Front Running A Systemic Market Crash: PPT Style

Ever notice how official speeches to prop up the US capital markets are timed right before a massive sell off? How about those last hour rallies when the market looks really bad? Let’s explore just what the Plunge Protection Team can do. For starters, the White House came out with the trumpets to kick off the open of 2008. The Dow then peeled off 600 points making it the worst January open the stock market has ever seen–ever. Not bad for a “strong and solid” market! On Jan. 4th President Bush said the following:

President Meets with Working Group on Financial Markets

Fact Sheet: December 2007 Marks Record 52nd Consecutive Month of Job Growth

“I had quite a fascinating and productive meeting with the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, chaired by Secretary Paulson. I want to thank the members for working diligently to monitor our capital market system, our financial system. And while there is some uncertainty, the report is, is that the financial markets are strong and solid. And I want to thank you for being diligent. This economy of ours is on a solid foundation…”

What is the Working Group on Financial Markets?

Executive Order 12631 — Working Group on Financial Markets

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish a Working Group on Financial Markets, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment. (a) There is hereby established a Working Group on Financial Markets (Working Group). The Working Group shall be composed of:

(1) the Secretary of the Treasury, or his designee;

(2) the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, or his designee;

(3) the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or his designee; and

(4) the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or her designee.

(b) The Secretary of the Treasury, or his designee, shall be the Chairman of the Working Group.

Sec. 2. Purposes and Functions. (a) Recognizing the goals of enhancing the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of our Nation’s financial markets and maintaining investor confidence, the Working Group shall identify and consider:

(1) the major issues raised by the numerous studies on the events in the financial markets surrounding October 19, 1987, and any of those recommendations that have the potential to achieve the goals noted above; and

(2) the actions, including governmental actions under existing laws and regulations (such as policy coordination and contingency planning), that are appropriate to carry out these recommendations.

(b) The Working Group shall consult, as appropriate, with representatives of the various exchanges, clearinghouses, self-regulatory bodies, and with major market participants to determine private sector solutions wherever possible.

(c) The Working Group shall report to the President initially within 60 days (and periodically thereafter) on its progress and, if appropriate, its views on any recommended legislative changes.

Sec. 3. Administration. (a) The heads of Executive departments, agencies, and independent instrumentalities shall, to the extent permitted by law, provide the Working Group such information as it may require for the purpose of carrying out this Order.

(b) Members of the Working Group shall serve without additional compensation for their work on the Working Group.

(c) To the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of funds therefor, the Department of the Treasury shall provide the Working Group with such administrative and support services as may be necessary for the performance of its functions.

Ronald Reagan
The White House,
March 18, 1988.
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 11:23 a.m., March 21, 1988]

Treasury’s War Room

These quiet meetings of the Working Group are the financial world’s equivalent of the war room. The officials gather regularly to discuss options and review crisis scenarios because they know that the government’s reaction to a crumbling stock market would have a critical impact on investor confidence around the world. (Fromsom)

In fact, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the U.K. Telegraph notes, Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson has called for the PPT to meet with greater frequency and set up “a command centre at the US Treasury that will track global markets and serve as an operations base in the next crisis. The top brass will meet every six weeks, combining the heads of Treasury, Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and key exchanges.”

“The government has a real role to play to make a 1987-style sudden market break less likely. That is an issue we all spent a lot of time thinking about and planning for,” said a former government official who attended Working Group meetings. “You go through lots of fire drills and scenarios. You make sure you have thought ahead of time of what kind of information you will need and what you have the legal authority to do.”

In the event of a financial crisis, each federal agency with a seat at the table of the Working Group has a confidential plan. At the SEC, for example, the plan is called the “red book” because of the color of its cover. It is officially known as the Executive Directory for Market Contingencies. The major U.S. stock markets have copies of the commission’s plan as well as the CFTC’s.

“We all have everybody’s home and weekend numbers,” said a former Working Group staff member.

The Working Group’s main goal, officials say, would be to keep the markets operating in the event of a sudden, stomach-churning plunge in stock prices — and to prevent a panicky run on banks, brokerage firms and mutual funds. Officials worry that if investors all tried to head for the exit at the same time, there wouldn’t be enough room — or in financial terms, liquidity — for them all to get through. In that event, the smoothly running global financial machine would begin to lock up.

This sort of liquidity crisis could imperil even healthy financial institutions that are temporarily short of cash or tradable assets such as U.S. Treasury securities. (Fromsom)

[This might explain the often seen cash infusion, or massive buying of index futures, after 2:30pm.]

According to John Crudele of the New York Post, the Plunge Protection Team’s (PPT) modus operandi was revealed by a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, Robert Heller. Heller said that disasters could be mitigated by “buying market averages in the futures market, thus stabilizing the market as a whole.”

