Jackroch,
First of all, I'd like to compliment you for your outstanding contributions to this board. I have just been lurking for a while, and I must say I am rather impressed with your posts.
I'd also like to point out that I believe the following to be correct, but I am not a securities lawyer, so it is entirely possible that my interpretatin is not 100% accurate.
I don't believe that your statement that anyone that is short on this stock now has 13 days to cover. I believe that the FINRA regulation covers "failures to deliver", which are related to some short sales, but not all.
It is typically a market maker (MM) that would be guilty of a "failure to deliver". In order to provide liquidity to the market, the MM's are allowed to fill buy orders even if they do not actually have the shares to sell. So, if you put in a buy order and a MM fills this order but did not actually have these shares, then the MM has performed a legal "naked short sale", and has delivered phantom shares to your brokerage account. The MM is then supposed to deliver real shares to your account by the closing date (third market day after the transaction). If they do not do so, this is a "failure to deliver", and I believe that this is what the new regulation addresses (that real shares must be delivered within 13 days).
On the other hand, for a regular (not naked) short sale (where actual shares are bowwored for the short sale transaction), then I don't believe that there is any 13 day clock to cover.
Regarding your comment about the morals of shorting: The real difference between someone that goes long on a stock and someone that goes short is that the long feels that the stock is undervalued at the current price and the short feels that the stock is overvalued at the current price. I don't believe that one position is morallly superior to the other. What I do think is immoral is spreading misinformation in an attempt to manipulate the stock price, but neither pumpers (longs) or shorts have a monopoly on this practice.
