Whenever there is a financial setback, whether a one-day plunge in the stock price of an odd internet company or the global market sell-off after September 11, there is always the cry: The shorts are somehow to blame.

The collapse of Bear Stearns is the latest round in this knee-jerk game.

Bloomberg News reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether hedge funds or other investors spread false rumors about Bear while selling its sales short or betting that its stock price would fall. The New York Stock Exchange is also involved in the inquiry, Bloomberg says.

Is this really necessary? For nearly a year it has been no secret that Bear was vulnerable to the collapse of the subprime market because of its relatively small size, its huge leverage, and its exposure to mortgages. In the October issue of Condè Nast Portfolio, Jesse Eisinger said that Bear might not survive.

Sure, the rumors about Bear grew significantly louder last week. But it is hardly underhanded when some were simply trying to profit on what was becoming increasingly obvious in the market: Bear was doing next to nothing to protect itself in the credit crunch even as others.

Last year, other Wall Street banks scrambled to raise huge amounts of new capital and to reduce leverage. They ousted top executives. They retrenched.

And Bear? An alliance with Citic Securities of China that came to nothing.

As the whisper campaign grew louder last week, Bear executives were denying there were any liquidity concerns.  Alan Schwartz, its chief executive, said in a statement on March 10 that "Bear Stearns' balance sheet, liquidity, and capital remain strong."

For banks, however, denials are never enough, Edward Hadas contended on Breakingviews.com last week. "Banks, especially weak ones, need to make themselves rumor-proof," he said.

That's what Lehman Brothers has successfully done—in 1998 and again today. Bear did not, and has no one to blame but itself.

Barry Ritholtz on the Big Picture blog says: Bear's "thinly traded mortgage-based paper got marked lower and lower because no one else wanted them. That is what caused the run on the bank, and not any whisper campaign."

The run came with breathtaking speed. On Tuesday, March 11, Bear's liquidity pool fell to $11.5 billion from $18.2 billion, according to the S.E.C.

By Thursday evening, that level had shrunk to just $2 billion, and the firm was contemplating filing for bankruptcy on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

That was the bleak forecast faced by Bear before the rescue by J.P. Morgan Chase and the Federal Reserve.

It is something to keep in mind during this silly season of searching for villains, not to mention the wishful thinking that there is an alternative to the J.P. Morgan takeover.

Bear is headed for liquidation, whether through J.P. Morgan or through a bankruptcy court. The only question, as Felix Salmon has put it, is whether shareholders want $2 or $0 per share. (With shares of J.P. Morgan continuing to rise, its all-stock offer will soon be worth $3 per share.)

Does no one remember Drexel Burnham Lambert?