I could be wrong, but I thought that the ban on naked shorting was only intermittently enforced and that it was, at most, a violation of SEC regulations. I do recall complaints on Zero Hedge that there seemed to be an orchestrated short squeeze which had been aided by the fact that many of the pension funds have, with good reason, begun to wonder about the security of shares they had leased out to short sellers and had begun to recall those shares. Discouragement of short selling, by whatever means, would certainly be helpful to driving up equity asset prices, especially with the low volumes that have characterized this rally since March '09.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."