Not everything in this world is a conspiracy. Especially with garbage stocks - they go down for other reasons than people and institutions conspiring against the shareholders. People need to look in the mirror for the source of the problem - they buy bad stocks.
The SEC does not oversee the day to day operations of FINRA or the Exchanges. They are more than capable of doing fine by themselves. That includes market surveillance, which was unchanged during the government shutdown.
The reason the market declined during that period was not because of some ridiculous short selling conspiracy. It was because the shutdown had a significant negative effect on the economy which has a significant effect on company's revenues and earnings, which caused the stock prices to fall. Pretty simple.
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