The longs must be smart enough (Not the WSB longs), the other Hedge Funds on the other side must be smart to end this before the maximum pain point of short hedge funds is reached, because if the short hedge funds go under, the longs will no longer be able to collect their winnings & simply everyone loses.
There are no shares to borrow because the hedge funds probably, cornered most of it already to close their positions once, GME and AMC hit certain price levels on the way down. You think the brokers care about the retail traders getting any shares when their best customers are the hedge funds? That is not even counting the put options they have on GME and AMC at various price levels. Stock options trade independently, of stocks.
Funnily enough, the CEO. They should do either a secondary offering or take a huge loan out as AMC did and use the current stock price as collateral. otherwise the whole stock price increase didn't do shit for the company. But if they get a 1 billion bucks loan/stock sale, they could use the money for restructuring or whatever they think needs to be done for the survival. Otherwise it is going to do the way of Radio Shack, the dodo, pets.com.
If hedge funds closed their position, it would be returned to the original owner. It could be available for lending again. But it's not, the number of shares available for lending decreased. Seems like an asset is a high demand or for any reason owners do not want to lend it anymore, even with the 30% interest ratio. I don't think that brokers care about retail traders as their best customers are hedge funds. Anyway, many parties (brokers, hedge funds) want this saga to finish, but it seems it's not finished yet...