No sir, they can buy back their air shares for cash and remove them from their ledger to get their account straight, before they are told to do so by the regulators. :-)
Might want to check out this site. Good article on the MMs practice that appears to be in effect here. It also says that the practice of acquiring so called air shares have to end in March. Could be an interesting week.
The air shares are the shares they have to cover. They are the short shares that don't exist, that they created out of thin air to sell so they have something to sell to buyers. Sooner or later they will have to buy real shares to balance their books for these fake/air shares that they created by shorting. The only way they can buy those real shares is from us, and we're not selling until the price is WAY higher than it is now.