Some Say the PPT Doesn’t Exist (from John Mauldin)

Every time the market drops and then “mysteriously” rallies, knowing individuals look at each other and nod, seeing the handiwork of the PPT.

Let’s say it straight out. The plunge protection team does not exist. It is an urban myth. Let me step by step prove it does not exist, and see if we can learn something in the process.

Art Cashin, of CNBC fame, and one of the real veterans of the markets, who has seen it all, wrote me the following very clear thoughts:

Trading desks do arbitrage program trading for a fraction of a percent on a trade. Any attempt by the Fed to manipulate the market would just make a lot of money for hedge funds and trading desks.

The amounts of money required to attempt such a manipulation would be huge. We are talking tens of billions of dollars if there was a true collapse going on. The collective size of the trading community in the world (hedge funds and “prop” desks – a prop desk is a proprietary desk for an investment bank or broker-dealer) is in the multiple hundreds of billions. It would require the willingness to lose billions of dollars every time you took the plunge, so to speak.

If the Fed or Treasury or some slush fund did buy stocks, it would inject liquidity or more total money into the financial system or money supply. Since the Fed openly manipulates the money supply every day in transactions that everyone can see, in order for the Fed to hide the activity of the PPT, they would have to take out liquidity by selling treasury notes. Otherwise, the numbers at the end of the day or week would not add up, and someone would notice. But if they were taking out liquidity and the money supply did not go down, then someone would know something was up. You can’t hide these numbers, unless you can get a lot of clerks at the Fed and elsewhere to agree to lie.

[Maybe not a lie. As Spock once said, "An omission." They stopped publishing M3 in March 2006. This is three years after Mauldin called it a myth.]

How To Hide PPT Action (from Mike Whitney)

This may explain why the Federal Reserve mysteriously decided to stop publishing its M-3 report. Since the Fed is the “main resource” for buying averages in the futures market “the money is injected into markets via the New York Fed’s Repo desk, which easily showed up in the M-3…. Without the useful resource of M-3”, Robert McHugh, Ph.D.says, “we need to find other tools to monitor when the PPT is likely to intervene, and kill shorts.”

What PPT Action Looks Like (from Minyanville)

Wall-Streeters and the media have called those who claim the government intervenes in the stock market ridiculous. They’d better. If it were ever found out that Washington does intervene in the market, all remaining confidence in the integrity of markets would be lost.

Tuesday morning in Europe when UBS (UBS) announced it would write down $19 billion and Deutsche Bank (DB) made similar pronouncements, both stocks were down big and the market was indicated much lower. That was the same day Lehman Brothers (LEH) was supposed to sell $3 billion in preferred stock to raise much needed capital. Imagine Lehman trying to get that deal done in such a messy tape.

Then all of a sudden those stocks began to turn. Along with the market, they closed higher on the day. Futures steadily rose all morning and methodically ended at the highs of the day. U.S. stocks saw one of the biggest rallies of the year. LEH not only got its deal done, but the stock rose so much the firm decided to grant another $1 billion in stock to its most loyal and secret investors.

It’s all highly convenient things turned out this way. The markets went from potential disaster based on fundamentals to a rip-roaring rally just when the government and banks needed it. It’s also highly suspicious.

But the pundits don’t do a very good job of debunking all the ancillary evidence of such intervention. Their main argument is that there’s no way to hide stock market buying by the government. That argument is very flimsy; there are many ways to hide it.

How about all these “loans” the Federal Reserve is making to dealers. There could easily be an arrangement that looks like a simple loan but in fact indemnifies the dealer from losses on any assets purchased with the proceeds of the loan. Just look at the deal the Fed made with JPMorgan (JPM) in buying Bear Stearns (BSC).

The Fed said it was taking control of $30 billion of a BSC portfolio, but not buying those assets, as currently the 1913 Federal Reserve act doesn’t permit such an action. However, the Fed is the the residual claimant, so it’s apparent it effectively has equity even if it won’t admit it. Overall, the Fed appears to be using any legal or structural manifestations necessary to accomplish what it wants to do despite what the Federal Reserve Act actually permits it to do.

How To Stage A PPT Bull Run

The editors of the New York Times summarized the feelings of many market-watchers who were baffled by this odd recovery:

“The torrent of bad news on housing is only worsening, with a report yesterday that new home sales for January had their steepest slide in 13 years…Manufacturing has already slipped into a recession, with activity contracting in two of the last three months. How is it then that investors took Mr. Bernanke’s words as a “buy” signal?”

