Suspicions about Plunge Protection Team break onto CNBC

9:58p ET Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Cable television network CNBC today could not escape a discussion of the possibility that the U.S. government has been intervening in the stock market to prop it up at crucial moments. The discussion occurred because the issue was pressed by a guest on the network's morning program -- Scott Nations, president of Fortress Trading in Chicago.

Nations could offer little more than his suspicions, but the utter lack of curiosity shown by the other market analysts on the program was deplorable. They rejected the possibility out of hand when plainly they themselves knew little about the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, nicknamed the Plunge Protection Team.

Nations attempted to note that the U.S. government lately has been intervening frequently in currency markets, but while this could not be denied, neither could it open any minds. Nations might have done well to note the government's denial of the request of John Crudele of the New York Post to obtain minutes of the meetings of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets:

http://www.gata.org/node/5074

For if the President's Working Group on Financial Markets itself refuses to say what it's doing, how can CNBC's experts be so sure that it isn't doing what so many people suspect?

You can watch today's exchange on CNBC about the Plunge Protection Team here:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=931599105&play=1

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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