As ECU struggles, I notice that many juniors, including most of mine, continue to sell off to levels I never dreamed of. I suspect that many of them, not any of mine I hope, will be forced out of business along the way being unable to raise funds to operate not only because of low stock price and market conditions but because of such an untenably huge stock dilution which would result from such a low stock price. Shorts must love it.

Here in the states, according to the NYTimes, "if the stock sold short becomes worthless (due for example to the bankruptcy of the company), the short seller never has to buy back the shares sold short." (That's not the first time I've seen that.) So the notion that "whoever sells what isn't hissin must buy it back or go to prison" surely doesn't hold here.

This little provision surely can add a lot to potential profits, since one wouldn't have to suffer the expense of buying shares back. No doubt this is certainly not lost on those US short sellers who drive stock prices down in the hopes of putting a company out of business. Sorta like free money.

There are also those who believe that "in this event the short seller never has to ''officially'' take a profit, and ''never has to pay taxes.'' Not true according to the Times. "The short seller will have windfall gain equal to the selling price of the stock sold short..."

Now, isn't that nice to know. The upstanding IRS allows people to sell stock they don't own, drive the price down and the company out of business and never have to spend a penny buying anything back. So long as the IRS gets their cut, nothing wrong with that it seems. Nothing personal. Just business. What a country!