yeah go on blame short selling, page-158

"Naked shorts only exacerbate the down times and provide excess volatility, even though they don't cause the business cycles in themselves."

Actually, potentially they can contribute (even if not be the cause) if companies are stupid enough to have share price or market cap triggers in their debt covenants. Remeber Babcock and Brown's problems were triggered by the share price being driven down so far that it caused a default on some of their loans, and therefore necessitated a renegotiation of the debts. In turn the problems of BNB then created a lack of confidence in other companies, especially the likes of MQG.

I don't know enough about Babcock and Brown to know whether they would have been gone anyway, or whether there would have been scope for a more orderly wind down if the parasites (oops I mean short sellers) hadn't had the ability to create a major imbalance in the supply/demand equation by artificially inflating the number of shares for sale through selling shares that don't exist.