Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will meet with federal regulators and top officials from the NYSE and other exchanges to dicuss whatever the hell happened last Thursday that caused the stock market to completely freak out.

The AP sums up the mystery this way:

Investors got an unmistakable reminder of how quickly their fortunes can change on Thursday when the Dow took a short but unprecedented 1,000-point tailspin. The sudden drop — generally believed to be due to trader error and computer glitches — sent the stocks of several companies briefly to almost zero.

The Dow partially rebounded to finish the day down 347 points, or 3.2 percent. But turbulence continued on Friday, with the Dow falling nearly 280 points at one point before ending the day with a 140-point drop.

The losses came despite Friday’s strong U.S. jobs April report, approval by Greek lawmakers of drastic austerity cuts needed for international rescue loans worth $140 billion and approval of the package by both houses of the parliament in Germany, where bailing out Greece is unpopular.

There are a bunch of theories as to why the markets are freaking — including a typo that triggered a robot panic, that stuff that is happening to Greece, and of course, cyberterrorism.

ABCNews says the purpose of the meeting with Geithner is to brief him on the progress that has been made in analyzing the mini-panic. He’ll meet with the President later in the day.

Geithner to Get Market Briefing From Regulators [ABCNews]
Analysis: Dow nose dive could help financial bill [AP]

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