I don’t buy into the many conspiracy theories that continually seem to get resurrected, but I expect that this particular thesis, from Max Keiser, may very well have legs:

“May 6th was an unequivocal act of domestic financial terrorism in America. A day that will live in infamy.

To scare the lawmakers, themselves large owners of the very banks and stocks that they are supposed to be regulating, a financial Weapon of Mass Destruction was put to their head and they acquiesced.

As the inventor of the continuous double-auction, market-making technology (VST tech. US pat. no. 5950176) that is referenced 132 times by program trading and HFT patents since 1996, I can tell you that
Goldman, JP Morgan and the gang simply pulled the ‘buys’ from their
computer trading programs and manufactured a crash. And when the coast
was clear, and it was clear the politicians were not going to vote for
anything that would break up the ‘too big to fail’ banks; all the
’sells’ were pulled from the computers and the market roared back.

This is a Manchurian Candidate market where program trading bots start the ball rolling in whatever direction Wall St. wants the market to go – and then hundreds of thousands of day-traders watching Cramer
on CNBC jump on the momentum bandwagon and commit the crime for the
Wall St. financial terrorists, who then say, ‘It wasn’t us, it was ‘the
market!’”

Amped Content goes on to note that coincidentally the day after the crash, the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment was soundly defeated by a 61 to 33 margin in Senate. And, a deal was struck to
eliminate key provisions from the audit of the Federal Reserve bill.
And, Goldman was meeting with the SEC to work out a settlement in their
case against them.

I am always reluctant to put much stock into these nefarious “coincidences” — but I have to admit that Max’ theory here is quite intriguing . . .