There is plenty of blame to go around for the crisis of confidence haunting U.S. financial markets.

You can fault consumers hell-bent on living beyond their means, the financial institutions that indulged them by extending credit many borrowers didn't deserve, the investors who purchased that debt without understanding the risks, and the inattentive regulators now demanding $700 billion worth of our trust.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox has nominated another group for membership in the growing fraternity of the guilty: rumor-mongering short sellers exacerbating the crisis by driving down the stocks of financial institutions.

A little more than a year after eliminating a rule that curbed short selling, Mr. Cox has implemented an emergency, one-month ban on shorting the stocks of 799 financial institutions.

"Unbridled short selling is contributing to the recent, sudden price declines in the securities of financial institutions unrelated to true price valuation. Financial institutions are particularly vulnerable to this crisis of confidence and panic selling," Mr. Cox said in imposing the restrictions on Sept. 19.

Critics will derive morbid satisfaction from the fact that Mr. Cox's measure couldn't spare one company on his endangered species list: Washington Mutual, the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. It was consumed by JPMorgan Chase, another protected species.

More than a dozen financial institutions doing business in Western Pennsylvania, ranging from Johnstown-based AmeriServ Financial to WVS Financial in West View are temporarily sheltered from the bearish brigands pillaging Wall Street.

They are in good company. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which last week agreed to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs, also is on the list. Goldman is as well.

While no one doubts the power of bearish rumors in times like these, there are plenty students of the market who say there are several ways for bears to get around Mr. Cox's initiative. More importantly, they argue it targets a group that actually helps markets behave more efficiently.

"To argue that the malaise in these financial stocks is due to short sellers ... just does not make sense to me," said Hemang Desai, an accounting professor at Southern Methodist University. "I have not seen any convincing evidence that the decline in these stocks is due to short sellers."

The SEC is targeting investors who believe that a stock is overpriced and will decline once other investors figure that out. Unlike conventional investors, they make money by selling high and buying low. Shorts borrow shares, sell them and repay the loan after the stock has fallen.

Dr. Desai's research indicates that facts -- not rumors -- are behind much short selling. A recent study he co-authored found that short sellers pick up on accounting irregularities a lot quicker than other investors, not to mention auditors. Once they do, they begin shorting the stock months before the company discloses it must restate earnings.

Dr. Desai and his colleagues also discovered that short sellers were more active at companies that derived a sizable portion of their earnings from what accountants refer to as accruals: depreciation, accounts receivable and other subjective judgments companies make in keeping their books. When those judgments are wrong, companies must restate their earnings, an event short sellers anticipate better than other investors.

To argue that investors who provide an early warning for troubled accounting "are the bad guys, it's hard for me to believe that," Dr. Desai said.

Short sellers "are among the leaders in discovering and ferreting out accounting fraud," said Penn State University accounting professor Ed Ketz. "Blaming short sellers for the problem is really one gigantic ploy to divert attention from the people who caused the problem in the first place."

There are plenty of nonfinancial stocks being targeted by shorts that Mr. Cox is not taking under his wing. Data published by Bloomberg last week revealed that retailers, automobile makers and other consumer discretionary stocks collectively were under more pressure from shorts than financials.

The SEC stepped in to shelter financial stocks because they are closer to the eye of the storm.

"At the heart of the crisis is a credit crunch that is about the safety and soundness of the financial system," said Jim Foster, managing director of Greycourt & Co., a Shadyside investment adviser. "Short selling isn't the cause of this problem by any means. The real issue in all of this was excessive leverage."

Mr. Foster believes that short sellers help markets operate more efficiently, providing liquidity and shedding light on problems other investors overlook. Those benefits notwithstanding, Mr. Foster believes that the SEC had to restrict short selling given the potential damage unchecked pessimism could do to financial stocks.

If regulators combine the temporary ban with a long-term solution, "then that's a combined regulatory measure that makes sense," Mr. Foster said.