Bill Bennett: “Quoting from the article, it says: The naked [short selling] debate is a product of the revolution that has occurred in…”

“Quoting from the article, it says: The naked [short selling] debate is a product of the revolution that has occurred in stock trading over the past 40 years. Up to the 1960s, trading involved hundreds of messengers crisscrossing lower Manhattan with bags of stock certificates and checks. As trading volume hit 15 million shares daily, the New York Stock Exchange had to close for part of each week to clear the paperwork backlog. As an insert in the quotation, I remember those days. I was trading in the stock market at the time, and having the market shut down to clear the back office paperwork was not an unusual experience. Going back to the article: That led to the creation of DTCC-- Those are initials for the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation-- which is regulated by the SEC. If I might, as an aside, I do not think that last statement is true. I am not sure that the SEC has control over the DTCC. Almost all stock is now kept at the company's central depository and never leaves there. Instead, a stock buyer's brokerage account is electronically credited with a ``securities entitlement.'' This electronic credit can, in turn, be sold to someone else. Replacing paper with electrons has allowed stock-trading volume to rise to billions of shares daily. The cost of buying or selling stock has fallen to less than 3.5 cents a share, a tenth of paper-era costs. But to keep trading moving at this pace, the system can provide cover for naked shorting, critics argue.”