U P D A T E D :

Iraq War Truth

9-11 Truth

The Matrix Hides Electoral Fraud

Watch the Labels the Media Uses

The Media Matrix Hides a Party

When Morpheus Comes

Examining the London Bombings

The 'I' Word

Democrats Better 'Republicans' Than the Politicians in the GOP

We're All Paranoid

More Evidence of Vote Corruption

When Media Dogs Don't Bark

Behind the Veil of the Bush & Clinton Years

Entering the Era of Deep Politics

Liberating the Mind, Leaving the Matrix

The Military: An Interview with Stan Goff

Geopolitics: It's Now or Never for Washington

Finance: I Want the Earth, Plus 5%

Book Review: Confessions of An Economic Hit Man

Poem: The Four Horsemen of the Average Fixed Cost

Congressman (R) Asks If It Was All a Big Mistake

Congressman (D) Calls For Real 9-11 Hearings

L.A. Times: Is Al Qaeda Fake?

Miami Herald: 'Dean Scream' Was Fraud

Former CIA Condemns New 'Attack Matrix'

Together, We Moved Three Mountains

Media Whites Out Vote Fraud

New Poll Finds Bush Ideas Already Out of Step (Supposedly We Just Reelected Him)

The Matrix

Will The Real Economic Hit Men Please Stand Up?

A Book Review & Meditation on 9-11 Truth

By Catherine Austin Fitts
From The Wilderness

Let us begin by defining a term that may be new to some readers. Limited hangout. A "limited hangout" is a partial confession, a mea culpa, if you will, that leaves the essence of a crime or covert reality hidden. Because it includes some small part of the truth, the limited hangout is irresistibly attractive to dissidents and political critics whose thirst for such truth makes them jump at the dangled scraps. Once the system's watchdogs are busy chewing on the limited hangout, the guilty players can go about their illegal business for a new round of unaccountable, semi-secret mayhem.1

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If you want to see an excellent limited hangout at work, pick up a copy of John Perkins' bestselling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. In his limited hangout confession, Perkins describes his career from 1971 to 1981 as a highly paid professional who helped defraud Third World countries by helping syndicates make uneconomic loans as a means to facilitate the eventual takeover of those economies by elite and corporate interests.

Greg Palast, Anne Williamson, and other first-rate investigative journalists have brilliantly documented instances of such economic warfare against sovereign governments and national economies - where nations are taken over with their own money, in much the same way as a corporate raider takes over a company through leveraged buy-out. I have documented a similar process in US communities and mortgage markets. In writing about this process, I use the concept of an "economic tapeworm" to explain the negative return on investment financial system that operates globally and relies on economic and military warfare to finance and subsidize itself.2

The phenomenon that Perkins writes about is well known. But his personal "how to" account of an economic hit pertains to an apparently cold case, far in the financial past. While this story is very instructive for those who have not yet dealt with professional fraudsters or been targeted by economic warfare3 (whether in the Third World or in the First World nations) it is even more instructive for its omissions - and for its timing as an apologia intended, we are led to believe, somehow to assuage guilt for harm done: it relates to events occurring twenty-five or thirty years ago, involving players who are, for the most part, dead or retired from the business of economic warfare and involving companies that have morphed into later incarnations.

In the process of providing a colorful account of a 1970s whodunit (complete with low tech strategies devoid of the dazzling technology tool-kit that is now an essential part of the economic hit man's weaponry), Perkins delivers to readers the "big lie." He reveals the secret that there is no greater conspiracy. This is simply globalization run amok, he would have us believe. Somehow, this particular conspiracy theory seems charmingly credible as part of a "confession." Perkins admits to what is known and then uses the credibility created by his "limited hangout" to further obscure the reality of who's who in the real governance of global investment and risk management. We are to presume that the investment networks in and around the Harvard Corporation, the City of London, the Vatican and investment managers and bankers for the proceeds of transnational organized crime are simply good-hearted fellows who let things get out of hand.

