Financial terrorism suspected in 2008 economic crash

Well freaking duh! Only took them 3 years to figure that out?

Financial terrorism suspected in 2008 economic crash

Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.

The unclassified 2009 report "Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses" by financial analyst Kevin D. Freeman, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, states that "a three-phased attack was planned and is in the process against the United States economy."

While economic analysts and a final report from the federal government's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission blame the crash on such economic factors as high-risk mortgage lending practices and poor federal regulation and supervision, the Pentagon contractor adds a new element: "outside forces," a factor the commission did not examine.

"There is sufficient justification to question whether outside forces triggered, capitalized upon or magnified the economic difficulties of 2008," the report says, explaining that those domestic economic factors would have caused a "normal downturn" but not the "near collapse" of the global economic system that took place.

But they blame it on those people :

Suspects include financial enemies in Middle Eastern states, Islamic terrorists, hostile members of the Chinese military, or government and organized crime groups in Russia, Venezuela or Iran. Chinese military officials publicly have suggested using economic warfare against the U.S.

So basically the whole report is a whitewash trying to stir up the warmongering... coming from the PENTAGON... who wants more money, what a surprise!

Get a clue, Pentagon, the real culprits are in Washington DC, New York and London, they are called ``The FED, the bankers and their puppets``.

I fail again! Was already posted!!!!!!!

reply to post by Vitchilo


While I am inclined to agree with the report, the fact remains that our financial destruction was a result of favoritism in regulation, illegal and fraudulent contract practices that the government turned a blind eye to, and the subsequent papering over through bailouts..

There ARE bits and pieces of evidence out there suggesting that some of this may have been engineered by unfriendly governments and entities overseas. But it is my opinion that these entities and governments only needed to NUDGE the US economy rather than send it into a tailspin to cause the financial meltdown we witnessed in 2008 and will witness again in the near future as a result of attempting to mitigate the economic destruction with more money printing.

The Chinese in particular have been looking for an exit for a long time. There is no better way than to force the US government to print to have the excuse needed to divest quickly, but orderly.

One day VERY SOON there will be a bond auction failure, and that will be the end of that.

Noone on Earth is going to buy that hogwash.

The crash occurred because they created it. The silly amounts of credit people couldn't afford....giving $350,000 mortgages to people making $40,000 a year.....yeah that's going to work.

In 2005 Congress ordered Banks to give mortgages to illegals. HUD reported in 2007 that +5 million illegals walked away from their mortgages. They bought and sold homes between themselves then fled the country with $6.3 Trillion...that was in 2008. Now the official number is around 11 million illegals walked away from their mortgages.

Best of luck trying to get money from them. They didn't have Social Security numbers and only used two utility bills to get approved for their mortgage.

We've been robbed and Congress orchestrated it. They are going to spend lots of time and psyops trying to get the world to think it was the Chinese that did it.

Nobody's going to buy it.

Financial terrorism....hahahahaha.... yeah its called the FED

Nows the time to buy stocks. there's some good bargains out there. Of course you have to have$$ to invest. I myself have done very well over the last couple years on a few stock plays.

You just gotta go with the flow...the world is the world.

So, in other words, illegal aliens are scaming the system that bad? and our governemnt and obama favors them? their unregistered taxpayers! thats steeliong,a nd costing yuo and me money. examples partly why CA was bankrupt. illegals go to hospitols, dont pay, moneys gotta come form somewhere ya know..the city/taxpayer.
See, this is why i dont like being reigistered into 'the system'. What ive learned over 36 years almost is, once your eligibale to pay taxes, aka have a job, and are reigstered with local fed and state, you dont get nuthin. if yuor here illegaly, pay NO taxes they love you. YOu, being a registered taxpayer, can and will go to jail for speaking up, fighting for your rights, will have NO money. your illegal, they give everything too you as well as citizenship, knowing youve been here illegaly for x amount of years. the law favors them, not us. and thier OUR laws!
maybe its US under attack, registered taxpayers as well* from the FED and corporate america. since thye love outsourcing so much to save $$$, that would show zero interest in any american wanting a descent salary*

reply to post by Vitchilo


They are trying to cover up who was REALLY to blame:

PART I - Ronald Reagan and LEVERAGED BUYOUTS

Sorry this is long but if you do not understand and see the scope of the problem you can not see that it is the slow death of the USA, and I am VERY serious about that.

to start: in 1990,before WTO was ratified, Foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP. www.fame.org...

DEFINITION:

Leveraged buyouts involve an investor, financial sponsors or private equity firms making large acquisitions without committing all the capital required for the acquisition. To do this, a financial sponsor will raise acquisition debt which is ultimately secured upon the acquisition target... en.wikipedia.org...