Robert McHugh, Ph.D. has provided a description of how it works which seems consistent with the comments of Robert Heller. McHugh lays it out like this:

The PPT decides markets need intervention, a decline needs to be stopped, or the risks associated with political events that could be perceived by markets as highly negative and cause a decline; need to be prevented by a rally already in flight. To get that rally, the PPT’s key component — the Fed — lends money to surrogates who will take that fresh electronically printed cash and buy markets through some large unknown buyer’s account. That buying comes out of the blue at a time when short interest is high. The unexpected rally strikes blood, and fear overcomes those who were betting the market would drop. These shorts need to cover, need to buy the very stocks they had agreed to sell (without owning them) at today’s prices in anticipation they could buy them in the future at much lower prices and pocket the difference. Seeing those stocks rally above their committed selling price, the shorts are forced to buy — and buy they do. Thus, those most pessimistic about the equity market end up buying equities like mad, fueling the rally that the PPT started. Bingo, a huge turnaround rally is well underway, and sidelines money from Hedge Funds, Mutual funds and individuals’ rushes in to join in the buying madness for several days and weeks as the rally gathers a life of its own. (Robert McHugh, Ph.D., “The Plunge Protection Team Indicator”)

According to Michael Edward: (“The Secrets of the Plunge Protection Team” Rense.com)

“Since 911, there have been at least three major long-term stock market rallies. In all 3 instances, when the markets opened all the indexes began to quickly plunge. In each incidence, by early afternoon the markets were brought back from the brink of collapse to the surprise of everyone, including historical analysts….An event that should have sent markets spiraling downward was the Enron, et al, unprecedented corporate accounting scandals. Yet despite this, an unprecedented across-the-board markets rally began on July 24, 2002. Once again, the European Press called it a ‘PPT rally.’”

The Danger of Free Market Intervention

Edward goes on to say that outside the US it’s “no secret” that the market is being manipulated. He cites an article in the UK Guardian on 9-16-01 which states, “that a secretive committee… dubbed ‘the plunge protection team’… is ready to coordinate intervention by the Federal Reserve on an unprecedented scale. The Fed, supported by the banks, will buy equities from mutual funds and other institutional sellers.”

Kenneth J. Gerbino put it like this in his recent article “The Big Sell Off” on kitco.com:

Latest figures from the Bank of International Settlements: $8.3 trillion of real money is controlling $313 trillion in derivatives. That’s 38 to 1 leverage. These figures are just for the over – the – counter derivatives and do not include the global exchange traded derivatives in currencies, stocks and commodities which are another $75 trillion.”

“$8.3 trillion of real money is controlling $313 trillion in derivatives!”

This illustrates the sheer magnitude of the problem and the economy-busting potential of a miscalculation. That’s why Warren Buffett calls derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction.” If there’s a fire-sale in hedge funds or derivatives, there’s nothing the Plunge Protection Team or the Federal Reserve will be able to do to stop a meltdown. The market will crash leaving nothing behind.

Conclusion (from Bob Chapman)

Treasury securities are also used to fuel the Fed’s repo pool which is used to power the PPT’s market manipulations by making tens of billions of dollars available on a moment’s notice. The Fed creates money out of nothing to buy treasuries from the primary dealers, who then use the sales proceeds to fund the operations of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets which assists the elitists in stealing from you on a 24/7 basis. The dealers offer to buy these securities back from the Fed within a month or less in what are called repurchase agreements. Thus, this “funny money” is shoveled back and forth from the Fed to the primary dealers and from the primary dealers back to the Fed as needed whenever the Illuminati deign that financial assistance for manipulation of markets is needed.

Treasuries are therefore the engine which drives this fraudulent scheme, a scheme that is completely illegal because the authority granted in Reagan’s Executive Order creating the PPT is exceeded beyond all belief in what one day will be exposed as the greatest abuse of financial power by US government officials in the history of our country. Because of this blatant illegality, Buck-Busting Ben and Hanky Panky Paulson deny that the PPT does anything but meet occasionally to brainstorm pending issues.

Sources:

Executive Order 12631 — Working Group on Financial Markets
March 18, 1988
Stock Market Manipulation – The secret maneuverings of the Plunge Protection Team (PPT)
by Mike Whitney
The Key To All Market Analysis
by Bob Chapman
July 5 2008
President Meets with Working Group on Financial Markets
Market Manipulation Under Veil of Secrecy?
Minyanville
Apr 03, 2008
Plunge Protection Team
by Brett D. Fromson
The Washington Post
Sunday, February 23, 1997; Page H01
NYSE Announces Third-Quarter 2008 Circuit-Breaker Levels
June 30, 2008
http://www.nyse.com/press/circuit_breakers.html
The Plunge Protection Team
by John Mauldin
April 05, 2003