This blog post originally appeared on RealMoney Silver on Feb. 15 at 7:46 a.m. EST.

"Short sellers can push the market down forever." -- Ben Stein on last night's " Kudlow & Company"

Last night, Ben Stein blamed the drop in equities on the short-selling community.

I simply can't let Stein's comment go unanswered. My intention is not to make an ad hominem attack on him but rather to set the record straight.

I have

responded

to Ben Stein's

blame game

over the last eight months with facts, not opinions. In the interim interval, Stein has alternatively blamed the

media

,

Goldman Sachs

(GS) - Get Report

and

its economist,

traders

and, now, short sellers.

I admire analytical acuity, investment rigor and logic of argument, but Stein's recent diatribe is astonishingly naïve, non-rigorous and materially incorrect.

The dedicated short community is small, estimated to be less than $6 billion, which is down dramatically over the last decade's bull market. To put this into perspective, the dedicated short pool is less than 10% the size of Fidelity's Magellan Fund.

As to the short portion of traditional long/short managers (which, according to Stein, is capable of exerting huge downside influence on stocks), it is completely overshadowed by the long portion.

On last night's show, Stein specifically mentioned the

Citadel Investment Group

, founded by the lynx-eyed Kenneth Griffin, as one of the funds capable of committing massive amounts to the short side in an attempt to impact stocks to the downside. I spoke to several people close to Citadel, and their short-selling exposure (and return attribution) is dwarfed by their long-biased investments.

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Maybe it was inevitable that the short sellers would be blamed for the egregious use of debt/leverage in the world's financial system. After all, why blame the entrenched ratings agencies (which, cycle after cycle, fall flat on their analytical faces), Wall Street firms (which exist to sell product) or the buyers of junk credit like the commercial banks (which abandoned their due diligence and common sense) when there is such a convenient scapegoat?

Quite frankly, if more investors and politicians had listened to Gary Shilling's pronouncements on the housing industry, Nouriel Roubini's dire analysis of the world's credit system, Pershing Square's William Ackman's comprehensive admonition of the monoline insurers or, even back in time, Kynikos' Jim Chanos' keen analysis of the shady accounting at Enron, billions of dollars in losses could have been avoided, and public policy solutions to systemic problems would have been encouraged before it was too late.

I am a hard worker and motivated by the opportunity afforded me by our capital system. Professionally, I labor for analytical truth for the sole purpose of delivering superior returns to my investors. If my investment theses are founded on faulty premises, I will perform poorly and my investors will flee.

That being said, I outlined (ad nauseum) my specific concerns on housing two to three years ago, subprime one and a half years ago and the emerging credit problems one year ago with clarity and rigorous analysis well before they entered the court of popular opinion.

My forecasts were largely ignored on my many appearances on "Kudlow & Company," and, even up until the fall of 2007, those concerns were roundly dismissed by some of Larry's Band of Merry Men.

So, Ben:

Blame the market's decline on the

Bossa Nova

.

Or blame the market's decline on the fundamentals.

But don't blame the market's decline on the short sellers.

Doug Kass is the author of The Edge, a blog on RealMoney Silver that features real-time shorting opportunities on the market.

At the time of publication, Kass and/or his funds had no positions in the stocks mentioned, although holdings can change at any time.

Doug Kass is founder and president of Seabreeze Partners Management, Inc., and the general partner and investment manager of Seabreeze Partners Short LP and Seabreeze Partners Short Offshore Fund, Ltd.