In other words the investor is placing a mortgage on property he does not OWN!!!

This is not moral or ethical and given what happened during the Great Depression, I would be very surprised if laws were not enacted to prevent it. SO - Where the heck was CONGRESS. Where the heck were the COURTS when this was going on??? Where the HECK was Obama and the democrats??? If you want to do one single thing to help America get back on her feet OBAMA??? Then Declare Leveraged Buyouts ILLEGAL. They are certainly immoral and very destructive to the country.

If you want to know what the US government did about it...

...In January 1982, former US Secretary of the Treasury William Simon and a group of investors acquired Gibson Greetings, a producer of greeting cards, for $80 million, of which only $1 million was rumored to have been contributed by the investors. By mid-1983, just sixteen months after the original deal, Gibson completed a $290 million IPO and Simon made approximately $66 million. The success of the Gibson Greetings investment attracted the attention of the wider media to the nascent boom in leveraged buyouts.[10] Between 1979 and 1989, it was estimated that there were over 2,000 leveraged buyouts valued in excess of $250 billion... en.wikipedia.org...

The big question is WHO profited from "eating the seed corn"

Remember every single dollar the bankers loan out whether it is to the US Government, business, or home owner is created on the spot. In other words it is legalized COUNTERFEITING. The byproduct of all this money printing was the increase of the money supply from $60.5 billion in 1966 to $2016 billion in Dec 2010 AND it caused the minimum wage to rise from $1.00 to $7.25. (My Mom in the thirties was paid 25 cents an hour and that was considered a very generous wage for an office manager)

....These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers.... In fact, investment banks are replacing the publicly held industrial corporations as the largest and most powerful economic institutions in America.... THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A VICIOUS spiral has begun, as each corporate player seeks to improve its standard of living at the expense of another's. Corporate raiders transfer to themselves, and other shareholders, part of the income of employees by forcing the latter to agree to lower wages. January 29, 1989 New York Times: LEVER AGED BUYOUTS: AMERICAN PAYS THE PRICE

Reagan - facilitate Leveraged buyouts/Hostile takeovers

....Both economic and regulatory factors combined to spur the explosion in large takeovers and, in turn, large LBOs. The three regulatory factors were the Reagan administration's relatively laissez-faire policies on antitrust and securities laws, which allowed mergers the government would have challenged in earlier years; the 1982 Supreme Court decision striking down state antitakeover laws (which were resurrected with great effectiveness in the late eighties); and deregulation of many industries, which prompted restructurings and mergers. The main economic factor was the development of the original-issue high-yield debt instrument. The so-called "junk bond" innovation, pioneered by Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham, provided many hostile bidders and LBO firms with the enormous amounts of capital needed to finance multi-billion-dollar deals.... www.econlib.org...

...In the 1980s during the great takeover boom and hollowing out of the industrial heartland, many states adopted amendments to their corporate codes that codified directors' fiduciary duties, so-called "constituency statutes". In general, these provisions made it clear that a director need not "maximize shareholder value." Rather, in complying with their fiduciary obligations, directors may take all sorts of things into consideration - the impact of their decisions on various constituencies, including employees, the community, the environment, the color of the sky, whatever...

The 1980s LBO boom was a scourge for management. They used whatever tools at their disposal to prevent an acquisition... The Delaware courts stepped in... In short, the message from the courts was that boards did not have a free hand to put off all takeover attempts... [remember many firms are incorporated in delaware because of business friendly laws] lawprofessors.typepad.com...

Leveraged Buyouts are still going on

‘Whitewashed Windows and Vacant Stores’

So, the businesses that provided jobs are gone, the office and retail space sits vacant, likely in default. The windows get broken, the walls get tagged, the weeds grow, trash blows, and, with no one to stop it, nature begins the process of permanent destruction. The value of those businesses and real estate is now gone.

Once Wall Street realized that success can only be so profitable but failure has unlimited potential, the race was on to loan money and securitize the debt.

Underlying all of this are the same activities that led to losses in sub-prime residential equities. Money was looking for a home, and some investors saw that cash could be leveraged out of these enterprises by buying them with someone else’s money and looting the assets....

Not even your life saving is safe from these descendents of the Robber Barrons

US Departments of Labor and Treasury Schedule Hearing on Confiscation of Private Retirement Accounts

Many of you have asked me do I think the government is going to confiscate our 401 k and IRA accounts. The writer of this article thinks the process has started.

On August 26, the US Department of Labor issued a news release :www.dol.gov...

It lists the agenda for the joint hearings being held with the Department of Treasury September 14-15, 2010 on what is euphemistically called “lifetime income options for retirement plans.” The hearings are being conducted by the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration.

