Neville tells his audience that over the past two weeks, a rumor had swung the stock market wildly, wiping out twenty-five to thirty billion dollars in paper value; he attributes the trigger to a remark by 'Mr. Martin' (almost certainly Federal Reserve chairman William McChesney Martin), which others then reinterpreted, sending the market swinging further -- his example of how insubstantial 'values' are, moved by mere words and interpretation rather than fixed reality.