excerpt:
quote:4. The Post is also starting to ask question about what really happened to CIA bio-warfare expert Frank Olson who purportedly jumped out a window after a bad acid trip. (A later autopsy revealed he also hit himself on the back of his head with a heavy blunt instrument before taking flight.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34204-2001Dec12.html
5. By the way, did you notice the US is having a coup?
Bush is now denying Congress access to routine information (FBI records about an organized crime investigation in Boston.)
He also has a major domestic problem called E-N-R-O-N to deal with that involves a lot of his close friends eligible for jail. The difference between Enron and Whitewater is Enron has the very real potential to tank US financial markets thanks to wildly out of control derivatives exposures.
What is a derivative? To put it as simply as possible, it's a "bet" on market movements that, if it goes wrong, can not only wipe out your investment in an eye blink, but leave you owing far more money than you put in the first place.
A good derivatives scam can take down one of the world's oldest banks (Barings), one of the world's richest counties (Orange County, California), and many believe even has chance of bringing chaos to the world's largest economy.
From "F.I.A.S.C.O" a book about the derivatives business written by a foot soldier: " (Derivative) salesmen often joke about their creations as weapons of mass destruction; and, in fact, the clients are often 'blown up' or have their 'faces ripped off.'"
Nice business, huh?
Derivatives are commonly packaged as "bond-like" instruments and sold to the knuckleheads that manage things like pension funds and the treasuries of state and local governments.
Friends who know the futures business have been long scratching their heads as to how a bunch of energy traders suddenly became the 8th largest business in the US. As we're finding out, they weren't. Billions of dollars have disappeared in the 'learning' process and, thanks to the the derivatives they sold far and wide, we may have only just seen the warm up.
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