http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist ... cre-begins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinnytsia_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurapaty
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/worl ... cle/374226
Financial topics
Re: Financial topics
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 8-0007.pdf
It was never about you one fine day but the other mirror of stacking agenda 21.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdnVAi64l4E
Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding.
Wisdom is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. All her paths lead to peace.
(Proverbs iii.13, 18 and 17, rearranged)
It was never about you one fine day but the other mirror of stacking agenda 21.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdnVAi64l4E
Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding.
Wisdom is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. All her paths lead to peace.
(Proverbs iii.13, 18 and 17, rearranged)
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Re: Financial topics
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/worl ... cle/374226
Johnys new friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNzIKoAy2pk
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Johnys new friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNzIKoAy2pk
ZMLP YMLP COPX SH BBEP CLMT CORR CLM
DPM EROC F GE KMI LINE LNCO MCEP NYMT
PGH PSEC QRE RFIL SGU MLPL VNRAP VNR
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Re: Financial topics
review on right and wrong views covered from 12/28/2008
Failure to clarify by the Democrats own liberal agenda, which is fact, and the bloggers dangerous ability to see ahead of the curve in my opinion to date. Israel has been more than restraint to date. Even other Arab community's warned do not pull the wolves tail. It is really about a few idiots with too much money on there hands being manipulated by older agenda's overall. Basically it follows the money and clearly understand its Politics, likewise, can have important financial implications. In 1998, Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), a Connecticut hedge fund, lost $3 billion on Russian bonds. This caused the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank to “suggest” to the firm’s limited partners that they invest more capital to avoid destabilizing the world financial system. LTCM, it turns out, was making very thin margins on their trades, and they had to bet huge amounts to generate a decent return. They got their money on loan from limited partners, Wall Street banks, and wealthy individuals. LTCM had leveraged over a trillion dollars on their bets on where the markets were going.
An interesting feature of this crisis is how poorly LTCM assessed political risk. The Russian bond default that triggered LTCM’s collapse did not arise because Moscow was unable to pay back the bondholders. Rather, the problem was a political split inside the Russian government. One faction simply refused to pay.
More recently, terrorist attacks beginning with 9/11 have had little economic or financial impact. After 9/11, the NYSE was closed for only four days. Within a year, the job market on Wall Street (and the New York City real estate market) was again booming. Even the New York firms hardest hit showed extraordinary resilience. Cantor Fitzgerald, Aon, and Marsh & McLennan lost hundreds of employees in the WTC attacks. Yet they all came back, most in weeks, some in months. The resilience of markets and business is not to be underestimated.
Financial and Economic Systems
It is important to distinguish between financial and economic systems. This distinction is central to understanding the growing opportunities for financial warfare, as distinct from classic economic warfare. The economic system deals with the hard and soft outputs of the economy—that is, goods and services. The financial system deals with money and credit. In the modern financial system these can be very complicated. Bank credit, money transfers, stocks, bonds, and derivatives are the “stuff” of the financial system. It is a system built on confidence. There is trust that loans will be paid, that money transferred to an account will actually get there, and that money once placed in an account will not suddenly “disappear.”
The difficult question is the relationship between these two systems. After the 500-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on October 19, 1987, the Dow recovered to its pre-crash levels by the second half of 1989. The huge one-day hit in 1987 had little lasting effect on the real economy. At times the real economy can slow down, measured by GDP decline and increased unemployment, while financial markets boom. At other times, the underlying economics can be good, but finance bad—as in 1987.
Distinguishing between the two systems is important. Financial shocks tend to be more immediate and concentrated in time. They can also be more targeted, affecting particular groups. Economic shocks usually affect broad segments of the population; unemployment goes up or goods are in short supply. Financial shocks are usually more concentrated. For example, when Enron collapsed in 2000, those most affected were not the average citizen, or even the average stockholder. It was the employees and shareowners who disproportionately suffered loss.
Financial Warfare
Financial warfare is an expanding arena of conflict. Understanding financial vulnerabilities requires thinking across departments that have not historically been well coordinated—e.g., Defense, Treasury, and the intelligence community. Since money in the modern era can be instantly moved electronically, even the appearance of a threat to accounts can lead to large outflows into safer banks in safer countries. Eisenhower ordered the Treasury Department to dump British Sterling on the international market. This depressed the value of the British pound, causing a shortage of reserves needed to pay for imports. If this financial situation had continued for much longer, it would have also increased British inflation. The message quickly got through to London, which, along with Paris, soon pulled out of the Canal.
In the aftermath of Iran’s seizure of U.S. hostages in 1979, President Jimmy Carter ordered Iranian government bank accounts frozen in the U.S. and the UK. Recently, the U.S. has acted to block North Korean bank accounts linked to illegal activities and the financing of its nuclear program. The U.S. Treasury Department blocked $25 million in accounts held in Banco Delta Asia in Macao. This Department also pressured other banks to stop dealing with the banks of Iran and Syria, as well as those of certain Russian companies involved in the arms trade. This pressure has made it more difficult for them to use the global financial system for letters of credit, trade finance, and remittances from their overseas citizens. It also has increased the risk premium and interest rates on any financing they are able to secure from other sources.
A U.S. crackdown on Iran’s Bank Sederat involved getting foreign banks including some of the world’s largest banks—UBS and Credit Suisse of Switzerland and ABN Amro of the Netherlands—to agree not to conduct business with this bank or risk being cut off from the U.S. financial system. U.S. actions have involved both official sanctions undertaken by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and informal actions intended to sap business confidence in dealing with Iran.
Most major banks fear “headline risk.” Having their names in major media for dealing with Iran’s atomic programs, for example, is likely to scare off their regular corporate customers. Informal pressure has proven to be a partial solution to hidden dealings, in that a bank has to consider the costs of dealing with a company or bank linked to Iran or North Korea. In the 1990s, many foreign banks easily bypassed oil sanctions against Iraq which were incorrectly thought to be governed by strict UN supervision of Baghdad’s accounts. The 2005 Volcker Report concluded that Saddam Hussein, using surcharges and kickbacks, diverted $1.8 billion involving more than 2,000 companies that engaged in illicit activities.