Nowhere does Perkins introduce the notion that cartels in a "New World Order" (the phrase coined and promoted by George H. W. Bush) use covert manipulation of the global financial system to centralize and concentrate economic and political power. Assassinations by "jackals" aside, Perkins barely hints that for fifty years the US military-industrial complex has been developing and testing powerful black budget technology, satellite and other invisible weaponry and surveillance technology and insider-trading tools behind the veil of national security secrets. Indeed, it was the need for a means of financing black budget operations and weaponry outside the view and control of Congress and the appropriations process - rather than the mere pursuit of corporate profits - that provided the political air cover for Perkins to do what he did as his covert counterparts marketed drugs in both American and Third World communities.

It's an old rule of economics. Sources and uses need to be in one integrated financial statement to understand an enterprise. In Perkins' world, we are never quite clear who got what cash and in what amounts when all was said and done. This means someone gets to keep the money and remain socially acceptable - and we remain clueless as to who was really running things two decades ago.

Economic Warfare in the 21st Century

The power of Perkins' book as a limited hangout can be understood by observing the sales, support, and kudos it has achieved in mainstream media while the leading books on 9-114, arguably the most significant economic hit in US history,5 have had a much harder time garnering attention. The message seems to be that economic warfare is something that the corporate mainstream will acknowledge, but only so long as it is low tech, long ago, and far away.

Understanding and facing the economic warfare responsible for slowly poisoning us and our families and wiping out our retirement savings is a complex and very scary undertaking in comparison to Perkins' concerned confessions. Perhaps we prefer to disassociate from our present circumstances, live in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, and focus on the study of yesteryear.

Complex and scary as it may seem, the growing body of evidence makes a compelling case that officials of the US government, its contractors, and the military abetted the 9-11 attacks. With the help and complicity of the US Congress and corporate media, they are engaged in the most profitable war and enforcement profiteering in history. This is a terrifying picture to contemplate.

Look how tough it has been for New Yorkers, the constituency most adversely affected by the 9-11 tragedy. A recent Zogby poll indicates that 49.3 percent of residents of New York City hold the opinion that officials "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." Yet, despite this widespread conviction and the mounting evidence that sustains it, no serious support has developed for the November 2004 citizens' complaint requesting that Elliot Spitzer, the Attorney General of New York, finally open a criminal investigation into the tragedy.

Although fifteen NYC legislators have also called for such an inquiry, there has as yet been no effort locally to hold the New York Senate and Congressional delegations accountable for failing to hold the executive branch responsible for its failure to perform, or for its potential complicity. While the New York firemen booing Hillary Clinton off the stage at the 9-11 Concert was a start, the sentiment then expressed has not translated into political action or market action. How many New Yorkers have cut off their subscriptions to, ads in, or investments in, the stock of the New York Times, when the Times helped to facilitate the 9-11 cover-up by failing to ask probative questions or hold officials accountable?

The problem the average New Yorker has is the same that we all face - our complicity is deep. We have an entire economy and culture financially dependent upon too many things that harm people and the environment. This is not new. Only the possibility that the war machine is blowing up thousands of middle class Americans in American office buildings in broad daylight is new.

The fact that the Bushes and the Clintons are on the same team - and have been since their alleged Iran-Contra partnership in an airport operation in Mena, Arkansas involving the trans-shipment of cocaine destined for the streets of America - is not something that most Americans have yet incorporated into our political equation.

The fact that current financial and commodity markets "clear" not through the operation of changes in price generated by the legitimate free market expression of supply and demand but rather by blowing up American office buildings and the people and legal documents in them is not something that most Americans saving for retirement or financing a home have incorporated as risks in developing an investment strategy.

We cannot fathom that economic warfare is now conducted using high tech software weaponry to silently invade the privacy of our banking and purchasing relationships, our comings and goings, and the details of our work and home lives. Nor have we incorporated this realization into our decisions about who we share our lives with and what we say and do behind closed doors.

The illumination of the truth of 9-11, however, could change most Americans' paradigms and transactions in powerful ways. It could certainly fuel an increase in demand for precious metals, alternative energy and local self-sufficiency.

Global Economics and the "Strong Dollar Policy"

In the mid-1990s, the Clinton Administration, led by an economic team comprised of Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Franklin Raines, instituted something called the "strong dollar policy." This policy was maintained by the Bush Administration, which held over in the first term many of the key players in policymaking positions, including George Tenet, Jerry Hawke (Comptroller of the Currency 1998-2004) and Charles Rossotti (45th Commissioner of the IRS).

