The NYT's Joe Nocera writes about "the anguish of being an analyst." The problem is that it's hard for analysts to get paid in an efficient market, where the value of information is dissipated as soon as it's used. This means, among other things, that analysts are more likely to get paid for buy recommendations than for sells. So what to do?

As discussed here, we should avoid regulation that reduces the few incentives that exist to produce valuable securities market information. Don't restrict use of nonpublic information in an elusive quest for "fairness." Get rid of Regulation FD. And if we're concerned that there's too little incentive to produce negative information, then we shouldn't attack the shorts.