U.S. Vulnerability to Financial Attacks
How would the U.S. financial system react to a WMD attack on a major hub, such as New York? Is enough being done to harden and back up financial systems so that a cascading set of failures would not spread to other markets, with dire political implications?
One reason Wall Street responded so quickly after 9/11 was that planning for a possible attack had been undertaken earlier. In 1997, a war game of a Wall Street attack was played. Leaders from the White House, Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Pentagon, and the intelligence community came together with leaders of Wall Street’s largest financial institutions to simulate a terrorist attack designed to disrupt the U.S. economy. The game was played in the WTC’s north tower, and some of the actual players were working there on 9/11 and were killed in the attack. The terrorist scenario was nothing like what actually happened on 9/11. The war game attacks focused on key nodes, like computer clearing houses and telephone switching centers, whereas on 9/11 a primitive yet highly effective attack was launched. Nonetheless, the lessons drawn from this game included the need to disperse key facilities away from lower Manhattan, as well as to back up important data at remote locations. All of this proved highly useful to the quick restoration of Wall Street on 9/11.
Since 9/11 the concern to reduce the U.S. financial system’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks has greatly increased. Virtually every major U.S. bank and financial institution has thought through its vulnerabilities. In addition, the Treasury Department has taken major steps to ensure that financial systems are more redundant and hardened and that back-up alternates are ready to take over in case of disaster. Sarbanes-Oxley and other legislation require financial institutions to monitor carefully their internal processes. Basle II, from the Bank for International Settlements in Basle Switzerland, reinforces this trend by requiring banks to reserve capital against so-called operational risks, i.e. internal process breakdowns such as those from cyber attacks or inside theft.
In addition, the pattern in the New York financial industry is to disperse back office operations to New Jersey and elsewhere. The hedge fund business is concentrated in nearby Fairfield County, Connecticut. The pattern from San Francisco to Miami is to shed high-cost downtown locations as much as possible. These trends have the combined effect of reducing the U.S. financial system’s vulnerability to terrorist attack. However, interdependencies among the financial system and other complementing systems remain. The electrical and telephone grids, in particular, are essential for the smooth operation of the financial system. One of the peculiar features of the New York financial market is that 40 percent of the workforce uses mass transit to get to work. In the event of a bio-attack in New York, this might be a major vulnerability. But in sum, the U.S. financial system is getting much harder to take down.
Terrorist Networks
The chief problems of denying funding to terrorist groups are that the amount of money they use is small, and the networks they rely on are mass market in character, and thus difficult to monitor without specific intelligence. Terrorist cells are unlikely to use large international networks for international funds transfer. Reports are that the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka have used on-line eBay and PayPal accounts for money laundering, arms trafficking, and other activities. Such small accounts are very difficult to monitor.
Terrorist funding is hard to disrupt, but even partial successes can have significant payoffs. One of the major lessons learned from cracking down on terrorist funding after 9/11 was the critical importance of the timing of financial attacks. Freezing suspects’ bank accounts requires worldwide coordination, since the seizures must come down nearly simultaneously.
Financial Warfare as a Strategy
One criticism of U.S. offensive financial warfare is that it is unlikely to be effective. Iran in 2007, for example, earns about $300 million a day in oil and gas exports. This money flow is not the object of financial actions because it is tied to the legitimate sale of oil and gas to customers around the world. The amount of money blocked in bank accounts held in the name of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, for example, is small compared to these larger flows of money coming from the energy exports.
But this view fails to put financial warfare in a strategic context. Blocking bank accounts of key groups and individuals puts the spotlight on them and thereby increases the risks to any company or government doing business with them. Financial sanctions legitimize additional actions, both financial and non-financial, which can ratchet up more pressure. This is where financial warfare and military strategy converge. Most people think of financial warfare as a substitute for military action, which it is, up to a point. But after a point it becomes a complement rather than a substitute.
The most intense kinds of financial warfare, such as blocking all monetary transactions and flows to and from a country and its citizens, may only make sense under conditions of war. But there is a large spectrum of intermediate cases between small financial sanctions which substitute for kinetic attacks and “all out” financial warfare complementing military attack. And it is this spectrum that gives us the key insight that financial warfare as a strategy is best viewed in an escalation framework. It has two separate effects. The first is the direct pain it causes to individuals and companies whose accounts are blocked or confiscated. The second impact comes from its place as a “next-step” action which is considered reasonable and justifiable. The next step builds on a sequence of actions which raise the bar of what are seen to be sensible and legitimate measures to right some wrong or to force a change in behavior. If the current step does not do this, the next step might. Placing financial warfare in an escalation framework has several important aspects. It is more focused than traditional economic warfare. It is, therefore, more likely to be considered acceptable in a political sense. It was the Iraqi people who suffered most from the embargo placed on Iraq from 1991-2003; Saddam and his cronies bypassed the embargo.
Blocking bank accounts and disrupting money flows is a sharp instrument that goes after those in power who are calling the shots. In many respects, conventional economic warfare is like carpet bombing; financial warfare is like precision strike. Neither one guarantees success, but the latter approach is usually more attractive. Another aspect of placing financial warfare in an escalation framework is that it doesn’t just play the game, it reshapes it. The U.S.’s use of informal financial pressures is a case in point. Over 40 major global banks and financial institutions have cut off or sharply reduced their dealings with the Iranian government and businesses at the urging of U.S. Treasury and State Department officials. This is action that goes beyond official UN sanctions intended to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. Consider a bank that serves as a financial intermediary for Iran or North Korea. It now has to evaluate the reputation risks to its entire portfolio in dealing with such “hot” clients. Again, credit is confidence. If other banks in the Interbank market (banks making short-term loans to other banks) view it as taking major risks by its dealings with Iran or North Korea, they are likely to be cut off.
