From Zero Hedge:
And for the most unsurprising news of the day, Reuters reports that the White House has admitted it knew about the S&P rating action on Friday. Which means that all the key bond buyers (or sellers are the case may be, Pimco), knew at roughly the same time what the key market catalyst on Monday would be (we can't wait to get a declassified glimpse of Larry Meyer's phone log over the weekend one day in the future). Which also means that today's action was a strawman in which the big boys merely waited for an opportunity to buy bonds are lower prices, which the ongoing European collapse merely facilitated. Most importantly, it is now all too clear why over the weekend, Tim Geithner's face, instead of being hard at work at finalizing his tax filing, would grace each and every TV screen. Advance damage control, TurboTax style.