Naked Shorts' Long Shelf Life

What if they passed a law and no one followed it?

Not one of those bizarre, outdated laws you hear about -- like in Maine, where people are required to bring shotguns to church -- but a brand new law with an entirely sensible goal, like keeping people from selling equities that don't exist.

Since January, Regulation SHO has required self-regulatory organizations like the NYSE or the NASD to keep a "threshold list" of securities that have a sizable failure-to-deliver position. That is, they must disclose daily the stocks that someone sold without either owning them or borrowing them. ...