Seen this way, financial warfare is a consensus-building device. It sets up a coalition made up of allies and those sitting on the fence who will have to decide whether to honor the sanctions. Financial warfare has an element of risk communication as well, both for the target and others in the network. According to Stuart Levey, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, “All the banks we’ve talked to are reducing significantly their exposure to Iranian business. It’s been a universal response. They all recognize the risks—some because of what we’ve told them and some on their own. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see the dangers.”
Viewed as a “next step” in a dynamic escalation, financial warfare may be much more effective in building pressure than is commonly believed. A good case can be made that North Korea decided to test its atom bomb when it did, in October 2006, because of the asset freeze placed on accounts Banco Delta Asia in Macao by Chinese authorities, at U.S. urging. Financial warfare could produce explosive effects, quite literally. This is another reason for looking at financial warfare as an escalation process: the failure to estimate and analyze its potential effects can lead to serious mistakes and big surprises. It can only be appreciated with a thorough understanding of it as a dynamic process.
Information Operations and Elite Targeting
Financial warfare complements military operations as well as information operations. When combined with advances in social network mapping, it can give a highly detailed picture of an elite’s communication and financial structure that can be used for targeting. Communication and software tools now exist to analyze connections in vast networks of heterogeneous information, such as financial transactions, mobile telephone calls, e-mail, and air travel. This gigantic information pool can be a source of knowledge about a nation’s elite, where they stash their money, who they talk to, and their position in a social hierarchy. The key to doing this lies in constructing overlays of these datasets to visualize the various connections.
Watching how money flows out of a country in a crisis can be an important tip-off to who is in the know and who is at least partially responsible for national decisions. Carried to the next step, this can be combined with precise military attacks to go after a nation’s elite. For example, tracking mobile telephone calls can reveal things like where the elite live, their vacation homes, and their travel patterns. Financial tracking of their bank accounts can reveal where they keep their money and who has access to their accounts. This creates the conditions for potentially ruinous attacks with far-reaching social implications on the national leadership. Were a national elite’s overseas bank accounts frozen and their homes targeted with cruise missiles, simultaneously, a hyper-decapitation attack could destroy a nation’s leadership. Clearly, this represents a large escalation. But there are many possibilities which fall short of this, and these constitute an important type of strategy: counter-elite targeting. Counter elite targeting has been considered in the past, both in the Cold War, with nuclear weapons, and more recently in conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq. But the 21st century is likely to see considerably more applications of it.
Spoofing—sending false signals of increased military and financial pressure—could be used to map out the crisis response patterns of a national elite, who they call, and where they send their money. This could be an intelligence treasure-trove of information. It could also be an input to information operations designed to make certain individuals, groups, or companies “suspect” in the eyes of a leader. This could undermine confidence in the regime. Seen as an escalation process, this focuses attention on actions which fall short of all-out attacks. These lower-level or intermediate actions are likely to provide U.S. decision-makers with a range of options between doing nothing and all-out attacks.
Developments in technology, intelligence, and finance are converging, creating more favorable conditions for financial warfare. More systematic thought should be given to this important subject.
Command and Control
Financial warfare blurs the military and civilian spheres of conflict. It should entail cooperation among the armed services, State, Defense, Treasury, DHS, and the intelligence community. Organizational issues over authority and tasking may prove to be one of the greatest barriers to getting a coherent intellectual framework for what is going on. The challenges are difficult, but ignoring them only makes it likely that improvisation and over-compartmentalization could produce serious mistakes.
War games, appropriately designed, could go a long way to revealing some of the tensions and stresses in command and control. The Wall Street Security Exercise cited earlier had this effect. It put attention on the sensitive interface among different government agencies and was an important, if small, step in understanding the vulnerabilities of the U.S. financial system.
Conclusions
Financial warfare is likely to be an increasing form of conflict because it lies at the intersection of powerful long-term trends in technology, networks, and finance. The precise targeting feature of financial warfare, relative to conventional economic warfare, marks a significant change in the nature of conflict. This topic calls out for more thought about what is likely to be a growing use of a tactic that calls for a strategic framework to understand it.
Meanwhile
Israel will have its alleged Mossad Agent, Rahm Emanuel, who holds dual U.S./Israeli citizenship as the President's Chief of Staff. It is possible that Rahm Emanuel will make sure President Barrack's banksters orders are carried out. As one of the key members within the Administration, Rahm Emmanuel was Bill Clinton's top aid and considered ruthless in exercising his duties. He now will control access to the president and can use his discretion as to who may enter the Oval Office or be denied. This powerful position allows him to insulate Israel’s interests considering that the Israeli government leaders are apprehensive regarding Obama continuing the tradition of maintaining the same close relations Israel enjoyed since the era of the Truman Administration. Israel’s leaders have a right to be concerned based on the following:
“Obama pledges state to Palestinian leader has an article written by Aaron Klein which is posted from Jerusalem stating that President elect Barack Hussein Obama today phoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and pledged to work to establish a Palestinian state as soon as possible, a senior PA negotiator told WND. “Obama expressed his full support for a Palestinian state. He told the president (Abbas) he will continue to promote the peace process, which will end with a two state solution,” said PA’s second most senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat. “There was a flare up on Election Day when a senior Palestinian official told WND the Obama campaign urged Palestinian officials to deny and Arab media report that the then-Democratic nominee confided to Palestinian leadership that he supports that their right to a capital in eastern Jerusalem. “The report in Al-Akhbar daily, known to have close contacts to Palestinian leaders in Lebanon, claimed Obama told Abbas and Fayyad he supports the rights of the Palestinians to east Jerusalem, as well as their right to a stable, sovereign state, but he petitioned them to keep the remarks confidential. “Asked for comment by WND, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat at the time would neither confirm nor deny knowledge of Obama’s purported remarks. Abbas political adviser Namer Hamad subsequently issued a denial to reporters. “But a senior official confirmed to WND that Obama said in a July trip to the region he favored a negotiated settlement that may grant the PA control over sections of Jerusalem.” Evidently, President Obama wishes to play both sides against the middle, a tactic he used when he consistently voted “present” when difficult decisions were to be made when he was an Illinois State Senator. As a U.S. Senator, he never originated a bill, but supported every liberal far to the left of left legislation. For the latter half of his first term, he spent nearly the entire time campaigning for the office of president. There is a leading Russian political analyst, Professor Igor Panarin (PhD) who stated that the United States will be dissolved in the next couple of years or sooner, just as the Soviet Empire dissolved. On November 24, 2008 his comments were reported by Izvestia that the U.S. foreign debt has grown like an avalanche. “This is the pyramid that can only collapse.” When asked who would replace the world markets, he said "Two countries could assume this role: China, with vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia.” Asked why he expects the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Prices and unemployment are already on the rise - whole cities (like Detroit) could be left without work. By spring Obama's campaign promises will not produce miracles. He also cited the "vulnerable political set up," "lack of unified laws," and "divisions among the elite," which becomes clear in these crisis conditions. He predicted the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific Coast with its growing Chinese population, the South with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise, the Atlantic Coast, with a distinct and separate mentality, five of the poorer Central states with their large Native American population and the Northern states where the influence of Canada is strong.”[2]
No nation can continue to depend on the likes of the foreign-banker-controlled Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, which is supported by the President- Elect, a member of the CFR or our “loose cannon” of a Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paulson. It was when he stood in the well of the senate with John McCain (CFR) by his side, both supporting the bail out of the criminal banksters that run the major market institutions without even a debating the pros and cons but unfortunately they were joined by the House and the Senate membership. At that point, it became apparent that he will be nothing but a stooge for the banksters.
