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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2009-02-16

Time To Fit Me For A Tin Foil Hat . . . 

. . . I guess.

Way back when, on October 19th, I wondered out loud (in print):

And then, doesn't it seem like strange coincidence that just when oil starts to calm down the rest of the financial markets go down the crapper?

[Mike] Huckabee said these words two or three weeks ago: "economic terrorism."

Now there's this: "Jihadist group claims responsibility for US financial meltdown"

Which is all well and good, and then the whole thing went quietly into that good night, and I didn't think about it much. Until this week, when I hear Glenn Beck run the audio on this (which I understand Rush was also playing):

It was about September 15th. Here's the facts, and we don't even talk about these things. On Thursday at about 11:00 in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there and that's what actually happened. If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2:00 that afternoon, $5 1/2 trillion would have been drown off the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

The actual date was Thursday, September 18th.

Now, before you do what I was first inclined to do, which is dismiss this guy (who I've never heard of--and I follow this stuff!) as one tooth too long for the job, you need to see this confirmation:

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”

How does this kind of a thing happen? $550 BILLION!?!? That seems like an awful lot of money to playing around with, unless there's a very good reason to do so.

So I ask again the question I asked back in October: who benefitted?

--Barack Obama. If you look at the RCP polling data, you see that John McCain held a slim lead (46.3-44.7) on Monday Sept 15th; Shearson-Lehman announced their collapse on Monday and was followed by others on Tuesday, and you see that by Wednesday the 17th the two are tied; by Friday the 19th Obama was ahead 47.3-45.4 and the race was never that close again. Certainly, John McCain's weak response hurt him--probably as much as the crisis itself. But you kind of have to note the coincidence of events, don't you?

--Government in General. First, there's the massive bailout of the financial sector--a bailout that doesn't seem to have had much effect, actually. Then there's the new "Stimulus Bill" which is going to cost our children and their children a substantial part of their fortunes, but which the CEO of Caterpillar said will "likely not save jobs" and which the Congressional Budget Office has admitted "will actually hurt the economy more in the long run" (CBO did project the bill would create jobs, though by 2011 the effects would be minuscule. ) Nonetheless, this massive piece of legislation was slammed through Congress in a couple weeks, with nowhere near enough time for proper debate, and with next to no bipartisan support. In exchange, we get a SecTreas with near supreme power over the economy, a substantial increase in the size of the Federal government, and small tax rebates in each of the next two years.

--And then there's those pesky Jihadists . . . If we should have learned anything over the last twenty years, its that every once in a while when one of these crazy cave-dwellers says something, we ought to take them at their word. So if there seems to be a coordinated run on the banks which throws the economy into "near collapse," and a Jihadist group claims responsibility while most of the public is completely unaware of the scope of the problem, then maybe, JUST MAYBE, there may be something to their claim.

--Variables It's just as likely, I suppose, that there's a shadowy sort of somebody out there (a "hegemon") who has the wherewithal to coordinate something like this attack. Let's see, is there anybody anywhere with a history of manipulating economies who is well known to be sympathetic to big government and/or Barack Obama? Anyone? Anyone?

But none of that is really the point. I think it highly unlikely that any one of these players were able to pull this off.

But doesn't it make you wonder--REAALLYY wonder--why the "professional journalists" haven't done or said anything about this? Because it seems to me that they've benefitted quite a bit from the crisis, as well.
Posted by: Michael / 2/16/2009 12:31:00 AM

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