TRUMPETS were blar ing when the Plunge Protection Team came to the rescue of the stock market in the final hour yesterday.

It was something right out of an old John Ford western.

OK, I can't really prove that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson directed the PPT - formally known as the President's Working Group on Financial Markets - to bail out the stock market.

But how else do you explain how the Dow Jones industrial average could be down a nerve wracking 800 points just 75 minutes before the close of trading and end with a loss of "just" 369 points?

Huh! Explain that to me.