Four Horsemen are again getting ready to ride, leaving destruction, suffering and death in their path. Wars are man-made, and peace, when it comes, will also be man-made. Surely the challenge of war and of the armament maker is one that no intelligent or civilized being can evade.
2, This information related to Professor Igor Panarin was provided by the Freedom Fighter blog, November 25, 2008
Failure to clarify by the Democrats own liberal agenda, which is fact, and the bloggers dangerous ability to see ahead of the curve in my opinion to date. Israel has been more than restraint to date. Even other Arab community's warned do not pull the wolves tail. It is really about a few idiots with too much money on there hands being manipulated by older agenda's overall. Basically it follows the money and clearly understand its Politics, likewise, can have important financial implications. In 1998, Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), a Connecticut hedge fund, lost $3 billion on Russian bonds. This caused the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank to “suggest” to the firm’s limited partners that they invest more capital to avoid destabilizing the world financial system. LTCM, it turns out, was making very thin margins on their trades, and they had to bet huge amounts to generate a decent return. They got their money on loan from limited partners, Wall Street banks, and wealthy individuals. LTCM had leveraged over a trillion dollars on their bets on where the markets were going.
An interesting feature of this crisis is how poorly LTCM assessed political risk. The Russian bond default that triggered LTCM’s collapse did not arise because Moscow was unable to pay back the bondholders. Rather, the problem was a political split inside the Russian government. One faction simply refused to pay.
More recently, terrorist attacks beginning with 9/11 have had little economic or financial impact. After 9/11, the NYSE was closed for only four days. Within a year, the job market on Wall Street (and the New York City real estate market) was again booming. Even the New York firms hardest hit showed extraordinary resilience. Cantor Fitzgerald, Aon, and Marsh & McLennan lost hundreds of employees in the WTC attacks. Yet they all came back, most in weeks, some in months. The resilience of markets and business is not to be underestimated.
Financial and Economic Systems
It is important to distinguish between financial and economic systems. This distinction is central to understanding the growing opportunities for financial warfare, as distinct from classic economic warfare. The economic system deals with the hard and soft outputs of the economy—that is, goods and services. The financial system deals with money and credit. In the modern financial system these can be very complicated. Bank credit, money transfers, stocks, bonds, and derivatives are the “stuff” of the financial system. It is a system built on confidence. There is trust that loans will be paid, that money transferred to an account will actually get there, and that money once placed in an account will not suddenly “disappear.”
The difficult question is the relationship between these two systems. After the 500-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on October 19, 1987, the Dow recovered to its pre-crash levels by the second half of 1989. The huge one-day hit in 1987 had little lasting effect on the real economy. At times the real economy can slow down, measured by GDP decline and increased unemployment, while financial markets boom. At other times, the underlying economics can be good, but finance bad—as in 1987.
Distinguishing between the two systems is important. Financial shocks tend to be more immediate and concentrated in time. They can also be more targeted, affecting particular groups. Economic shocks usually affect broad segments of the population; unemployment goes up or goods are in short supply. Financial shocks are usually more concentrated. For example, when Enron collapsed in 2000, those most affected were not the average citizen, or even the average stockholder. It was the employees and shareowners who disproportionately suffered loss.
Financial Warfare
Financial warfare is an expanding arena of conflict. Understanding financial vulnerabilities requires thinking across departments that have not historically been well coordinated—e.g., Defense, Treasury, and the intelligence community. Since money in the modern era can be instantly moved electronically, even the appearance of a threat to accounts can lead to large outflows into safer banks in safer countries. Eisenhower ordered the Treasury Department to dump British Sterling on the international market. This depressed the value of the British pound, causing a shortage of reserves needed to pay for imports. If this financial situation had continued for much longer, it would have also increased British inflation. The message quickly got through to London, which, along with Paris, soon pulled out of the Canal.
In the aftermath of Iran’s seizure of U.S. hostages in 1979, President Jimmy Carter ordered Iranian government bank accounts frozen in the U.S. and the UK. Recently, the U.S. has acted to block North Korean bank accounts linked to illegal activities and the financing of its nuclear program. The U.S. Treasury Department blocked $25 million in accounts held in Banco Delta Asia in Macao. This Department also pressured other banks to stop dealing with the banks of Iran and Syria, as well as those of certain Russian companies involved in the arms trade. This pressure has made it more difficult for them to use the global financial system for letters of credit, trade finance, and remittances from their overseas citizens. It also has increased the risk premium and interest rates on any financing they are able to secure from other sources.
