Europe's new dress code

摘要

EJROPEAN politicians may not agree on much about the debt crisis but they are fairly united in their dislike of speculators. In August Belgium, France, Italy and Spain introduced bans to prevent the short-selling of financial stocks. The rules in France and Italy are likely to stay in place until November nth; those in Belgium and Spain are indefinite. This week the European Union also agreed to ban "naked" shorting of shares (when stocks have not been borrowed before they are sold) and naked purchases of sovereign credit-default swaps (cdss), whereby investors buy protection without owning the underlying bonds. The ban starts in November 2012.