Reblogging Paul Kedrosky's post about blaming short sellers. Politicians and Regulators have a huge incentive to blame "short sellers" because they are trying to deflect attention. They are the ones who screwed up (along with the Management Teams).
Short sellers control relatively little capital compared to the amount of money run on the Long side and the amount of capital a good company could use to buy back it's own shares. You didn't see Warren Buffet's company going up in flames last week did you? No, because he keeps the appropriate amount of cash around to buy his stock when it's artificially low.
Read that article because we have a good old fashioned witch hunt going on and it's complete b.s.