Resident Fellow Alex J. Pollock

While one may argue about the specific levels triggering disclosure, the Financial Services Authority certainly has an essential principle right: that concentrated short, as well as long, positions should be disclosed to the market ("Funds forced to reveal bets on UK bank woes", June 24).

The US needs to catch up and apply the same principle. You quote Darren Fox's complaint about the FSA requirement: "What you have now got is an inequality between the long and short sides." But look at the inequality under US rules: concentrated short positions are not required to be disclosed at all, while long positions of course are.

The disclosure requirements should be applied equally to both. This seemingly obvious idea has been proposed in the past but never acted on in the US. A good time to implement it would be now.

Alex J. Pollock is a resident fellow at AEI.