Thanks a lot guys.
Posted on 02/13/2010 4:37:07 PM PST by BIOCHEMKY
Thursday [Feb. 17, 2009] when Washington’s new director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the “violent extremism” of the 1920s and 1930s.
(Excerpt) Read more at eu-digest.com ...
"U.S. Intel Chief's Shocking Warning: Wall Street's Disaster Has Spawned Our Greatest Terrorist Threat"
http://www.alternet.org/rights/127252/u.s._intel_chief's_shocking_warning:_wall_street's_disaster_has_spawned_our_greatest_terrorist_threat/
It turns out that Wall Street, rather than Islamic jihad, has produced our most dangerous terrorists. We will see accelerated plant and retail closures, inflation, an epidemic of bankruptcies, new rounds of foreclosures, bread lines, unemployment surpassing the levels of the Great Depression and, as Blair fears, social upheaval.
The specter of social unrest was raised at the U.S. Army War College in November in a monograph [click on Policypointers' pdf link to see the report] titled "Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development." The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a "violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States," which could be provoked by "unforeseen economic collapse," "purposeful domestic resistance," "pervasive public health emergencies" or "loss of functioning political and legal order." The "widespread civil violence," the document said, "would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security."
"An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home," it went on.
See also "American International Group [AIG], Inc."
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/american_international_group/index.html?inline=nyt-org
Interestingly...
Though its name is American, the company is rooted in Asia. According to company lore, its founder, Cornelius Vander Starr, a World War I veteran, traveled to Asia with only 300 Japanese yen (less than $3 today) in his pocket and started the firm in Shanghai in 1919. With a partner, he sold marine and fire insurance and expanded rapidly throughout the Philippines, Indonesia and China by hiring locals as agents and managers, a business strategy A.I.G. uses today. Nearly half of A.I.G.’s 116,000 direct employees — about 62,000 people — are in Asia.
A.I.G.’s problems rest in its London-based financial products unit, part of its financial services group, which is exposed to securities tied to the value of home loans. The financial products group sold credit-default swaps, complex financial contracts allowing buyers to insure securities backed by mortgages. As home values have fallen, the value of the underlying mortgages has declined, and A.I.G. has had to reduce the value of the securities on its books.
The company’s distress followed an unusual period of turmoil at the company. Early in 2005, questions arose about financial transactions that had the effect of making the company’s earnings look better. Mr. Greenberg resigned as chief executive after regulators sent a wave of subpoenas to A.I.G.; eventually it restated earnings covering a five-year period. -------------------------------------------------------
See also Breaking News:
"Wall Street Helped to Mask Debts Shaking Europe"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?ref=global-home
"As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group [the infamous AIG], financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere."
Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.
As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.
Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November — three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety — a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.
The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.
It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.
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And the beat goes on...and the beat goes on...
the justification for the nation police force separate and new that reports to O
Just wait until we have a Depression equal or worse than 1929. There are 650M gun owners in the US. I believe there would be open revolt this time going all of the way to D.C.
Yeah, America could do something like elect a Marxist president.
Yep it’s comming soon.....Just wait until barry start issuing more of his Executive Orders......or Kingly Edicts...
or replace teddy’s seat with a republican :)
There may be 650 million guns in the USA, but there are only around 300 million people. Maybe half of them own guns.
Did you notice that AIG is NOT really as “American” of a company as the American people and the world have been led to believe?
It was founded in Asia (its roots are actually in Asia) where it directly employs half of its work force.
There are crooks and con-men overseas as well as right down the street. That’s quite beside the point.
Not likely, and here’s why IMO: the Great Depression was a worldwide phenomenon. Governments worldwide were pursuing policies that made matters worse. China, Singapore, Australia, Canada, and Norway are not. Germany would be in good shape if it wasn’t for Greece weighing down the Eurozone.
The economy in the US is going to stay stagnant for some time though, but I doubt we will see Depression levels. Frankly these Goldman Sachs conspiracy theories keep getting more and more far-fetched.
What was he insuring them with, the 300 yen? Has it always been a fraud?
The article is one year old......
To refresh our memories, video of then Junior senator from Illinois Obama proposing the need for a national police force:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEnNYN8sKbQ
Note also:
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased INTERNATIONAL TENSIONS or ECONOMIC or FINANCIAL CRISIS.
Today America is under increasing INTERNATIONAL TENSIONS and is reeling from ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CRISES.