A U.S. crackdown on Iran’s Bank Sederat involved getting foreign banks including some of the world’s largest banks—UBS and Credit Suisse of Switzerland and ABN Amro of the Netherlands—to agree not to conduct business with this bank or risk being cut off from the U.S. financial system. U.S. actions have involved both official sanctions undertaken by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and informal actions intended to sap business confidence in dealing with Iran.
Most major banks fear “headline risk.” Having their names in major media for dealing with Iran’s atomic programs, for example, is likely to scare off their regular corporate customers. Informal pressure has proven to be a partial solution to hidden dealings, in that a bank has to consider the costs of dealing with a company or bank linked to Iran or North Korea. In the 1990s, many foreign banks easily bypassed oil sanctions against Iraq which were incorrectly thought to be governed by strict UN supervision of Baghdad’s accounts. The 2005 Volcker Report concluded that Saddam Hussein, using surcharges and kickbacks, diverted $1.8 billion involving more than 2,000 companies that engaged in illicit activities.
U.S. Vulnerability to Financial Attacks
How would the U.S. financial system react to a WMD attack on a major hub, such as New York? Is enough being done to harden and back up financial systems so that a cascading set of failures would not spread to other markets, with dire political implications?
One reason Wall Street responded so quickly after 9/11 was that planning for a possible attack had been undertaken earlier. In 1997, a war game of a Wall Street attack was played. Leaders from the White House, Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Pentagon, and the intelligence community came together with leaders of Wall Street’s largest financial institutions to simulate a terrorist attack designed to disrupt the U.S. economy. The game was played in the WTC’s north tower, and some of the actual players were working there on 9/11 and were killed in the attack. The terrorist scenario was nothing like what actually happened on 9/11. The war game attacks focused on key nodes, like computer clearing houses and telephone switching centers, whereas on 9/11 a primitive yet highly effective attack was launched. Nonetheless, the lessons drawn from this game included the need to disperse key facilities away from lower Manhattan, as well as to back up important data at remote locations. All of this proved highly useful to the quick restoration of Wall Street on 9/11.
Since 9/11 the concern to reduce the U.S. financial system’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks has greatly increased. Virtually every major U.S. bank and financial institution has thought through its vulnerabilities. In addition, the Treasury Department has taken major steps to ensure that financial systems are more redundant and hardened and that back-up alternates are ready to take over in case of disaster. Sarbanes-Oxley and other legislation require financial institutions to monitor carefully their internal processes. Basle II, from the Bank for International Settlements in Basle Switzerland, reinforces this trend by requiring banks to reserve capital against so-called operational risks, i.e. internal process breakdowns such as those from cyber attacks or inside theft.
In addition, the pattern in the New York financial industry is to disperse back office operations to New Jersey and elsewhere. The hedge fund business is concentrated in nearby Fairfield County, Connecticut. The pattern from San Francisco to Miami is to shed high-cost downtown locations as much as possible. These trends have the combined effect of reducing the U.S. financial system’s vulnerability to terrorist attack. However, interdependencies among the financial system and other complementing systems remain. The electrical and telephone grids, in particular, are essential for the smooth operation of the financial system. One of the peculiar features of the New York financial market is that 40 percent of the workforce uses mass transit to get to work. In the event of a bio-attack in New York, this might be a major vulnerability. But in sum, the U.S. financial system is getting much harder to take down.
Terrorist Networks
The chief problems of denying funding to terrorist groups are that the amount of money they use is small, and the networks they rely on are mass market in character, and thus difficult to monitor without specific intelligence. Terrorist cells are unlikely to use large international networks for international funds transfer. Reports are that the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka have used on-line eBay and PayPal accounts for money laundering, arms trafficking, and other activities. Such small accounts are very difficult to monitor.
Terrorist funding is hard to disrupt, but even partial successes can have significant payoffs. One of the major lessons learned from cracking down on terrorist funding after 9/11 was the critical importance of the timing of financial attacks. Freezing suspects’ bank accounts requires worldwide coordination, since the seizures must come down nearly simultaneously.
Financial Warfare as a Strategy
One criticism of U.S. offensive financial warfare is that it is unlikely to be effective. Iran in 2007, for example, earns about $300 million a day in oil and gas exports. This money flow is not the object of financial actions because it is tied to the legitimate sale of oil and gas to customers around the world. The amount of money blocked in bank accounts held in the name of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, for example, is small compared to these larger flows of money coming from the energy exports.
But this view fails to put financial warfare in a strategic context. Blocking bank accounts of key groups and individuals puts the spotlight on them and thereby increases the risks to any company or government doing business with them. Financial sanctions legitimize additional actions, both financial and non-financial, which can ratchet up more pressure. This is where financial warfare and military strategy converge. Most people think of financial warfare as a substitute for military action, which it is, up to a point. But after a point it becomes a complement rather than a substitute.
The most intense kinds of financial warfare, such as blocking all monetary transactions and flows to and from a country and its citizens, may only make sense under conditions of war. But there is a large spectrum of intermediate cases between small financial sanctions which substitute for kinetic attacks and “all out” financial warfare complementing military attack. And it is this spectrum that gives us the key insight that financial warfare as a strategy is best viewed in an escalation framework. It has two separate effects. The first is the direct pain it causes to individuals and companies whose accounts are blocked or confiscated. The second impact comes from its place as a “next-step” action which is considered reasonable and justifiable. The next step builds on a sequence of actions which raise the bar of what are seen to be sensible and legitimate measures to right some wrong or to force a change in behavior. If the current step does not do this, the next step might. Placing financial warfare in an escalation framework has several important aspects. It is more focused than traditional economic warfare. It is, therefore, more likely to be considered acceptable in a political sense. It was the Iraqi people who suffered most from the embargo placed on Iraq from 1991-2003; Saddam and his cronies bypassed the embargo.