...as I understand it, is to push for the US government to eventually nationalize (confiscate) all assets in private Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and 401K plans!

The US government is desperate to get its hands on private assets to help cover soaring budget deficits...

Obviously, an outright seizure of assets would meet stiff resistance from the public. So the confiscation will never be described as such by government officials. Expect to see terms such as “retirement income protection” thrown around. It is highly likely that such a program would be implemented in steps to help overcome public opposition.

The US government plan is to eventually take ownership of all assets in IRAs and 401K accounts and replace them with US government “Treasury Retirement Bonds.” In the October 2008 hearings, it was proposed that these bonds pay a 3% interest rate. Another major change is that, upon retirement, the individual’s retirement account would be converted into an annuity. Once the individual is deceased, the individual’s heirs would not inherit anything (similar to what happens now with Social Security “accounts”)....

"There are two distinct classes of men. Those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes." - Thomas Paine

To me, this whole financial mess started wtih Bush jrs version of capitalism. hell they got the $700 billion bailout despite the majority of voters said NO too it. thiers your answer. His secratary of treasury, guy from meryl lynch bank executed it. might as well pull a dunbar truck inback of the federal reserve hugh?
Deregualtions too. so much of wallstreet and business was de regulated for wahtever reason, everything went into freefall and freegame,f or those who wanted to scam n make more money. loopholes rather* it made it easier, for illegals then to purchase things. Maybe, this is why illegals are favored? they all have 2 ro 3 jobs, not like typical americans, so they make very good money yearly, prob under the table too. which means payed 0 taxes.
system figured this out, and saw opportunity to favor them since it made a few rich? maybe thats why the system and governemnt favors illegals,a nd leaves us bhind to die or rot. eh could be

Of course there are people, groups and nations that want encourage U.S. decline. Of course they took advantage of the crisis. They didn't engineer it though. It was mostly home grown. There is always someone waiting to kick you when you are down. I don't think enemy exploitation of the crash is unexpected.

reply to post by crimvelvet

PART II Clinton and the set-up for FORECLOSUREGATE

After the Great Depression, several laws were put in place to prevent another depression. The 1933 and 1934 Security and Exchange laws, The McFadden Act of 1927, The Glass-Steagall Act or Banking Act of 1933. Also Bank Holding Company Act of 1956.

Clinton's laws Negating above: Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999

More pro-banking Clinton laws:
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991:Allowed big banks to gobble up smaller banks more easily.

Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 and RTC Completion Act - Housing and business loans to minorities.

Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 200 - left CDSs unregulated and set up AIG bailout and Foreclosuregate.[/url]


Here are the crucial move:
1.CDSs, credit default swaps were exempted from regulation in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in the year 2000.

2.Hank Paulson who was the Treasury secretary who engineered the AIG bailout worked for Goldman Sachs.

3. If a bank had the credit default swap insurance policies on a mortgage, especially if they had more than one, it was to their advantage to force foreclosure.

4. Obama mortgage program sets up homeowners for defaulting on their mortgage by reducing payments up front before qualification and then handing them a staggering bill, due in one month when they do not qualify. (First hand experience) www.wtop.com...

Senior investors, who are typically financial institutions, own the AAA tranches that are insured against default by AIG, and they WANT to foreclose on the Middle Class so that insurance payments kick in. Conversely, the junior tranche investors want workouts with homeowners because their investment is not insured.

“To ensure that the mortgage servicer pushes default instead of workout, the servicer is paid double (50 basis points versus 25 basis points) by the MBS to service a loan in default. Why do you think your servicer tells you that you must be in default before it will consider a mortgage modification, a practice known as invited default?

“Simply put,” says Parker, “the government bailout of AIG has actually encouraged foreclosures because the taxpayers continue to fill AIG’s coffers with enough cash to pay out insurance on defaulted home loans.”

“A credit default swap (CDS) is a credit derivative contract between two counterparties,” says Wikipedia. "The buyer makes periodic payments to the seller, and in return receives a payoff if an underlying financial instrument defaults. CDS contracts have been compared with insurance, because the buyer pays a premium and, in return, receives a sum of money if one of the specified events occur...

Instead of cars or houses, credit default swaps were used to guarantee mortgage-backed securities (MBS), a safe bet according to the best-available mathematical models. Why? Because most homeowners pay off their home loans with the certainty of an ATM.
The is no reserve requirement with CDS because there's no government regulation. Each insurance company can set aside as much — or as little — as it wants for reserves. In fact, a company could set aside nothing for potential losses without violating regulatory requirements.
The money NOT set aside for reserves can be invested in high-risk securities to create a larger cash flow for the insurance company. This means that with CDS, insurers expected not only premiums but also bigger investment returns then would be possible with regular insurance products.
CDS premium revenue is not restricted to those who might have actual losses or real assets to protect. You can bet as much as you want and create as many CDS as you want....
www.realtytrac.com...