The smoothness of the transition between administrations ostensibly led by political parties in opposition to each other belies the ruse and underscores the strategic nature of the centralization of economic and politic power under way.

While the game of trying to figure out what in the world the strong dollar policy really is has gotten increasingly Orwellian6, the basics are pretty simple. We have kept the dollar's value high relative to other currencies - and far above what fundamental economics would warrant - by asking the consumer and taxpayer to shoulder extraordinary and rising levels of debt financed by increasing amounts of dirty money. This has enabled elites to move off-shore and into private hands virtually all the real financial equity in the country. The US is not alone in experiencing "disappearing equity" - it is part of a global equity-centralizing and asset-control process.

The strong dollar policy was characterized by a series of financial and market manipulations:

Four Secretaries of the Treasury refused to produce audited financial statements and reported a total of $4 trillion in "undocumentable adjustments";7

The Clinton and Bush Administrations rejected policies that would build American productivity and employment8 in the face of the plan to move employment abroad while permitting the growth of debt and immigration quotas at home;

The Clinton and Bush Administrations promoted federal credit policies that turned American homes into ATM machines and led to a mortgage market characterized by increasing levels of fraud;

The Clinton and Bush Administrations in concert with the central banks (most notably the Federal Reserve) and bullion banks (including JP Morgan-Chase, Citibank and Goldman Sachs) manipulated the gold and silver markets to suppress the price of precious metals while large inventories were moved out of governments and central bank accounts worldwide and into private hands;

US pension funds and 401k and IRA retirement savings accounts lost value by waves of accounting and other financial frauds at widely held corporations (such as Enron, Worldcom and Tyco);

US Congress and regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted corporate controls, ostensibly to protect investors from further acts of corporate fraud, that operate as a subtle form of capital control, limiting the ability of entrepreneurs on Main Street to raise capital in financial markets;

Military force was used to ensure that global investors would continue to purchase US Treasury and mortgage agency securities and the US dollar would prevail as the currency of international choice;

The federal budget, federal credit, and federal contracting were operated to favor corporate profit making at the cost of small business and labor productivity;

US Treasury and Federal Reserve market intervention was used to ensure low cost of capital for favored global corporations; and,

The types and amounts of outstanding financial derivatives exploded, far beyond the ability of most public and private leaders to understand or explain.

No one has made a count of the deaths that resulted worldwide from these various financial manipulations. Certainly The death toll from the pincer movement of military warfare and economic warfare is far greater than is generally understood.

9-11 : Steroids For The Strong Dollar Policy?

While floating the global dollar economy on a sea of debt and easy money worked well for the economic hit men and women through the end of the 1990s, by the summer of 2001 the game seemed to have run its course. Defense appropriations had stalled that summer. Members of the media were asking questions about $3.3 trillion missing from HUD and DOD. Shortly before 9-11, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that DOD could not account for trillions of taxpayer dollars. On September 9, 2001, the online news magazine From the Wilderness issued an economic alert warning that the global financial system ran the risk of meltdown.9

With the events of 9-11, however, the US government was able to garner support for the extraordinary financial market interventions necessary to continue the strong dollar policy. After 9-11, the US government was able to keep the lid on the various financial frauds and manipulations. America and the global financial system have since stayed afloat for another three years.

The answer to the question Cui Bono? ("Who benefits?") from the strong dollar policy suggests that allegations that members of the Bush Administration fully expected, welcomed, and even facilitated 9-11 should be taken very seriously. Trillions of dollars have been moved out of the US economy under the umbrella of the strong dollar policy - much of it in what appear to be criminal ways. The 9-11 tragedy conveniently necessitated a sudden, centralized control over government and theretofore private activities, in the name of protecting national security interests and addressing the threat of terrorism. 9-11 diverted attention from, and shut the door behind, that money movement. It ushered in a wave of legislation rushed through Congress that would make it much more difficult for the American people to do anything about it. The events of 9-11 have acted as a "lock-down" on a financial coup d'�tat at the core of the "strong dollar policy."

In the Machiavellian tradition, it turns out that the "strong dollar policy" is a policy that intentionally destroys the value of the dollar.

