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It was "Financial Terrorism"

It was 5 years ago this week that Lehmann Bros. went belly up.    And then we all had to endure the GFC with its myriad of consequences.     Many, many people suffered then - and still are.

In this piece from CounterPoint the writer asserts - with some justification it would seem - that the collapse of Lehmans was nothing other than "financial terrorism".

"The Lehman Brothers default on September 15, 2008, was the biggest incident of financial terrorism in US history. When Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke convened an emergency meeting with leading members the US Congress  and their aides on September 18, 2008, they had already developed a “break the glass” strategy for extorting $700 billion dollars from US government to make up for the losses on trillions of dollars of toxic “subprime” assets that were at the center of Wall Street’s massive predatory lending swindle.

The plan was to precipitate a financial catastrophe so immense that elected officials would comply with Wall Street’s demands as presented by former Goldman Sachs CEO, Paulson. To that end, Bernanke warned the congressional assembly that if they refused to meet their extortionist demands of $700 billion no-strings-attached bailout, that “We may not have an economy on Monday”. This was clearly a lie that was intended to coerce congress. As it happens, the so called Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP was not implemented for a full month later (October 14th). The economy was still intact although the markets and Bernanke’s friends on Wall Street had suffered severe losses.

Naturally, this analysis veers  from the specious narrative presented in the MSM, which characterizes the behavior of Paulson and Bernanke as selfless and even “heroic”. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Continue reading here.

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