Like it or not, we have to accept the fact that one of the modern day peculiar phenomena is there is plenty of money(billions!) to be made on the money market(stocks and shares, foreign exchange rates, derivatives, warrants, hedge funds, short selling or going long, taking over, merging or breaking up of companies etc.). In other words there is plenty of opportunity for people to make a fortune just by hitting a few buttons on the computer keyboard. Gone are the days when people could only make money trading in tangible commodities. I am a chef running a catering business. I have to live with the fact that I have to work long and stressful hours cooking and dealing with suppliers, customers, health inspectors, taxman etc. in order to make a profit but if I had my time again I would certainly learn how to take advantage of the money market and use other people's money to enrich myself. Nobody minds being called a predator as long as we can laugh all the way to the bank!

Wing, Poole, UK

I think you should only be able to buy or sell shares you own or which are transfered to you and UK taxes paid.
The goverment would have made a lot of tax out of the hedge funds £1billion they had made tax free

Barry, Barnes , London

It beggars belief that any holders loan out stock when the only result is the lowering of the share price.
Short selling should be subject to MUCH more stringent controls.
Apparently it aids "market liquidity" but to my simple mind, it simply and only disadvantages shareholders and should be completely banned.
Naked shorting should be punished by the most extreme penalties, such as being required to reimberse all shareholders for any drop in share price

NicD, London, UK

Northern Rock is basically a well run company serving many people,but suffering from adverse credit conditions.The hedge fund managers should stop shorting the stock and allow the shares to find an honest level.Their greedy no holds barred approach in this case is disgraceful,they are already rich but they dont care about the difficulties they are causing other people,who are going to end up with higher mortgages. if the bank failsThey are giving hedge funds a bad name.

roger allan, cranleigh, england

Mr Richards is clearly attempting to talk up Northern Rock's share price to increase the value of his stake.

HB, London,

There's only one reason why Northern Rock's share price fell from 12 to 2. It's because the company is a irresponsibly run. Stop blaming others for your own mistakes people.

mark , dubai, uae

The huge amount of money pumped into hedge funds in search of returns in a marketplace now so competitive that yield in excess of the cost of borrowed funds
is increasingly difficult to find, could have unexpected consequences.

If profits can be made easily from the collapse of a bank, logically, assisting in that process (perhaps by borrowing heavily from it for an investment with a high risk of inability to pay for itself) might become an attractive strategy.

If some of the increasingly large M&A deals were to be viewed from this risk perspective, it might be apparent that future stability of growth might, in some cases, enhance risk of future debacles with opportunity for profit from the downside.

dr venables preller, Warminster, UK

Yes we are being attacked by foreigners and we have to defend ourselves and our assets.Its not a coincidence that large American banks would not make loans on normal terms when their fund managersstarted shorting.
They should regulate that shares can only trade between falls and rises of 5% per week or 10 % per month. A similar sytem operates on the new york exchange during volatile times. Or regulate that short options etc have to cancelled at cost when BoE or FSA thinks there is an organised attack..

WHudson

willihudso, notts, uk

Mr Richards is absolutely right. Unless the FSA does its job and stamps out this blatent form of market abuse we will have no banking industry left. Institutions also have their part to play. They, after all are supposed to be the guardians of our pension funds and it is highly likely that they will hold banking shares in their portfolios. I cant imagine that the little income they derive from stock lending can make up for the decline in share value such as we have seen in NR and will likely also see in the others if they allow it. If the stock is not available to be borrowed it cannot be used by the hedge funds to destroy a company.

simon davis, tunbridge wells, kent

its alright if he had made money out of this collapse - bit like the pot calling the kettle black, all hedge funds make money like this including his own - so whats the problem - the problem is he has not made a billion like the rest and is now crying wolf

jimmy, warwick, england

Institutions paid to manage investments have no business lending those investments out (for a fee) to others, who are attempting to make money by devaluing that investment.

The stock lenders know what the borrowers want those shares for - to make such loan is a fundamental breach of trust. They should compensate the people whose assets they manage for the consequences of these actions.

Stock lending under these circumstances cannot be defended and should not be allowed as a normal City business practice.

Peter Dunford, Bournemouth, UK

Towards the end of February, Northern Rock's share price started falling below its '100 day moving average', according to the charts - that's seven months ago!

They speculated and got it right.

John, London, UK

This has less to do with price manipulation and more to with certain companies' business plans and related strategies. Nothern Rock, not to put too fine a point on it, was right out there and it is paying the price for the market's reactions to sub-prime and the subsequent liquidity crunch. The timing of this article is great: look for Northern Rock as one of next week's best performing equities- should also be good for the benchmark, particularly in the early part of the week.

Mark, Sliema , Malta

There a lot of interested and false rumours surrounding Northern Rock to put down the share price. I think the real value of the stock is close to 8,0 pounds.

Juan Smith, Madrid, Spain

Did the Predatory hedge funds that made £1 billion windfall from Northern Rock misery, pay any income tax?

arron, chatham,

Northern Rock is not a bank. It borrows short term cheap money to fund long term mortgages and obviously that is a not a sensible business model. Where are the regulators? Where are the old rules that made sense?

John Albert , Lisbon, Portugal

I wish I knew how to "short"... Making money at the expense of a financial institution strikes me as being an entirely legitimate activity. Anything to get our own back !!

Scamp, Aberdeenshire,

Financial institution fuelled by cheap credit and holding opaque and often illiquid investments says people should not be able to short sell shares in financial institutions fuelled by cheap credit and holding opaque and often illiquid investments.

Or am I being silly?

I am also impressed at the amount of due dilligence that Mr Richards' company has managed to perform on a such a dynamic situation before investing his £50mn of (mainly borrowed) money.

Having already been found to be off-side and losing money. He first tries to 'talk his book' by making statements on bank's solvency followed by attempting to try and get FSA to initiate a short squeeze.

Isn't this market manipulation?

Indio, London, UK

Northern Rock has indeed seen an orgy of shorting but at least this has been abundantly clear for much of 2007, which should have alerted smaller investors to risks within its strategy. When a company becomes such a target for professional shorters, it is generally a very good warning sign.

Edmond Jackson, London,

Did anyone see Philip Richards throwing a hissy fit when the market was sloshing with cheap credit?

They also could be sued for keeping information from the stock exchange about their own problems. a case is being drawn up by shareholders.

Mark, Newcatle, Engalnd

Two postings - both from America - so that makes them holy writ does it?

Philip Richards is right to say what he did. Woe betide the next victim because having smelled blood in the profits that have been made this time, the next victim will be treated the same.

Janet Wood, Kirkby Stephen, England

Despite Mr Richards' ranting, the shorts were right. Shorts can't collapse a company. Only a company's own actions can do that.

The only thing short selling can do is to reduce the price of a company's shares, which makes a basically sound company a bargain for Mr Richards.

And is Northern Rock basically sound? Well, I think that is supposed to be Mr Richards' area of expertise, isn't it?

jon livesey, Sunnyvale, CA/US

This absolutely confirms that need identified by Lyndon H. Larouche for the erection of a "firewall of Protection," by sovereign nation states based on the Constitutinal principle of the "General Welfare" principle. Maybe England can come out of this crisis by adopting an American Constitutional principle, wouldn't that be highly ironical!!!!

Gerald Pechenuk, Chicago, Illinois/USA