First Goes Capitalism, Then Democracy

Traditionally, the faith of the US working class in democracy has been one of the most powerful supports for democracy worldwide. It is not enough to bankrupt the American middle class and the American government. The current effort to move to more centrally controlled governance also requires removing this faith that underpins support for global democracy. Part and parcel of doing so is establishing popular support for the notion that the economic supports for democracy - sound money, open and transparent markets and government, and access to equity - are somehow bad.

An example of this is Marjorie Kelly's The Divine Right of Capital, which neglects to integrate the covert revenue streams into the equation and instead attempts to explain problems and resolutions in terms of overt cash flows only. According to Kelly, the editor of Business Ethics magazine, free markets, not organized crime and black budgets, are the problem. Hence, the problem is that shareholders want to make money, not that insiders rip off small investors of their savings and retirement investments using criminal means, protected, not obstructed, by governmental intervention. Kelly's bio mentions her speaking engagements at Harvard, without concern for Harvard's leadership in Enron, Harken, the rape of Russia, HUD corruption and other criminal frauds.

In the latest escalation of the Orwellian nightmare, we have entire networks of good-hearted progressives and socially responsible investors promoting a framework of "problems-solutions" that provides the perfect intellectual camouflage for their opponents' control over national and international resources. Now that the so-called "New World Order" has stolen all of the money, those who are most appalled at this state of affairs unwittingly promote policies that will prevent the ordinary person from communicating with integrity or creating and accumulating wealth. Even worse, they crave the credibility conferred by the foundation, church, and university investment syndicates most richly rewarded by economic and military warfare. Their behavior and the policies they promote -- if allowed to triumph -- will ensure our descent into a 21st century war economy.

Lest these words give offense, I would encourage you to read one of the most important and brilliant economic articles of 2004, "Shilling for a New World Order" by Anne Williamson.10 Understanding Mr. Shiller and the folks who finance and promote his effort tells us much about who profits from fascism. Shiller provides the philosophical prerequisites for ending democracy and markets for good and ensuring that no one can rise other than through serving the war economy.

Ultimately, getting to the truth of 9-11, more than any limited hangout, offers an opportunity to ask and answer all the unanswered questions of who is running our world, and to illuminate how the covert cash flows really work. Only with such a powerful understanding can we appreciate the intellectual poison in Shiller's proposals and find real solutions effective in decentralizing our financial systems. I am reminded of a wonderful and very intelligent staff member of the CIA who told me in 1997, "Your problem is that you have not answered the question, where does evil come from?" Indeed, this is the unanswered question of our day; it is a question that cannot be answered without a much richer and clearer picture than we now have of the economic warfare raging throughout our world and the economic hit men and women leading it.

Truth and Hope Spring Eternal

Two weeks ago I visited a friend who has absolutely no interest in politics. He is well into his seventies. He understands the extent and seriousness of the corruption. Given his age, he has concluded that the only thing he can do to help is live an upright life and pray. His response to the truth of 9-11 has been to withdraw from current events and contribute spiritually. He mentioned that a group of his friends had suggested that a recent event had been determined by covert means in complete contradiction to accounts put forth by the mainstream media. He spoke about our current leadership with sadness. It was clear from his manner that he no longer takes them seriously. They have lost what the Chinese call "the mandate of heaven." They are thugs - to be avoided in public and laughed at in private.

While this may sound like a small thing, I saw something I have seen many times since the Presidential election. Many of us patriotic Americans are quietly and invisibly withdrawing our mandate from the current leadership - not from America as a country, or from the notion of a democratic American government or from the American people. We understand that our enemy is not these things. This silent withdrawal in the hearts and minds of millions and the use of spiritual warfare to effectively counter those behind economic and military warfare has the power to shift power to more legitimate leadership.

Enough hearts and minds on Main Street are silently withdrawing support to begin real cultural and economic change. Imagine if the truth of 9-11 could illuminate the real economic hit men and women of our day and age. Imagine if the truth of 9-11 unleashed us from the paralysis of ignorance about the covert cash flows around us and the paralysis of uncertainty about whom we can trust - and helped us transform our situation in a wealth-creating way?

As Percy Bysshe Shelley once said, "Ye are many. They are few."

Catherine Austin Fitts was Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H. W. Bush, and was a managing director of Dillon Read. She now is president of Solari.com, which organizes teleseminars including one further discussing the points raised in this article.

This article was originally published in, and is ©, From The Wilderness. Reprinted with permission.

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