Don't Blame the Shorts: Why Short Sellers Are Always Blamed for Market Crashes and How History Is Repeating Itself

Listed in bloombergs TOP 50 BUSINESS BOOKS OF 2010 and shortlisted for spears FINANCIAL HISTORY OF THE YEAR AWARD

robert sloan works in the hedge-fund industry. as he shows in this readable polemic, dislike of shorting has a long history. . . . someone has to point out when the emperor has no clothes. the shorts were among the biggest skeptics of the subprime-mortgage boom and of the banks that financed it. and when they were proved right, their activities were banned. gratitude, huh?
The Economist

if robert sloan manages to go the distance in Dont Blame the Shorts, it is because his book is as much about historical tensions between Washington and Wall Street as the practice of short selling. He puts it all in the context of the opposing views of the federalist Alexander Hamilton, who was pro-speculation, and Jeffersonian republicans, who were pro-agriculture and convinced that making money from money was nonsense. . . . His book is a useful corrective to the view of short selling as unpatriotic or uniquely antisocial . . . it is a brave act to take on anti-finance populists at this time.
Financial Times

in this knowing book about the business of short-selling stocks, financier robert sloan gives a modern day lesson on why we shouldnt shoot the messenger. . . rather than blast short sellers, we should praise them for exposing management methane. . . .the story may be old, but sloans easy and informative writing makes for a thoroughly worthwhile update.
Barrons

bob sloan, a wall street veteran, cites the confrontation in his new book, Dont Blame the Shorts, as evidence that blind fury from politicians and unrepentant shrugs from bankers are far from new. As the title suggests, Sloans main thrust is to defend the practice of short-selling. . . . Today, Sloan says, the very same battle of ideas is being played out in America . . . this is just the latest bitter expression of the constant tension between a moneyed east coast financial elite, and the manufacturers, mom-and-pop shops and the scrappy entrepreneurs who bitterly resent the power of Wall Streetbut dont want the cash taps to be turned off.
The Observer

Timely, concise, accessible to the lay reader and with a decorously polemical edge, it is both revealing and entertaining. No matter what the politicians do, the markets will find a way to challenge the finaglers and the optimists who sustain them. Like the poor, the shorts will always be with us.
Spears

post-crisis reading . . . best books on the financial crisis and its aftermath. . . . while other authors point accusing fingers, in his book, Dont Blame the Shorts, Robert Sloan leaps to the defense of short sellers who, as he describes, have been long scapegoated for market crashes and are once again in the wake of the recent crisis. The Dutch East India C...