The US is not a pure free market system, it is mixed. For example, the Fed’s (quasi-govt agency) impact on interest rates or the price curbs on exchanges. Most would argue that controls such as these are necessary, yet they constrain a purely free-market.

Of course, there is much more transparency for most of these controls (at least one knows that there is a potential for action, timeframe, etc.), whereas these secret meetings with unknown results not only cause distrust, but could put investors at a disadvantage as well since the large brokerage firms that are involved in such a system would have an unfair advantage (e.g. knowing where future support lies), and pass that knowledge to their trading arm.