What I'd like to know is whether this is a real story with a basis in fact. If it isn't, what was that US representative talking about? If it is a real story, shouldn't our press with all their expert reporters and fact checkers have mentioned this just a bit more? I know they were plenty busy in Alaska poring over hospital birth records and all that, but surely not all of the 4th estate was so occupied.
Just what the heck happened in September 2008? Was it financial or political?
Via Instapundit, there is an update:
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.
Not that economic warfare caused the crisis, really, as the article notes. We had real problems that were going to harm us. But economic terrorism made the crisis worse and aimed to make it much worse.
It seems like the Congressman noted in that early report must have heard about this investigation in early stages. What I really want to know is whether we consider this an act of war, whether we are working to defend ourselves from similar attacks (our spending binge doesn't give me confidence on this front), and whether we are going after whoever did this with whatever means we have? Do we know who did this?
And what was their objective? Did they really want to collapse the world economy, just ours, or even just influence our election? I assume the economic "weapon" was not something that could be calibrated enough to know what the attacker would get.
UPDATE: I'd like to note that I have no way to judge the reliability of this report. The Washington Times article cites someone who thinks the idea that we were attacked is not demonstrated by the proof offered. Nor can I judge whether we are still under attack. But a weapon of monetary destruction could be just as damaging as the WMD we worry about jihadi enemies using. I do find it hard to believe that anybody but a state actor could pull this off, so if jihadis are behind it, they are within a government and not sitting in a cave with dial-up connections. And even if Russia or China, or another state would be hurt, too, as collateral damage in an attack on America and the West, fanatics could believe it is acceptable damage if they believe it will only hurt them but crush us. They don't even have to be right to believe we would be crushed, remember, to act on those beliefs.
UPDATE: Oh, and the useful idiots who shaped the battlefield--if we were a battlefield.
