On August 16th as the market was crumbling, a rumored emergency “secret” FOMC meeting came to the rescue. That’s not unexpected for a market that loves to feed on rumors. However, when the market bounced definitively into the close and then the following morning, Bernanke screwed the shorts with his 50 bps Discount Rate cut before the open, he made the rumor come true. At that time, I wrote about a character I call “CutThroat” - the person who leaked the inside info on the FOMC meeting. Obviously, I never expected anyone in the media or even Bernanke himself to investigate who did this. After all, manipulating the market so it goes up in times of trouble seems to be acceptable to our government, if not preferred, and I don’t know of a journalist or politician that has the balls to push for an explanation. But in the end, I suspect that someone made a killing with knowledge of something that should have been remained confidential. So why do I care? I know this sounds sickening - but I actually believe in free market capitalism and the credibility of our markets. That means more to me than whether stocks are going up or down. I actually believe that the Fed should not be used as a tool of politicians and market participants. Call me idealistic, call me naive, call me stupid, call me whatever you want. But when we heard last week about Bernanke’s telephone calls in the days before the “secret meeting of the Fed” was conveniently leaked, well …it makes my CutThroat claim not sound so ridiculous. Maybe it’s even a clue. But who cares?