Why Were Lessons of 1998 Mini-Crash Ignored?
by Henry Makow Ph.D.
The American financial system almost collapsed in 1998 when a hedge-fund, "Long Term Capital Management" went belly up. In a harbinger of 2008, banks had placed huge derivative bets on the Russian economy with LTCM.
The Fed forced 13 US and international banks to purchase the hedge-fund. Altogether $4.6 Billion was lost.
A PBS Frontline Documentary http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/ magnificently shows that although the American (and world) economies are at stake, the Clinton and Bush Administrations refused to regulate the derivative market, and allowed it to grow to an eventual $595 Trillion during the housing bubble.
Not only did they refuse to regulate the industry, they forced out Brooksley Borne, the Chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, who had demanded action.
During the credit crisis last year, former fed chairman Alan Greenspan was hauled before Congress and asked why he had refused to regulate these markets. The documentary shows him confessing that he had been "mistaken." The "world view" that had guided him for 40 years --that markets were self regulating-- had been wrong.
What is shocking, and you can see this for yourself in this amazing documentary, Greenspan is making a Masonic "triangular" hand sign as he offers this confession.
He is signaling to his fellow Illuminati that he knew exactly what he was doing. His confession was bogus.
Similarly, in the same documentary, Arthur Levitt, the Chair of the SEC at the time, makes the same sign while confessing he should have listened to Brooksley Borne.
In other words, this dangerous high wire act is Illuminati policy. Brooksley Borne says in the documentary that we can expect more financial turmoil until the derivative markets are regulated.
Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers were in charge in 1998. Their then- deputies, Timothy Geitner and Ben Bernanke are in charge now. All are Fed or Goldman Sachs alumni. This is like asking cocaine addicts to regulate drugs.
The hand signs and the fact that no significant regulation has taken place, suggests that derivative market turmoil will be used again to bring down the US (and world?) economies, cause a depression and usher in the New World Order. Certainly "a new world order" was on everyone's lips during the last crisis.
PBS is virtually a province of the Rockefeller empire. Yet this Frontline documentary is superb, what journalism should be. Apparently, the Illuminati is willing to stoke the anger of the US public at their mainly Jewish financial underlings.
Essentially the American people are disenfranchised. Their leaders are Freemasons who are dedicated to integrating the country into a world government run by Illuminati central bankers. This integration requires that the American standard of living (and economy) are downsized, and this is what is happening now.