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For those who doubt the PPT exists

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wayneL

wayneL

VIVA LA LIBERTAD, CARAJO!
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The semi mythical Plunge Protection Team it has been argued by some, doesn't exist.

Well it does. Its real name is the President's Working Group on Financial Markets (Google it) and it has been convened in the Oval Office (thought to be the first time it's ever been convened there) to discuss the current situation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/ma...008/01/07/ccview107.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

Also see http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en...orking+Group+on+Financial+Markets&btnG=Search

Doubting Thomas's should read it and weep (as should us bears :rolleyes:)
 
Re: For those who doubt the PPT exists.

Damn i wish America could crash without affecting the rest of the world, that would be sweet justice :D

The longer they fight it the worse it will get. And how dodgy is it that the head of the Fed is on the PPT, talk about creating rather than facilitating a market.

Sorry Wayne but im moving towards your camp, which i know you dont like. :p: But more on a greed and fear basis rather than a 'fundamental' basis, if that makes any sense
 
Even the PPT can't fight the markets. They can't clean up the credit derivative mess, and they can't stop gold. All they do us delay, and make the ultimate moves bigger and harder.
 
Re: For those who doubt the PPT exists.

prawn_86 said:
Damn i wish America could crash without affecting the rest of the world, that would be sweet justice :D

The longer they fight it the worse it will get. And how dodgy is it that the head of the Fed is on the PPT, talk about creating rather than facilitating a market.

Sorry Wayne but im moving towards your camp, which i know you dont like. :p: But more on a greed and fear basis rather than a 'fundamental' basis, if that makes any sense
Click to expand...

LOL didnt the Fed create the PPT ??
 
Hows this for a startling little fact from that article .....


Sovereign wealth funds stand ready to rescue banks, as they have already rescued Citigroup and UBS. But as Moody's pointed out this week, the estimated $2,500bn in lost wealth from the US house price crash is more than the entire net worth of all the sovereign wealth funds in the world.
Click to expand...


;)
 
I really enjoy Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's articles. You get the feeling when you read them that he is one of the few that actually knows...rather than simply riding with the pack.
 
If the PPT exists, then they are probably in a bit of troubles themselves.

PPT needs cash to prop the market up... since this fallout is based around credit (cash)... where will the PPT get the funds to keep things aloft?

PPT, if it exists, will unlikely to save anyone during this corrective phase...
 
Sovereign wealth funds stand ready to rescue banks, as they have already rescued Citigroup and UBS. But as Moody's pointed out this week, the estimated $2,500bn in lost wealth from the US house price crash is more than the entire net worth of all the sovereign wealth funds in the world.
Click to expand...

How is that even possible? :confused:
 
If such a thing as a plunge protection team does exist for the US stockmarkets and i doubt it then IMO its a recipe for disaster, if they start buying and the market even gets a sniff of such buying , they will think somethings up and start dumping stock.

Complete b#ll@cks, but then again this is America we are talking about :confused: and in particular a certain Mr Bush :banghead:
 
wayneL said:
Pager,

Read the links in the OP. It is all out in the open now.
Click to expand...

Yeah, what has struck me as especially odd, is these successive bullet like trajectory trends to the upside. Gun barrell straight without dips. From my observations, you just don't ever get them normally on the indices (so I don't touch them with a barge pole). Yet, we seem to have had a couple of these on the US indices each day for the last week. The most striking one, right before whatever announcement tanked the market Tuesday night. Make of that what you will... :2twocents
 
Thanks for this info and links wayneL, very valuable.

Just a few comments, for what they are worth (I wouldn’t place the bid higher than 2c).

Central Bank intervention in currency markets is a fact of life. Sure, the markets are left alone much of the time, lassiez-faire and all that, but from time-to-time perceptions arise within treasuries and CBs that a currency or currencies may be priced at a level far-removed from what seems “reasonable”, based on the “fundamentals”, and intervention in one form or another is the result. There are a number of different forms of intervention, from sitting on the bid or offer, aggressively giving bids or paying offers to quickly chase price from a level, to “jawboning” (making comments or speeches designed to shift the price of the currency).

The Reserve Bank of Australia has a code for such intervention, they call it “smoothing and testing”. When the RBA is engaged in a bit of smoothing and testing of the AUD it is wise not to stand on the other side (at least in the short-term).

So, for me, it is no great leap to accept that efforts at intervention occur in other markets. A nice example of “jawboning” are Greenspan’s words of many years ago now about “irrational exuberance”, which caused a rapid sell-off in global markets. A man in his position does not say such words off-the-cuff. Now, his comments did not have a lasting impact, the markets recovered quickly to become even more irrational over the next 5 years. This is important, too, and was explicitly referred to in that article you have linked in The Telegraph:

“Not even a Bush New Deal can hold back the post-bubble tide that is drawing in across the globe. What it can do is buy time.”

The existence, and activities, of a “plunge protection team” is NOT a reason to go out and buy with your ears pinned back, not at all. It is there to slow any fall, to “buy time”. If the PPT was a unit of the RBA they would describe themselves as being engaged in a bit of “smoothing and testing”.

Question: where did the phrase “Plunge Protection Team” come from? That name in itself is instructive. It is not the “Decline Protection Team” – they are not trying to halt falls, just stop them turning into a plunge.

And a second question: how does one become a fly on the wall in such meetings...
 
chops_a_must said:
Yeah, what has struck me as especially odd, is these successive bullet like trajectory trends to the upside. Gun barrell straight without dips. From my observations, you just don't ever get them normally on the indices (so I don't touch them with a barge pole). Yet, we seem to have had a couple of these on the US indices each day for the last week. The most striking one, right before whatever announcement tanked the market Tuesday night. Make of that what you will... :2twocents
Click to expand...

One of these bullet-like surges to the upside on Tuesday was right after the release of home sales data showing a lower-than-expected result...go figure...BUT, in the context of this thread that move is very telling indeed.
 
Timmy said:
And a second question: how does one become a fly on the wall in such meetings...
Click to expand...

I dare say you would need an Ivy League education and a hell of a lot of powerful connections.

I suggest you start working on a legacy so the kids can become those flies :D
 
wayneL said:
Pager,

Read the links in the OP. It is all out in the open now.
Click to expand...


I can understand there may be a body/commitee who advices on this type of thing but find it hard to believe there are actually involved in buying in the US stockmarkets to try and prop it up, but as i said above anything is possible with the Bush administration :(

If they are doing so, IMO they are playing a very dangerous game, that could lose the already heavily in debt US Govt $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and cause a financial crisis the likes the world has never seen.
 
They don't need to go in buying. Just send one of the PPT members out
and promise some rate cuts is all that's needed.
 
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