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Full Title: "Did China or Jihadists try to bankrupt America? Pentagon report reveals financial terrorists may have triggered economic crash" Terrorists and other 'financial enemies' were likely responsible for the near collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008, a new Pentagon report has concluded. The 2009 report, Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses, said financial terrorism by Jihadists or countries such as China may have cost the global economy $50 trillion in a series of co-ordinated strikes against the U.S. economy. In an astonishing conclusion, the report claims two unidentified traders deliberately devalued trillions of dollars' worth of stocks at...

Bill Gertz has an article running in this morning’s Washington Times, “Financial terrorism suspected in ’08 economic crash,” on a report prepared by the Department of Defense in June 2009. In the report, financial analyst Kevin Freeman argues that the 2008 economic crisis was assisted by outside forces. What the study (which we are providing a copy of exclusively here at PJ Tatler at the conclusion of this post) investigates is how outside forces could have helped things along by manipulating oil prices, naked short selling of U.S. financial firms (e.g. Bear Stearns), and attacking the U.S. dollar. Gertz reports:...

One has to wonder: Did our economy fall down the stairs or was it pushed? Three questions remain: Is not a threat to destroy financial markets along with acting intentionally and directly opposite what you claim needs to happen an act of financial terrorism? If it is an act of financial terrorism, why has it been ignored for more than a year instead of leading to a full investigation and hearing in front of a Grand Jury? And finally, is the same thing happening - this time hidden because we can no longer see Federal Reserve liquidity actions in the...

Late Last night when I originally posted this story it did not include the following...

RIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT HUSSEIN: "A $550 BILLION ELECTRONIC RUN ON THE BANKS" This is un-frickin-believable. The financial crisis was deliberate, planned, staged. Who made the run? "Someone threw us in the middle of the Atlantic ocean without a life raft. We are trying to determine which is the closest shore and whether there is any chance in the world to swim that far. We don't know." Electronic Run On Banks - $550 Billion Withdrawn In 1 Hour, Federal Reserve Halts Withdrawals - US Economy Would Have Collapsed Capitalism Gone Wild hat tip Cathy Rep. Paul Kanjorski of...

Any honest assessment must include the role that credit-default swaps have played in this mess: it’s the elephant in the room, the $30 trillion market that people do not want to talk about. C.D.S.’s have already figured prominently in taxpayer bailouts. The $150 billion rescue of the American International Group, for example, came about because of swaps the insurer had written on mortgage securities. And the $100 billion taxpayer backstop handed to Bank of America on Jan. 16 had a good bit to do with soured credit-default swaps that the bank inherited when it acquired Merrill Lynch. “Credit-default swaps written...

January’s Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was even worse than expected. Seasonally adjusted employment fell by 598,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rose to 7.6%. In his Saturday address that followed this news, President Barack Obama was correct in pointing out that 3.6 million jobs have been lost since the recession, at least as “defined” by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), began. The recession, as normal people define it (”a decline in gross domestic product [GDP] for two or more consecutive quarters”), began in the third quarter of 2008 and became official...

At a conference in Dubai, NYU's Nouriel Roubini said credit crisis losses could hit $3.6 trillion, up from $1 trillion worth of writedowns and losses estimated by Bloomberg to have already roiled the global financial system.Bloomberg reports Roubini says that if losses are really as large as he fears “it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion. This is a systemic banking crisis.”  He also warns the disease is spreading to Europe, where the Royal Bank of Scotland Group faces an estimated $41 billion loss. Roubini also said the global...

Barack Obama's White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, told business leaders assembled by the Wall Street Journal in November that the economic crisis facing the country is "an opportunity to do things you could not do before." That has to be one of the most chilling statements I have ever heard uttered by an American political official in my lifetime. It ranks right up there with the transparent arrogance of Clinton administration hotshot Paul Begala's July 1998 explanation of the use of executive orders by the president to go over the heads of Congress: "Stroke of the pen. Law...

