SEC Extending Short Selling On Financial Stocks!!

Yes! This is what they are doing!

• SEC Extends Short-Selling Rules
  
  The Securities and Exchange Commission voted to extend the temporary rules it put in place to restrict short-selling of a handful of financial stocks.
  
  The SEC commissioners didn't take additional steps opposed by Wall Street to expand the number of stocks affected by the rules or make them permanent.
  
  The temporary rules were set to expire Tuesday, and the SEC extended the order on the 19 stocks until Aug. 12. It won't be extended beyond then.
  
  .......
  
  So far, the rules have had mixed results. Shares of the 19 financial firms targeted by the SEC soared after the rules were announced, but some, such as Merrill Lynch & Co., Fannie Mae and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., have fallen again, approaching their previous lows. That undercuts the arguments that short-sellers drove the decline of the shares. SEC economists are studying the effects of the emergency action on those stocks.
  
  SEC chairman Christopher Cox said he looks forward to the analysis and said he believes the emergency order "helped to control illegitimate rumor-mongering and other techniques of market manipulation."

Totally incredible!

By placing restriction on short selling on these shares, isn't this a form of manipulation too?

Where is the free market?