Third World USA

Just as we issue our Plunger Alert there come this little jewel from theage.com which confers third world status on the US. The IMF it seems will actually investigate the plunge protection team, so they say.

If this was to happen in Australia the International Monetary Fund would be hammering at the door of the Reserve Bank. But Australia does not have a President's Working Group on Financial Markets, commonly known as the Plunge Protection Team, that allows the US Government to prop up the markets by buying shares. But to imagine the IMF investigating the US financial system is unthinkable, or was. But, at the weekend, Der Spiegel reported that the IMF would conduct a full investigation into virtually every aspect of it.

Der Spiegel wrote that the IMF had "informed" Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of plans that would have been unheard of in the past: a general examination of the US financial system. The IMF's board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program is to be carried out in the US.

I would not get to excited. Remember that CEOs of Wall Street firms like James Dimon of JP Morgan and Richard S. Fuld, Jr. of Lehman Brothers, sit on various FED boards and that Treasury Sectary Paulson is still the Goldman Sachs CEO and the Godfather of the Plungers. It turns out the the owners of the the FED own the IMF and World Bank and Bank of England as well. So, this won't go far, but it is significant that they feel compelled to do the song and dance anyway.