Blocking bank accounts and disrupting money flows is a sharp instrument that goes after those in power who are calling the shots. In many respects, conventional economic warfare is like carpet bombing; financial warfare is like precision strike. Neither one guarantees success, but the latter approach is usually more attractive. Another aspect of placing financial warfare in an escalation framework is that it doesn’t just play the game, it reshapes it. The U.S.’s use of informal financial pressures is a case in point. Over 40 major global banks and financial institutions have cut off or sharply reduced their dealings with the Iranian government and businesses at the urging of U.S. Treasury and State Department officials. This is action that goes beyond official UN sanctions intended to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. Consider a bank that serves as a financial intermediary for Iran or North Korea. It now has to evaluate the reputation risks to its entire portfolio in dealing with such “hot” clients. Again, credit is confidence. If other banks in the Interbank market (banks making short-term loans to other banks) view it as taking major risks by its dealings with Iran or North Korea, they are likely to be cut off.
Seen this way, financial warfare is a consensus-building device. It sets up a coalition made up of allies and those sitting on the fence who will have to decide whether to honor the sanctions. Financial warfare has an element of risk communication as well, both for the target and others in the network. According to Stuart Levey, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, “All the banks we’ve talked to are reducing significantly their exposure to Iranian business. It’s been a universal response. They all recognize the risks—some because of what we’ve told them and some on their own. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see the dangers.”
Viewed as a “next step” in a dynamic escalation, financial warfare may be much more effective in building pressure than is commonly believed. A good case can be made that North Korea decided to test its atom bomb when it did, in October 2006, because of the asset freeze placed on accounts Banco Delta Asia in Macao by Chinese authorities, at U.S. urging. Financial warfare could produce explosive effects, quite literally. This is another reason for looking at financial warfare as an escalation process: the failure to estimate and analyze its potential effects can lead to serious mistakes and big surprises. It can only be appreciated with a thorough understanding of it as a dynamic process.
Information Operations and Elite Targeting
Financial warfare complements military operations as well as information operations. When combined with advances in social network mapping, it can give a highly detailed picture of an elite’s communication and financial structure that can be used for targeting. Communication and software tools now exist to analyze connections in vast networks of heterogeneous information, such as financial transactions, mobile telephone calls, e-mail, and air travel. This gigantic information pool can be a source of knowledge about a nation’s elite, where they stash their money, who they talk to, and their position in a social hierarchy. The key to doing this lies in constructing overlays of these datasets to visualize the various connections.
Watching how money flows out of a country in a crisis can be an important tip-off to who is in the know and who is at least partially responsible for national decisions. Carried to the next step, this can be combined with precise military attacks to go after a nation’s elite. For example, tracking mobile telephone calls can reveal things like where the elite live, their vacation homes, and their travel patterns. Financial tracking of their bank accounts can reveal where they keep their money and who has access to their accounts. This creates the conditions for potentially ruinous attacks with far-reaching social implications on the national leadership. Were a national elite’s overseas bank accounts frozen and their homes targeted with cruise missiles, simultaneously, a hyper-decapitation attack could destroy a nation’s leadership. Clearly, this represents a large escalation. But there are many possibilities which fall short of this, and these constitute an important type of strategy: counter-elite targeting. Counter elite targeting has been considered in the past, both in the Cold War, with nuclear weapons, and more recently in conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq. But the 21st century is likely to see considerably more applications of it.
Spoofing—sending false signals of increased military and financial pressure—could be used to map out the crisis response patterns of a national elite, who they call, and where they send their money. This could be an intelligence treasure-trove of information. It could also be an input to information operations designed to make certain individuals, groups, or companies “suspect” in the eyes of a leader. This could undermine confidence in the regime. Seen as an escalation process, this focuses attention on actions which fall short of all-out attacks. These lower-level or intermediate actions are likely to provide U.S. decision-makers with a range of options between doing nothing and all-out attacks.
Developments in technology, intelligence, and finance are converging, creating more favorable conditions for financial warfare. More systematic thought should be given to this important subject.
Command and Control
Financial warfare blurs the military and civilian spheres of conflict. It should entail cooperation among the armed services, State, Defense, Treasury, DHS, and the intelligence community. Organizational issues over authority and tasking may prove to be one of the greatest barriers to getting a coherent intellectual framework for what is going on. The challenges are difficult, but ignoring them only makes it likely that improvisation and over-compartmentalization could produce serious mistakes.
War games, appropriately designed, could go a long way to revealing some of the tensions and stresses in command and control. The Wall Street Security Exercise cited earlier had this effect. It put attention on the sensitive interface among different government agencies and was an important, if small, step in understanding the vulnerabilities of the U.S. financial system.
Conclusions
Financial warfare is likely to be an increasing form of conflict because it lies at the intersection of powerful long-term trends in technology, networks, and finance. The precise targeting feature of financial warfare, relative to conventional economic warfare, marks a significant change in the nature of conflict. This topic calls out for more thought about what is likely to be a growing use of a tactic that calls for a strategic framework to understand it.
