Standard & Poor's Timing Strikes Some as Curious

It's getting harder and harder to convince conspiracy theorists that varied forces aren't trying to boost the stock market, however futile those efforts appear in light of Wednesday's selloff.

As has been widely reported, Standard & Poor's Tuesday night announced it will remove seven (eek!) foreign companies from the S&P 500 and replace them with firms domiciled in the good old U.S. of A.

Predictably, shares of the seven companies coming out, Royal Dutch Petroleum (RD Quote), Unilever (UN Quote), Nortel Networks (NT Quote), Alcan (AL Quote). Barrick Gold (ABX Quote), Placer Dome (PDG Quote), and Inco (N Quote) were lately down between 3.3% and 14.2%. ...