In other words there maybe more than one CDS on a mortgage and therefore it is much more profitable to collect the multiple payoffs than to refinance the mortgage.

MATT TAIBBI: Well, the insurance policies, the things that Cassano [AIG] was selling that are like insurance, Goldman Sachs actually had bought $20 billion worth of those guarantees, so that when we bailed out AIG, we were effectively bailing out Goldman Sachs, because AIG owed Goldman Sachs $20 billion.

And that’s significant, because who was the Treasury Secretary who engineered this bailout? It was Hank Paulson, who was the former head of Goldman Sachs. They ultimately ended up installing Ed Liddy as the CEO of AIG, and Liddy, himself, is a former Goldman employee. And now the top aide to Timothy Geithner, Mark Patterson, is a former Goldman executive. I mean, this whole situation is rife with Goldman Sachs employees...

MATT TAIBBI: Well, you know, the biggest situation is, you know, a lot of these contracts, these CDS contracts, are like gambling, in the sense that—normally when you buy an insurance policy, you’re buying a policy on a house that you actually own. With these CDS contracts, you could actually bet on somebody else’s mortgage. AIG, for instance, could have gone to Goldman Sachs and said, you know, “We’d like to bet that the mortgages that were issued by JPMorgan Chase are going to default in the next ten years.” So these two parties that don’t have anything to do with the actual underlying loan could actually gamble on the outcome of that loan. So, this is—it’s really no different at all from gambling. And that’s why they had to seek a specific exemption from gaming laws in the year 2000, when they actually went forward with the deregulation of these instruments.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?

MATT TAIBBI: In the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in the year 2000, they specifically exempted credit default swaps from being treated as gaming under any state laws. And they had to do that, because they were afraid that they were going to be regulated by, you know, state gaming agencies.
www.democracynow.org...

reply to post by Vitchilo


Well there have been rumors in the past.. like the USSR trying to attack our stock exchanges in 1979 and 1981 by systematically crashing shares..

In 2007 the actual stock market crash occurred directly after Congress refused to bailout the banks.. I can only assume the banks themselves then crashed the markets in retaliation .. I'd still call it terrorism and economic warfare.. but I highly doubt it was Muslims.

Aside from that, the sheer ignorance of the report is highlighted in the simple fact that no terrorist organization can topple the US economy via trading.. the amount of wealth cycling through the exchanges is astronomical.. only the largest financial institutions together and or the largest economies could possibly have that effect.. Unfortunately that does still leave Russia and China.

Occams Razor - fewest gods are correct, or simplest answer is usually right. If it were possible, if it did happen, if there's no other explanation, then the only question left is 'who?'.

The goal is to bankrupt the Treasury and destroy the Dollar. Looks like it's working.

Back to the question of who, it would take a massive amount of money to create and collapse these bubbles. It takes a significant amount of money to create electronic runs on what were the wall street banks. How many Billions? Would it be leveraged into Trillions?

China? A collection of Sheiks? Russia? Iran?

The entire western empire is collapsing. Couldn't have been Europe. Must be east or far east.

reply to post by Rockpuck


Puck if you remember when the market crashed after Congress failed to pass TARP the first there was a statistic that you could follow at the time called "slosh". Bernanke pulled the slosh and the market tanked. With the myriad of "extraordinary measures" in place by the FED since then one cannot really tell the amount of "slosh" in the system so it's not possible to look at the same statistics now as a clue to a market downturn.

I saw this article and found it one of the most hilarious pieces of disinformation I've seen. I do agree that financial terrorists are in part responsible for what happened in our economy. They include both domestic and international financial terrorist organizations.

Domestic Financial Terrorist Organizations:
US Federal Reserve Bank Bank of America Citigroup
JPMorgan/Chase Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs AIG

In 2007 the list above would have included other entities like Countrywide Financial, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns but those that haven't been bankrupted have been assimilated into the larger terrorist organizations above.

There are international financial terrorist organizations as well:
IMF Barclays Credit Suisse HSBC


I personally consider people like Ben Bernanke, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankenfien, Timothy Giethner, and Vakrim Pandit along with their bought and paid for politicians to be more dangerous to the future potential prosperity of my children than any bogeyman like Osama, Chavez, or Imadinerjacket.

In a just world the people I've mentioned above would be having the same fear right now as Mumar Gaddafi. That the gig was up and real soon someones gonna drag them out of their gilded office and that Final Judgment was near.