Cyberwar...
Article in today's New York Post about North Korea's Cyber nastiness this past week. Something clicked for me upon hearing more about this yesterday, bear with me.

I remember reading a report online this past October, just as John McCain was 'suspending his campaign to focus on the economy' that the economic issue's first manifestation was in the Federal Reserve 'losing' half a trillion dollars in cash in a twenty-minute period (I have tried, but I cannot find that post anywhere) on the day the markets first began to tank. That's $500 billion electronically transferred by someone, or several someones, someplace where the Federal Reserve was unable to follow it, or get it back. Someone suddenly drew on huge reserves of cash and took it clean out of the monetary system. The next day, the Fed was looking for $700 billion; 500 to cover the losses, 200 more as a cushion. (Disclaimer: I do not know for a fact that any of this is factually true, but it fits a theory based on what I know and see. I spent 20 years in data processing in the financial industry, so bear with me).

Now, the Fed is perfectly capable of tracing that money, or at least , it should be. So far as I know, it still has not explained where that money went. There could be two reasons for it:

a) They honestly don't know.
b) You really don't want to know.

Why wouldn't you really want to know? Because what if that cash was vaporized in a cyber attack? How safe would you feel your money was? Markets are all about security, if nothing else; people have to believe the system is secure and within reasonable limits, predictable. How secure and predictable is a system where someone could electronically siphon off half a trillion dollars with no one noticing or being able to stop it?

The timing of the debacle was suspect too. An October Surprise of epic proportions. Perhaps someone was giving G.W.B a final "fuck you!" on his way out the door, and at the same time ensuring that John McCain would be fatally wounded? When one considers the speed with which the Obama Administration, and the democratic party apparatchiks have shown in insinuating itself into American industry and finance, and destroying what's left of financial confidence from within the system, the more paranoid, tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists begin to sound.

Just a hunch, but I gather we're not being told the entire truth behaind this economic crisis, because the truth is that this country was attacked, sans bombs and airplanes, electronically with a cyber assault on the financial system. I think the government knows it, and knows who did it -- but not how it was done -- and that this helps explain some of the recent chaos.

Or, I could be talking out of my ass. Until more facts are available, your guess is as good as mine.