COVID-19, 2008, and 9/11: Kissing Crisis Cousins

1. “Rahm Emmanuel reprises ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ catchphrase amid coronavirus pandemic by Emma Colton, Washington Examiner, March 24, 2020.

• • The former Obama adviser reprised the quote he used during the 2008 financial crisis while speaking on ABC’s This Week on Sunday”.

2. “The Obama Bear Market: “Never waste a good crisis” – David J. Theroux, Independent Institute, March 6, 2009.

• “Bloomberg’s advice for those in the economic crises his policies are fomenting is that buying shares now “is a potentially good deal”.
• Former Obama supporter Charles Krauthammer, ….in ‘Deception at Core of Obama Plans’ states: “The market’s recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic – for enacting his “Big Bang” agenda to federalize and or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society (that term, by the way, is right out of the Karl Marx’ Communist Manifesto).
• On the very same day, Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary, Clinton, told a European Parliament audience in Brussels to “never waste a good crisis” in pursuit of a “New Green Deal”.
• “German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble warned …that the global financial crisis could have political repercussions, noting that Adolf Hitler rose to power following the 1929 Wall Street crash”
  • According to David Stockman in his book The Great Deformation, it was FDR’s profane refusal to sign on to the London Agreement forgiving the German WWI debt in 1919 that created the economic crisis leading to Hitler’s rise to power.

–  “These people predicted the 2008 recession and were laughed at!” by Mudit Kapoor, Business Week, New Delhi, September 28, 2018:

Nouriel Roubini, 2005, testified before the IMFof the impending crisis.

          – Michael Mayo, 1999, his warnings cost him his job at Credit Suisse and friends on Wall Street.

         – William Poole, 2002, former president St. Louis Federal Reserve, warned of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s insolvency.

• Raghuram Rajan, 2003-2005, Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund warned of the impending financial disaster.
• Christopher Thornberg, 2005, Economist, served on the advisory board of Wall Street hedge fund Paulson & Co. Inc., described housing as a bubble and functionally a pyramid coming close to its last leg “resorting to its last leg “resorting to crazier and crazier financial instruments to get these people in”.
• Paul Singer and Jim Chanos, (who predicted the fall of Enron), 2006 & 2007, “warned the G-7 finance ministers a systemic financial collapse could happen because major banks were creating “radioactive” securitisations” from things like sub-prime mortgages.
• Janet Yellen, 2007, Chief of the Federal Reserve, testified before Congress that sub-prime mortgages were the “600lb. gorilla in the room”. Congressmen called her “gloomy”.
• Warren Buffet, the “Oracle of Omaha” said derivatives in the stock market were a “time bomb”.
• Andrew Redleaf, December 2006, “Sometime in the next 12-18 months there is going to be a panic in credit-markets…The driver in the credit-market panic of 2007 or 2008 will be sudden, profound and pervasive loss of faith in the alchemy of structured finance as currently practiced”.
• Brooksley E. Born, 1999, chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency which oversees the futures and commodity options markets. During her tenure on the CFTC, Born lobbied Congress and the President to give the CFTC oversight of off-exchange markets for derivatives but her warnings were ignored or dismissed (mocked by Milton Friedman) and resisted by other “regulators” (politically appointed “turnstile” bureaucrats who rotated between Wall Street and Federal employment)

3.  According to the 9/11 Commission Report there are four factors that enabled bin Ladin’s Saudi terrorists to kill almost 2,000 Americans:

• “The Wall” (ironically) created by the Clinton administration cancelling President Reagan’s Executive Order (EO20333) requiring the CIA and FBI to share information on international terrorism.
• The CIA agent in the Pacific who was tracking the 9/11 terrorist knew they were boarding a plane in Hong Kong for the U.S. and was told he could not pass on this information to the FBI because of Clinton’s “Wall”.
• The FBI agent who wanted to report to higher that Saudi men taking flying lessons were not learning how to land was told she could not do so because of Clinton’s “Wall”.  She testified to the 9/11 Committee “it seemed like someone higher wanted people to die”!
• The refusal by the Clinton Secretary of Treasury, Robert Rubin, (and Wall Street broker) to accept the cost of implementing the “Atlanta Plan” devised during the ’96 Atlanta Olympics to defend against an attack by hijacked airliners. It was suggested by the FBI that the plan be implemented in New York City and Washington, D.C.
• As an immigration inspector in Douglas, Arizona I was told by several supervisors I could not deny entry into the U.S. of Saudi men attending the flying program at Cochise College who’s student visas had expired because American, Delta and United airlines had complained to the State Department that it would cost them thousands of dollars in unpaid seats if INS sent them back. The State Department’s exact words were “Don’t FUCK with the 7As! (student visas)”.
• The former chief of the CIA’s Alec Station (formed to find and kill Osama bin Laden) Michael Scheur states in his book Marching Towards Hell that he resigned from the team after trying thirteen times to get Presidents Clinton and Bush to give the green light to kill bin Laden. Both gave the most obtuse excuses for not killing bin Laden that Scheur realized neither was serious about eliminating the world’s No.1 terrorist.

After the COVID-19 political/media-induced sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic, the modeling figures have been exponentially reduced downward by as much as 8 to 10 times – after establishing de facto martial law and shutting down the American economy. This cost taxpayers 2.2 trillion dollars setting up another financial crisis being compared to the ’29 Depression.

In each case, these crises could have been avoided. Not the flu itself but the hysteria associated with it that created the avoidable impending economic disaster. 

FDR also told reporters standing on the deck of the presidential yacht with Saudi King Faisal “There are no coincidences in politics”. (archival film)