If they are "naked" does it really matter if there are shares available to borrow or not? I thought that was the whole thing about naked shorts, that they are shorting without actually borrowing the stock as opposed to regular shorting, in which the stock is borrowed. It might make sense that if stock is tied up it would curtail regular shorting, which is what Sprott successfully did with Timinco saving it from the shorts.

Besides that, with over 170,000,000 shares outstanding (90,000,000 or more in free hands), it would take a lot of collusion to stop the shorts.

Naked shorting drives me absolutely crazy and frustrates me to no end. Why there isn't something done about it baffles me. Perhaps the only reason it is allowed is that it's one of the strongest tools in the PPT's toolkit. After all, who do you think has been the biggest shorter of gold in the last year, naked or otherwise?