Meanwhile
Israel will have its alleged Mossad Agent, Rahm Emanuel, who holds dual U.S./Israeli citizenship as the President's Chief of Staff. It is possible that Rahm Emanuel will make sure President Barrack's banksters orders are carried out. As one of the key members within the Administration, Rahm Emmanuel was Bill Clinton's top aid and considered ruthless in exercising his duties. He now will control access to the president and can use his discretion as to who may enter the Oval Office or be denied. This powerful position allows him to insulate Israel’s interests considering that the Israeli government leaders are apprehensive regarding Obama continuing the tradition of maintaining the same close relations Israel enjoyed since the era of the Truman Administration. Israel’s leaders have a right to be concerned based on the following:
“Obama pledges state to Palestinian leader has an article written by Aaron Klein which is posted from Jerusalem stating that President elect Barack Hussein Obama today phoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and pledged to work to establish a Palestinian state as soon as possible, a senior PA negotiator told WND. “Obama expressed his full support for a Palestinian state. He told the president (Abbas) he will continue to promote the peace process, which will end with a two state solution,” said PA’s second most senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat. “There was a flare up on Election Day when a senior Palestinian official told WND the Obama campaign urged Palestinian officials to deny and Arab media report that the then-Democratic nominee confided to Palestinian leadership that he supports that their right to a capital in eastern Jerusalem. “The report in Al-Akhbar daily, known to have close contacts to Palestinian leaders in Lebanon, claimed Obama told Abbas and Fayyad he supports the rights of the Palestinians to east Jerusalem, as well as their right to a stable, sovereign state, but he petitioned them to keep the remarks confidential. “Asked for comment by WND, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat at the time would neither confirm nor deny knowledge of Obama’s purported remarks. Abbas political adviser Namer Hamad subsequently issued a denial to reporters. “But a senior official confirmed to WND that Obama said in a July trip to the region he favored a negotiated settlement that may grant the PA control over sections of Jerusalem.” Evidently, President Obama wishes to play both sides against the middle, a tactic he used when he consistently voted “present” when difficult decisions were to be made when he was an Illinois State Senator. As a U.S. Senator, he never originated a bill, but supported every liberal far to the left of left legislation. For the latter half of his first term, he spent nearly the entire time campaigning for the office of president. There is a leading Russian political analyst, Professor Igor Panarin (PhD) who stated that the United States will be dissolved in the next couple of years or sooner, just as the Soviet Empire dissolved. On November 24, 2008 his comments were reported by Izvestia that the U.S. foreign debt has grown like an avalanche. “This is the pyramid that can only collapse.” When asked who would replace the world markets, he said "Two countries could assume this role: China, with vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia.” Asked why he expects the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Prices and unemployment are already on the rise - whole cities (like Detroit) could be left without work. By spring Obama's campaign promises will not produce miracles. He also cited the "vulnerable political set up," "lack of unified laws," and "divisions among the elite," which becomes clear in these crisis conditions. He predicted the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific Coast with its growing Chinese population, the South with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise, the Atlantic Coast, with a distinct and separate mentality, five of the poorer Central states with their large Native American population and the Northern states where the influence of Canada is strong.”[2]
No nation can continue to depend on the likes of the foreign-banker-controlled Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, which is supported by the President- Elect, a member of the CFR or our “loose cannon” of a Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paulson. It was when he stood in the well of the senate with John McCain (CFR) by his side, both supporting the bail out of the criminal banksters that run the major market institutions without even a debating the pros and cons but unfortunately they were joined by the House and the Senate membership. At that point, it became apparent that he will be nothing but a stooge for the banksters.
Four Horsemen are again getting ready to ride, leaving destruction, suffering and death in their path. Wars are man-made, and peace, when it comes, will also be man-made. Surely the challenge of war and of the armament maker is one that no intelligent or civilized being can evade.
2, This information related to Professor Igor Panarin was provided by the Freedom Fighter blog, November 25, 2008
Re: Financial topics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q7ksb26G_Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYwv2oLT940 As we have recently seen some of Ishmael have awaken to what is from a honest query.
Some gold dust is taken for the slave tax jizya or jizyah a the per capita tax. They have a long way to go to understand the perfect law of liberty.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-2 ... ess-wisdom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYwv2oLT940 As we have recently seen some of Ishmael have awaken to what is from a honest query.
Some gold dust is taken for the slave tax jizya or jizyah a the per capita tax. They have a long way to go to understand the perfect law of liberty.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-2 ... ess-wisdom
Last edited by aedens on Sat Mar 22, 2014 4:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Reality Check
- Posts: 1441
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Re: Financial topics
Just a word to the wise here. Ukrainian politics are complex and propaganda can be partially true, and still totally false and misleading.
The above linked article is propaganda, which does not mean it is mostly false, but does mean it totally mis-represents what is going on politically in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian political party being trashed in the linked article, and held up as being a major force in current politics in Ukraine is anything but a major force. The political party is named "Freedom" in English, "Svoboda" in romanticized Ukrainian, named more fully as "The All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda" in English, and, in Ukrainian "BO Свобода", or more fully: ( "Всеукраїнське об’єднання «Свобода» ", Vseukrayinske obyednannia "Svoboda"), translated as Freedom.
The current government in the Ukraine is made of members of parliament elected in October 2012. The government is NOT, REPEAT NOT, made up of the protestors who objected in the streets when the Ukrainian President did exactly the opposite of what he promised to do when running for office. In that parliamentary election ( in 2012 ) only five political parties received enough nationwide votes to earn seats in parliament. The "Freedom", or " "Svoboda" or "BO Свобода" party, whichever name your prefer, came in dead last right behind the hated communist party.
The only reason "Svoboda" is part of the ruling coalition government is the communists refused to join any coalition government and only part of the Pro-Russian Party's parliament members agreed to join a unity coalition government as independents. The smallest party in parliment, "Svoboda/Freedom", was needed to form a unity government.
The individual who is quoted widely in the linked propaganda articles was thrown out of the party for making those remarks about "Kikes".
Finally, the "Freedom" or "Svoboda" party is actually the merger of at least two parties, as the result of a Ukrainian Supreme court ruling banning the former practice of political parties running as blocks, such as the pro-Russian block and the anti-Russian block, or the previous anti-Communist block which the parties of both the current pro-Russian block and the parties of the current anti-Russian block belonged to.
So by the propaganda argument used in the article the Pro-Russian party is also fascist because they use to be in a coalition with the right wing fascist party. Ridiculous, but just as factually true as the propaganda in the linked article. Guilt by association is not valid in a political system where political alliances are constantly changing based on Supreme Court rulings and the actions of your political enemies.
A similar piece of propaganda floating around is that the longest serving deputy prime minister is a member of an extreme far right wing party, when in fact he was elected by the pro-Moscow party as the most respected member of parliament who was not a member of the then ( Dec 2012 to Feb 2014 ) government coalition. In other words he was elected for his personal honor and knowledge, as respected by every member of the parliament, both majority and minority members, not just his own small minority party.
