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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tommaso who wrote (70628)	9/29/2006 10:28:00 AM
From: bart13	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

The whole notion of the PPT is completely unproven, and as far as I can tell, activities to directly influence the stock market by buying securities would be completely illegal. I'm not a big fan of the literal PPT bogey man either, but the correlations between various Fed & Treasury actions do exist and are quite significant at the very least. The executive order for the PPT does exist too. As far as the Fed and buying stocks, my research indicates that it is not illegal. My TIO article covers some applicable quotes. Also, per Humphrey Hawkins, they are allowed to buy both US and foreign debt, and the stock and bond markets are related.

To: Tommaso who wrote (70628)	9/29/2006 4:09:52 PM
From: regli	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

"... The whole notion of the PPT is completely unproven, and as far as I can tell, activities to directly influence the stock market by buying securities would be completely illegal. ..." dailyreckoning.com ... MR. PAUL: Good afternoon, Chairman Bernanke. I have a question dealing with the Working Group on Financial Markets. I want to learn more about that group and actually what authority they have and what they do. Could you tell me, as a member of that group, how often they meet and how often they take action; and have they done something recently? And are there reports sent out by this particular group? MR. BERNANKE: Yes, Congressman. The President’s Working Group was convened by the President, I believe, after the 1987 stock market crash. It meets irregularly, I would guess about four or five times a year, but I am not exactly sure. And its primary function is advisory, to prepare reports. I mentioned earlier that we have been asked to prepare a report on the terrorism risk insurance. So that is what we generally do. MR. PAUL: In the media you will find articles that will claim that it is a lot more than an advisory group you know, if there is a stock market crash, that you literally have a lot of authority, you know, to impose restrictions on the market. And we are talking about many trillions of dollars slushing around in all the financial markets, and this involves Treasury and, of course, the Fed, as well as the SEC and the CFTC. So there is a lot of potential there. And the reason this came to my attention was just recently there was an article that actually made a charge that out of this group came actions to interfere with the prices of General Motors stock. Have you read that, or do you know anything about that? MR. BERNANKE: No, sir, I don’t. MR. PAUL: Because they were charging that there was a problem with General Motors, and then there was a spike in GM’s stock prices. But back to the issue of the meeting. You tell me it meets irregularly, but there are minutes kept, or are there reports made on this group? MR. BERNANKE: I believe there are records kept by the staff. These are staff mostly from Treasury, but also from the other agencies. MR. PAUL: And they would be available to us in the committee? MR. BERNANKE: I don’t know. I am sorry, I don’t know. ...