From what I hear al qaeda / bin laden have or have access to significant amount of money. Not to give anyone any ideas but would it be possible for them to initiate an artificial crash but buidling up a large enough portfolio and pulling it out at a key point to try to make others get scared and follow?
"Homeland Security said it had no evidence to corroborate the threat but had issued the warning out of an "abundance of caution". The department said in a statement that the threat was for all of December." Help me out here guys. What does this mean? Am I to assume that George is up to something in ME and HS is running cover for him.
Actually... I would agree with Mvic about Wall Street being extremely vulnerable: (1) Many Wall Street firms are not nearly as technologically advanced as people think... In fact, many are still running mainframes with software coded in the 80s. Everybody here thinks in terms of "internet brokers"... But IB is 1% the size of Merrill Lynch... Who make money the old-fashioned way... By systematically lying to their Customers. (2) A tiny nuclear device detonated in New York harbor... Would make lower Manhattan uninhabitable for a generation. This will happen... WHEN not IF. Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and friends absolutely guarentee it... And are doing everything in their power to speed this up. (3) When #2 happens... your brokerage account will not have a high priority. But would sort of agree with zdreg on Mid-East: (1) 50% of US military is in Persian Gulf vicinity... and are staying for a while (2) Saudis (and Jordan) are Sunni... and is a BIG, RICH counterweight to Iran. (3) By FAR... the most vulnerable country to oil disruption is Iran. They export everything through Strait of Hormuz... ** And import 40% of their gasoline **. The US military could shut down the Iranian economy in 2 weeks... With Strait naval blockade and precision bombing... no need for invasion ever.
Do you think that ML or any of the big IB have their all their records stored on their mainframes in NYC? They are stored in more than one geographical location and one of them is probably some server or tape farm in a bunker under some mountain in Nevada or something like that. Obviously a nuke in any US city (which I still think is an if not a when if our civil servants are allowed to do their jobs without the politicians using them as a political football) would be catastrophic but even a nuke on wall street would not put an end to the US markets. Americans have this great attribute and it is that they don't stay down for long. Wall St would be up and running again within a few weeks or a month either in Chicago, or San Fran temporarily. If it ever happened though you could pretty much say good bye to the ME and radical islam.
Arab terrorists could never pull off the technology/organization that is needed to get away with any significant cyberattack.
We are talking about the Al Qaeda Master Plan... small nuke in Manhattan. But you are right... that is not a problem... Because there is a copy of everything "under some mountain in Nevada". Personally, I have moved all of my firm's assets from New York... to another country... Because the American People do not have the will to defend their country. American does NOT EVEN HAVE THE WILL to kill it's #1 enemy in Iraq... Muqtada al-Sadr. Instead of killing al-Sadr with one air strike... Bush has sacrificed 1000s of American boys... With his methodical Vietnamization of the Iraq war. The entire Iraqi political elite... Is now placing their bets on the people that come AFTER the Americans leave.
Yeh it's not the foreign arabs to woryr about it's the copycats like the London bombers. Those anarchists are just punk kids looking for trouble but they got access and know how. Interesting that Bolling shorted the mkt on the news. He covered at a loss but that 200 pt drop chatter apparently made the rounds. :eek:
You must be scared for all of December now. Did you see the news, all companies must now record all emails and IM, the TSA is making new secret lists of passengers (you have no right to see or challenge these lists). Still, a bunch of people who hate being under the heel of a foreign army will some how over take a 1st world country and TAKE AWAY YOUR FREEDOM You must believe that. You do realize that the internet is the last source of true, non-corporate contolled free speech. You do realize that this will not last for long. Due to "terror threats" they will halt our internet freedoms, much a NT, MSFt, CSCO, YHOO is supplying the technology to China to do the same. Facism is very profitable.