So, we learned from the trial of insurance giant AIG in New York last week that the Federal Reserve has a "Doomsday Book" that the government doesn't want the judge to make public.
This is allegedly a gameplan that gives special powers to the central bank in the event of an emergency.
The plan was said to have been written during the Great Depression, but I'm sure it has been updated a lot since then.
I don't know what's in the Doomsday Book, but I bet the No. 1 extraordinary power is: Keep the stock market from collapsing. And No. 2 is: Don't let anyone know you are doing it.
Remember, former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has already said Washington did stuff during the Great Recession of 2008 that it wasn't proud of.
Rigging the stock market would — of course — fall into that category as we try to bring free markets and democracy to others around the world.
Some people put ketchup on their hot dogs. Some others probably sprinkle bacon on their ice cream. Some people even believe in Big Foot, while some think he's their brother-in-law.
The point here is that most people don't. And it's not that big of a deal when some people do anything.
Whenever you see the phrase "some people" in a news story, you can assume some things: The writer is either trying to bias the story in one direction or another, or he's too lazy to figure out what "most people" think or he's just looking for a angle that makes a good hook.
That gets me to last week's release of the Federal Reserve's minutes for its September policymaking group, the Open Market Committee.
Journalists and Wall Streeters sift through this report each month like it was Vatican dogma written in Latin. And, admittedly, the minutes are not an easy read — this month, eight pages of very small type with an inconsistent and sometimes incoherent message.
I'm going to pick on Bloomberg News today. But what I am about to say applies to other news organizations as well.
"Fed Officials Saw Global Slowdown Among Risks to Outlook," was one of the headlines immediately after the minutes were released around 2 p.m. last Wednesday.
What backed up that statement? "Some participants saw the current forward guidance as appropriate in light of risk-management considerations, which suggested that it would be prudent to err on the side of patience while awaiting further evidence of sustained progress toward the committee's goals," Bloomberg reporters wrote, quoting the minutes.
This was interpreted by Wall Street to mean that the Fed was willing to not only keep interest rates near zero for a "considerable time," but that it might even be more than a considerable time because it was going to err on the side of lower borrowing costs.
"It's not even on their radar screen," is how one Wall Streeter interpreted this statement for Bloomberg.
But erring on the side of patience was only what "some" FOMC members believed. The Fed isn't going to say it, but it is safe to assume that the rest of the dozen FOMC members didn't agree.
The gist of the September Fed minutes was this: ho-hum, status quo. The Fed is going to raise rates some day, but doesn't know when because the economy is only growing moderately.
That's just not much of a story. And it doesn't give Wall Street much of an excuse to trade stocks.
The spun story caused a big jump in the Dow Jones industrial average on Wednesday — a rally that was completely reversed and then some on Thursday, Friday and Monday when "some" people realized they'd been conned.
AIG's former Chairman Maurice Greenberg is arguing at that trial that he — oh, excuse me, make that shareholders — got screwed when Geithner and the other Washington saviors bailed out the company he founded.
The government took over AIG in exchange for a $185 billion taxpayer bailout that Washington said was necessary because the insurance company's woes could have caused the whole financial system to collapse. Greenberg alleges that the government confiscated shareholder assets.
I'm not taking sides on this one. But I do have an observation because I bumped into AIG a lot when I was investigating Bill Clinton's financial dealings in Arkansas in the late 1990s.
What did I find? I discovered that AIG was tight with Clinton when he was governor and that the company was involved in some, let's use the word "creative," deals with the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA).
I believe I even caused AIG to be fined by Maryland insurance authorities over something it did that it shouldn't have.
My point now? I think it's pretty funny that Democrats were running the country when all of this happened to Greenberg and AIG.
Greenberg never would have been treated this way under Clinton.
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