As much as $75 billion of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. value was destroyed by the unplanned and chaotic form of the firm's bankruptcy filing in September, according to an internal analysis by the company's restructuring advisers. A less-hurried Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing likely would have preserved tens of billions of dollars of value, according to a three-month study by the advisory firm, Alvarez & Marsal. An orderly filing would have enabled Lehman to sell some assets outside of federal bankruptcy-court protection, and would have given it time to try to unwind its derivatives portfolio in a way that might have...

Is the author of this complaint any relation to Madoff. They appear to have the same last name.

One of my favorite conservative heroes in the Senate, GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, tries to rouse lame duck President Bush from his stupor and urges him to exercise his constitutional duties. It’s an exercise in futility, but a good try nonetheless. November 14, 2008 The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear President Bush: I am deeply concerned that the execution of your economic stabilization plan by Secretary Paulson represents an unprecedented governmental intervention in the economy that threatens our nation’s long heritage of limited government and commitment to the free...

Reforms are defusing the danger in the credit-default swap market. AS THE GLOBAL CREDIT CRISIS GRINDS ON WITHOUT seeming relief, worries grow that a mishap in the once obscure credit-default swap market could trigger an even more lethal financial meltdown. ..... It's easy to understand why credit-default swaps, which have been called financial weapons of mass destruction, can engender hysteria. These quasi-insurance policies allow buyers to insure all manner of debt instruments, including corporate and sovereign-nation bonds, various bond indexes and securitizations, against any credit losses from defaults. Demand for them grew explosively during the past decade's credit boom. According...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

RUSH: I want to expand my thought process on this whole Madoff thing and take it into the realm of the current economic crisis, because, quite naturally, all this fascinates me. It's about money. Well, it's all of our money here, folks, that's literally being tinkled away, and I've been asking myself, "How in the world did we get to this point when it all seemed to happen so overnight?" Now, I understand that there were foundational problems that we were being told of as far back as last summer and in spring, but if you search your memory bank...

<p>Forget Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion fraud. The SEC, and the press, should be focused on short-sellers’ attempts to destroy the U.S. banking system, Cramer said.</p> <p>Just in the 12 days leading up to the Nov. 24 Citigroup bailout, short selling accounted for over 49% of the total trading volume in that company’s stock. For JPMorgan Chase , it was 41%. Bank of America : 35%. Goldman Sachs : 40%. Morgan Stanley : 37%. Wachovia : 42%. Wells Fargo : 42%.</p>

Plunge also due to concerns about Mitsubishi investment; 'you can short Morgan Stanley today' The stock price of Morgan Stanley plunged as much as 25% on Thursday. The drop was attributed to the end of the SEC’s ban on short-selling of financial stock, as well as concern about the status of a planned $9 billion investment by Japan’s top bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. “There is continued unease about the prospects of the Mitsubishi deal going through, and that has also impacted (their) credit default spread,” said Matt McCormick, Portfolio Manager and banking analyst at Bahl & Gaynor Investment Counsel...

Two days after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sought bankruptcy protection, an explosive rumor spread that another big Wall Street firm, Morgan Stanley, was on the brink of failure. The chatter on trading desks that Sept. 17 was that Deutsche Bank AG had yanked a $25 billion credit line to the firm That wasn't true, but it helped trigger a cascade of bearish bets against Morgan Stanley. Chief Executive Officer John Mack complained bitterly that profit-hungry traders were sowing panic. Yet he lacked a critical piece of information: Who exactly was behind those damaging trades? Trading records reviewed by The Wall...

Abstract: Five of the world's richest hedge fund managers, including George Soros, the man who the broke the Bank of England, have been called to account by US politicians for their role in the collapse of the global financial system. The quintet – including John Paulson, who made $3.7bn (£2.49bn) last year betting against the US mortgage market – were grilled over their roles in buying unregulated derivatives products, which some politicians believe contributed to the financial markets' meltdown. The men, who each earned more than $1bn each last year, were called to account by Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, who...

George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, testified at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Thursday. Highlights: * Said "a deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out." * Said hedge funds were an integral part of the financial market bubble which now has burst. * Said hedge funds will be "decimated" by the current financial crisis and forced to shrink their portfolios by 50-75 percent.