The financial crisis was entirely foreseeable....

The financial crisis was entirely foreseeable....

Everything Happening Now Was Planned Before the Barbaric Inside Job of 9/11....

Special preface to my friends in the military, law enforcement and intelligence and other government servants: You are sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution wherever you are...., and the facts below may help you do so.....

We’ve been told that “9/11 changed everything” and that we’re living in “a post-911 world”.

We’ve been told that what our government is doing now has been rendered necessary by the urgent post-9/11 threat from terrorists.

In reality, however, virtually everything happening now was planned before 9/11. Please see for yourself:

• The government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this)

• The Patriot Act was planned before 9/11 (and see this). Indeed, former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig:

After 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

(4:30 into this video).

• Government plans, exercises or drills to detain American citizens who opposed war were also drawn up before 9/11, as was a bill allowing the permanent detention by the Attorney General of aliens convicted of no crimes, with no judicial review

• The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see this and this)

• The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might “have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.” And see this.

• Cheney made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: “Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq … to secure control of its oil.” (remember that Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

• The decision to threaten to bomb Iran was made before 9/11, and the Christian Science Monitor notes that the U.S. has been claiming for more than 30 years that Iran was on the verge of nuclear capability
  

• Wars throughout the Middle East and North Africa to effect regime were planned before 9/11

• Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarchy long before 9/11
  

• Cheney and Rumsfeld actively generated fake intelligence which exaggerated the threat from an enemy in order to justify huge amounts of military spending long before 9/11. And see this

• America played dirty games to justify wars before 9/11.....
• 
  

The Core of the Patriot Act Was Drafted in 1995 … By the Skunk Joe Biden....

Everyone knows that the Patriot Act was drafted before 9/11.

But few know that it was Joe Biden who drafted the core provisions which were included in that bill … in 1995.

CNET reported in 2008:

Months before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, Biden introduced another bill called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995. It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of “terrorism” that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detention of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review.* The Center for National Security Studies said the bill would erode “constitutional and statutory due process protections” and would “authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations.”

Biden himself draws parallels between his 1995 bill and its 2001 cousin. “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill,” he said when the Patriot Act was being debated, according to the New Republic, which described him as “the Democratic Party’s de facto spokesman on the war against terrorism.”

***

Biden’s proposal probably helped to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration’s Patriot Act.

The Center for National Securities reported in 1995:

On February 10, 1995, a counterterrorism bill drafted by the Clinton
Administration was introduced in the Senate as S. 390 and in the House of
Representatives as H.R. 896.

The Clinton bill is a mixture of: provisions eroding constitutional and
statutory due process protections, selective federalization — on political
grounds — of state crimes (minus state due process rules), discredited
ideas from the Reagan and Bush Administrations, and the extension of some of
the worst elements of crime bills of the recent past.

The legislation would:

1. authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to
investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations;

2. repeal the ancient provision barring the U.S. military from civilian
law enforcement;

3. expand a pre-trial detention scheme that puts the burden of proof on
the accused;

4. loosen the carefully-crafted rules governing federal wiretaps, in
violation of the Fourth Amendment;

5. establish special courts that would use secret evidence to order the
deportation of persons convicted of no crimes, in violation of basic
principles of due process;

6. permit permanent detention by the Attorney General of aliens convicted
of no crimes, with no judicial review;

7. give the President unreviewable power to criminalize fund-raising for
lawful activities associated with unpopular causes;

8. renege on the Administration’s approval in the last Congress of a
provision to insure that the FBI would not investigate based on First
Amendment activities; and

9. resurrect the discredited ideological visa denial provisions of the
McCarran Walter Act to bar foreign speakers.

* Note: The CNET article contains a typographical error, using the word “detection” instead of “detention” in the sentence: “allowing permanent detection of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review”. Not only does this make no sense, but a review of the bill confirms that it provided for permanent detention.....

The financial crisis was entirely foreseeable....

Foreseeable or Not?

April:

Whenever there is a disaster, those responsible claim it was “unforeseeable” so as to escape blame.

For example:

• It happened with 9/11

• It happened with the BP oil spill (see this, this, and this)

• It happened with the Japanese nuclear accident

The big boys gamble with our lives and our livelihoods, because they make a killing by taking huge risks and cutting costs. And when things inevitably go South, they aren’t held responsible (other than a slap on the wrist), and may even be bailed out by the government.

But surely the financial crisis was different. After all, Wall Street executives and politicians say that the financial crisis wasn’t foreseeable. .

Actually, it might have been slightly foreseeable for a little while before the financial crisis.

We’ve Known for Thousands of Years

We’ve known for literally thousands of years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. .

We’ve known for 1,900 years that that rampant inequality destroys societies.

We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that monopolies and the political influence which accompanies too much power in too few hands is dangerous for free markets.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that trust is vital for a healthy economy.

We’ve known since the 1930s Great Depression that separating depository banking from speculative investment banking is key to economic stability. See this, this, this and this.

We’ve known since 1988 that quantitative easing doesn’t work to rescue an ailing economy.

We’ve known since 1993 that derivatives such as credit default swaps – if not reined in – could take down the economy. And see this.

We’ve known since 1998 that crony capitalism destroys even the strongest economies, and that economies that are capitalist in name only need major reforms to create accountability and competitive markets.

We’ve known since 2007 or earlier that lax oversight of hedge funds could blow up the economy.

And we knew before the 2008 financial crash and subsequent bailouts that:

• The easy credit policy of the Fed and other central banks, the failure to regulate the shadow banking system, and “the use of gimmicks and palliatives” by central banks hurt the economy

• Anything other than (1) letting asset prices fall to their true market value, (2) increasing savings rates, and (3) forcing companies to write off bad debts “will only make things worse”

• Bailouts of big banks harm the economy

• The Fed and other central banks were simply transferring risk from private banks to governments, which could lead to a sovereign debt crisis

Given the insane levels of debt, rampant inequality, currency debasement, failure to punish financial fraud, growth of the too big to fails, repeal of Glass-Steagall, refusal to rein in derivatives, crony capitalism and other shenanigans … the financial crisis was entirely foreseeable....