The point is Ukrainian politics are complex, each party who won nationwide seats in parliament, is actually an amalgamation of several parties, that the Ukrainian Supreme Court forced to merge into a single party if they wanted to win any seats in parliament, and one should not be taken in by the kind of guilt by association, simplistic, propaganda contained in the linked article.
Are their people practicing extreme evil in the Svoboda party, absolutely. Are those individual people in positions of as much power as those practicing evil in Russia right now are? Not even a close second.
Last edited by Reality Check on Sat Mar 22, 2014 4:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Financial topics
As noted "review on right and wrong views covered from 12/28/2008"
You candor is needed RC and thank you as we see the light even if it is a candle in the darkness.
The senator and picture was the actual core focus as you seen what is the bent of mind billions of dollars
stripped from us went to. It went to darkness as in five billion it was reported from.
Oleh Tyahnybok and the Senator on stage was not air brushed in.
No thinking man would be on stage with that.
You candor is needed RC and thank you as we see the light even if it is a candle in the darkness.
The senator and picture was the actual core focus as you seen what is the bent of mind billions of dollars
stripped from us went to. It went to darkness as in five billion it was reported from.
Oleh Tyahnybok and the Senator on stage was not air brushed in.
No thinking man would be on stage with that.
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Reality Check
- Posts: 1441
- Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2011 6:07 pm
Re: Financial topics
I saw a poll recently where John, the Senator, was the most hated ( or perhaps the term was least respected ) Senator in in the U.S. Senate.aedens wrote:As noted "review on right and wrong views covered from 12/28/2008"
You candor is needed RC and thank you as we see the light even if it is a candle in the darkness.
The senator and picture was the actual core focus as you seen what is the bent of mind billions of dollars
stripped from us went to. It went to darkness as in five billion it was reported from.
Oleh Tyahnybok and the Senator on stage was not air brushed in.
No thinking man would be on stage with that.
That is quite an honor when you serve with so many strong competitors such as Harry, the Senator in chief.
John is as much a mystery to me as Obama, as to motivations. Thinking man ? Great question.
But, on the other hand, in this case he may have been trying to send a message of support to the Ukrainian people, rather than those who wanted to be seen with him. He might have just become old, and lazy, as many of us have.
On the third hand, I knew he was telling lies when he said he had seen the light on the immigration issue when he was running for re-election. When you stand with evil it does often say a lot about your character.
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Higgenbotham
- Posts: 7984
- Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 11:28 pm
Re: Financial topics
When gold is money, there is no real difference between financial and economic systems because the money is a part of the economic production process and must be produced or exchanged based on the production of other things. Today it is important to distinguish between the financial and economic systems because the financial system is being used to rip off the producers and every country is trying to jockey for position in order to get more for less. There is a perverse logic happening because strengthening the economic system with long term investment can weaken the economic system. I think that's why in a fiat money system we have not seen any major infrastructure projects during this depression. Japan is a good example of that. Rather than making the investment to rebuild their nuclear reactors, which would not pay off right away and therefore cause a temporary or maybe permanent stock market and economic crash, the choice has been made to bolster the financial system by buying their energy deficit with counterfeit money and ripping off the energy producers (and in the longer term any other producer) in the process. This leads the huge wealth disparity referenced earlier.aedens wrote:Financial and Economic Systems
It is important to distinguish between financial and economic systems.
(Reuters) - Chevron Corp, the second-largest U.S. oil company, cut its 2017 production forecast on Tuesday by 6 percent, citing project delays and asset sales, while saying high prices have pushed its new baseline for oil to north of $100 a barrel.
Despite the more cautious production forecast, Chevron raised the oil price used in its planning models to $110 a barrel from $79. Exxon Mobil, the largest U.S. oil company, is using a similar level of $109 a barrel in its budgets, based on 2013 average prices.
"There comes a point when some projects just won't be able to compete for capital" below $110 per barrel, Watson told reporters after the analyst meeting.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... SU20140311Chevron plans to sell about $10 billion of assets in the next three years, an increase from the $7 billion in asset sales in the previous three years, which will also cut production.
While the periphery breaks down rather slowly at first, the capital cities of the hegemon should collapse suddenly and violently.
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Higgenbotham
- Posts: 7984
- Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 11:28 pm
Re: Financial topics
Higgenbotham wrote:The choice has been made to bolster the financial system by buying their energy deficit with counterfeit money and ripping off the energy producers (and in the longer term any other producer) in the process. This leads the huge wealth disparity referenced earlier.
Cutting the cost of everything from salaries and steel pipes to seismic surveys and drilling equipment is the central challenge for the oil and gas industry over the next five years.
It is convenient, but wrong, to blame poor project management for all the days and cost overruns. Some decisions have been flawed, but on projects of this size and complexity, at least some errors are to be expected.
Mega-project managers in 2013 were not, on the whole, worse than in 2003. Unfortunately, the economic and financial environment has become much less forgiving. When projects start to go wrong it has proved much harder to limit the delays and damage to the budget.
http://gulfnews.com/business/features/o ... -1.1306425Employees in North Dakota’s oil, gas and pipeline sectors were taking home an average monthly salary of $9,000 in the fourth quarter of 2012, and staff at support firms were making an average of more than $8,000, according to the latest data from the US Census Bureau.
Their colleagues in Texas were doing even better: average salaries in the oil and gas extraction industry were over $15,000 per month, and $11,000 in pipeline transportation. That made them some of the best-paid employees in the US. Only financial services employees in New York ($28,000), Connecticut ($25,000), California ($17,000) and a few other states were routinely making more.
To be consistent with the value added and difficulty of the job, financial services employees should be getting paid about 1/3 to 1/2 as much as oil industry employees.
As referenced in the article, the economic and financial environment becomes less forgiving for producers when they are being ripped off with counterfeit money. If someone has to dig gold out the ground to buy oil, then there is a level playing field.
While the periphery breaks down rather slowly at first, the capital cities of the hegemon should collapse suddenly and violently.
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