The protocols have been triggered

Toward the end of this FREE story on page one of the Wall Street Journal can be found the following nugget that should titillate all those conspiracy theorists in our midst.

The market turmoil prompted the President's Working Group on Financial Markets -- the Treasury, the Fed, the SEC and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission -- to trigger protocols established by Mr. Paulson shortly after he took office last year. They include a detailed list of who is going to call financial institutions, risk managers, traders and chief executives to keep tabs, how often they should call and the like. When he first joined Treasury from Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson instructed Emil Henry, then the Treasury official in charge of financial institutions, to craft guidelines for five or six "meltdown" scenarios. One was a catch-all "General Withdrawal from Risk Taking." Others include a liquidity crisis, stock-market meltdown and oil shock. The Working Group has held conference calls, principally among staff, at least once a day in recent days.

If things get really bad, they might have to have conference calls twice a day - should that fail to stem the panic, then three, four, or five calls may be necessary.

Don't they have a new name for this group now?

Dunno - a quick search yielded little other than the amazing transformation of Hank Paulson as depicted in the WSJ over the last year.

That kind of steely-eyed resolve is just what we need now.