded that there was no way to analyze Enron, but that investing in Enron was instead a "trust me" story. One analyst, while admitting that Enron was a "black box" regarding profits, said that, as long as Enron delivered, who was he to argue! It was clear to us that most of these analysts were hopelessly conflicted over the investment banking and advisory fees that Enron was paying to their firms. We took their "buy" recommendations, both current and future, with a very large grain of salt!

Holding firms accountable via the markets. Can't have any of that now, can we. No worries though, the quick and nimble monolith of governmentalism will certainly save the day.