Plunge Protection Team

This passage is taken from "What or Who is Driving up Prices?" from ETFGuide.com, as posted on Yahoo Finance yesterday:

"What's the PPT's job?

The Plunge Protection Team's job description is to prevent another 1987-like 'Black Monday' from occurring (the Dow fell 22.61% on 10-19-1987). How can that be done?

According to John Crudele of the New York Post, Robert Heller, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, described the modus operandi of the PPT as 'buying market averages in the futures market, thus stabilizing the market as a whole.'

The existence of the PPT was verified by former-Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos via an appearance on Good Morning America on September 17, 2000. At the time of Mr. Stephanopoulos' appearance, the Nasdaq (Nasdaq: QQQQ - News) was caught up in the dot.com bubble bust and had fallen 25% in less than six months, as did the Technology Select Sector SPDRs (NYSEArca: XLK - News).

What caused the 70% rally

TrimTabs founder and CEO Charles Biderman, added further evidence to suspicions many have had for a while. TrimTabs is a research firm that tracks money flows into the market.

Here's what Mr. Biderman had to say: 'We cannot identify the source of the money that pushed stock prices up so far so fast.' More specifically, the source of about $600 billion net new cash necessary to lift the market's overall capitalization by $6 trillion last year could not be identified.'

Biderman continues, 'We know that the U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to support the auto industry, the housing market and the banks and brokers. Why not support the stock market as well? The money did not come from traditional players.

One way to manipulate the stock market would be for the Fed or the Treasury to buy a nominal $60 to $70 billion of S&P 500 stock futures each month for as long as necessary. Depending on margin levels, as little as $5 billion to $15 billion per month was all that was necessary to lift the S&P 500 by 67% (statement was made on January 6, 2010).'

Obviously the Plunge Protection Team was the culprit behind this entire rally. The ETF Profit Strategy Newsletter predicted the onset of this rally previously on March 2nd based on a composite of common sense indicators."