@Gregory's Motivatr

"The abuse of “bidding up the market” by speculation based on broker’s loans is not often recognized by the public, though its evil results ought to be reasonably evident to any one who remembers 1929. Yet it is plainly impossible to abolish “buying on margin” unless by reducing all transactions to a basis of cash purchases — which would preclude an immense part of legitimate investment business. This being true, it ought to be evident that prohibition of “short sales” would expose the market to the extreme and dangerous maladjustment which so one-sided a proviso would inevitably create. Our “rashes” would be vastly more ruinous; our recoveries with the necessary “bear repurchases” eliminated, far less emphatic. The market would have become a trap for the unwary, with no automatic safeguard."