That makes it 150M (50% of the population) that are ready for the upheaval coming this way.
“Frankly these Goldman Sachs conspiracy theories keep getting more and more far-fetched.”
One West Bank is the new name for Indymac Federal Bank, which was recently sold [March 2009] to a consortium of investors. The consortium is headed by Goldman Sachs VP Steven Mnuchin (also of Dune Capital Management in New York) and also includes hedge fund operator J. Christopher Flowers, who has specialized in distressed bank purchases, and hedge fund operators, big time Goldman Sachs investors, and billionaires George Soros and John Paulson.
Investors have injected $1.5 billion into the bank on top of the $10.5 billion paid by the FDIC. That raises the banks tangible common equity to over 9% versus an industry average of 4-6% range. THE GOVERNMENT WILL ALSO SHARE IN FUTURE LOAN LOSSES.
“Indymac Purchased by Mnuchin, Paulson & Co. and Others “
Now, One West Bank is benefiting from forced “short sales” of properties with foreclosed mortgages BECAUSE in addition to receiving the reduced sale price from the new property owner, it also receives 80% of the difference between the original sale price and the discounted sale price from the FDIC and it receives payment on a promisary note from the original property owner. This makes it IMPOSSIBLE for One West Bank to EVER lose ANYTHING on any real estate sale it finances.
See video:
http://www.thinkbigworksmall.com/mypage/player/tbws/23088/964766
“One West Bank”
http://www.bestcashcow.com/banks/article/bankman/one-west-bank
The Article is still one year old......
“has it [AIG] always been a fraud?”
AIG has had serious financial problems known and acted on by American government officials since at least 2005.
American International Group was the largest insurance company in the United States before it suddenly collapsed in September 2008 under the weight of bad bets it made insuring mortgage-backed securities. The company was bailed out by the Federal Reserve, but even after an initial infusion of $85 billion, losses continued to mount and in November the Treasury announced a new rescue package that brought the total cost to $150 billion.
On March 1, 2009, the federal government agreed to provide an additional $30 billion to A.I.G. and loosen the terms of its huge loan to the insurer, even as the insurance giant reported a $61.7 billion loss, the biggest quarterly loss in history.
The intervention would be the fourth time the United States has had to help the giant insurer avert bankruptcy. The government already owns nearly 80 percent of the A.I.G.’s holding company as a result of earlier interventions, which included a $60 billion loan, a $40 billion purchase of preferred shares and $50 billion to soak up the company’s toxic assets.
State insurance regulators have said repeatedly that A.I.G.’s core insurance operations were sound — that the financial disaster was caused primarily by a small unit that dealt in exotic derivatives. But state regulatory filings show that A.I.G.’s individual insurance companies have been doing an unusual volume of business with each other for many years — investing in each other’s stocks; borrowing from each other’s investment portfolios; and guaranteeing each other’s insurance policies. Many of the insurance companies have reduced their own exposure by sending their risks to other companies, often under the same A.I.G. umbrella. This practice may have put billions more at risk.
In December (2009) the company, after dropping “A.I.G.” from its sales brochures in June, leapfrogged its competitors and reclaimed a title it held for many years before its bailout...two [of its] subsidiaries, Western National Life and First SunAmerica. The booming annuity sales are a bright spot for American International Group, which must raise cash to pay back the federal government.
Yet even as the biggest banks repay their government debt in what is being heralded as a successful rescue program, A.I.G. looks increasingly like a long-term ward of the state.
Mr. Greenberg, who joined A.I.G. in 1960, focused on making giant commercial deals, increasing the company’s share of the life insurance business and writing what were, decades ago, unusual types of coverage, like insurance against kidnapping and protection from suits against a company’s officers and directors.
A.I.G.’s problems rest in its London-based financial products unit, part of its financial services group, which is exposed to securities tied to the value of home loans. The financial products group sold credit-default swaps, complex financial contracts allowing buyers to insure securities backed by mortgages. As home values have fallen, the value of the underlying mortgages has declined, and A.I.G. has had to reduce the value of the securities on its books.
The company’s distress followed an unusual period of turmoil at the company. Early in 2005, questions arose about financial transactions that had the effect of making the company’s earnings look better. Mr. Greenberg resigned as chief executive after regulators sent a wave of subpoenas to A.I.G.; eventually it restated earnings covering a five-year period.
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