plunge protection team

I found this article today and it makes perfect sense if you want are a conspiracy theorist. Of course he does make some good points and it could very well be true. I personally can't say anything myself because I don't know about the market to make and educated decision based on what the article and other people I have heard said. But it is certainly something to look at and think long and hard about to see if it makes sense to you, and if it is true then what needs to happen.

A number of remarkable things transpired Thursday, as we mentioned in an earlier post. The S&P 500 fell to a five-year low. Of course, we’ve done that before - as recently as last month - so it’s not that remarkable. We managed to piroutte nearly 900 points on the Dow industrial average, measuring the days lows to the day’s highs. Of course, we had a 900-point one-day gain in a trading session last month. So not that remarkable. We apparently successfully tested the lows for the cycle established in last month’s selloff. But we retest lows in about 90% of bear-market cycles. So - again - interesting, but not remarkable.

What’s remarkable is that we did all that without conspiracy theorists coming out of the woodwork to yap about the doings of the legendary Plunge Protection Team. You know the infamous PPT, don’t you? Formally, the Working Group on Financial Markets, or some such falderal. Supposed to recommend legislative and private-sector solutions for remedying distress in the financial markets. But really - as every good CT (conspiracy theorist) knows - actually steps up to buy the market at precipitous times. Times like Thursday. Market in distress? Check. Remedying said distress? Check. Short-term solution that didn’t do much more than salve some anxieties for a single session? Double check.

Yup, sounds like the work of the PPT.

Former Fed official Robert Heller cinched the PPT’s place in history when he effectively suggested that the equities market wasn’t too big for the federal government to tame. You go into the futures market, you buy the whole market, you restore some confidence. That was essentially Heller’s proviso. And, shoot, lately, having nationalized the banking business, the commercial paper market, the money market, a slug of insurance and the biggest chunk of the mortgage market, the government’s proven its willingness to take decisive action in the face of calamity. Why should Thursday have been any different? Why should the equities market be any different than the credit market?

And yet the PPT CT’s - by all indications - quiet as a schoolboy sneaking into class after the bell rang for first period. Maybe it’s just that the PPT leadership council - the Treasury Secretary, Fed chair, SEC chair and CFTC chair - have been so visible the last few days, they couldn’t have conducted the clandestine meeting (reportedly held at Goldman Sachs, which is said to help implement the nefarious schemes … and - hey, come to think of it - isn’t the Treasury secretary a Goldman alum?) required to confirm the plan. (I’d like to think they’ve got those nifty matching keys that Gene Hackman and Denzel fought over in ”Crimson Tide” that were required to launch the missiles.)

Or maybe the PPT simply silenced the CTs.

MORE THINGS GO WRONG FOR I-PAPER

As if there wasn’t enough going awry at International Paper (IP), here come new signs that the global diversification plan it put in place last year has come back to bite them. Back in October 2007, when the stock was trading at $35 a share - about three times where it’s trading currently - I-Paper lined up a Russian partner, LLim, to expand its global footprint. The U.S. company paid $620 million for the 50% stake in the Russian concern, and pledged another $750 million to help it expand its operations.

Unfortunately for LLim, as well as other Russian paper producers, Russia’s Prime Minister Putin has postponed (or canceled) a duty on wood exports from the country for at least the next nine to 12 months. As a result, LLim said it expected to see the delay hurt its business, with volume seen dropped 40%. Its EBITDA figures to come in at about one-third of previous forecasts.

The only good news for I-Paper in all this is that, as a result of the business slowdown, there isn’t much sense in executing on the expansion plan. So at least that drag on its cash flow figures to go away. Still, shares down another 5% Frida

http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2008/11/14/justice-league-or-plunge-protection-team/