Is this recession intentional?

[begin_within]

And if so, who intended it and designed it, and why?

[readmoreoften]

1. That's one possible reading of the folks at deepcapture.com

(or is it deepcapture.org?)

[elleng]

6. What ARE they?

.

[readmoreoften]

15. They're capitalists who've gotten screwed over by even more vicious capitalists.

Patrick Byrne (owner of overstock.com) was taken down by Cramer and Co. Then he started challenging them and got some folks at the Columbia Journalism Review involved. It's pretty complicated but incredibly well documented in my opinion. Whether the collapse is *engineered* is questionable. But it seems to have happened due to excessive criminal activity from the inside. My guess is perhaps even out of bounds of the government itself. This is no "republican plot". This is republicans robbing republicans.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

16. Someday, Patrick Byrne, PhD. ...

Will be regarded as a prophet. You mark those words.

[readmoreoften]

19. I agree.

[crimsonblue]

10. damn you, beat me to it.

Before I read the lengthy (40,000 word) essay on deepcapture, I was skeptical that the recession was intentional. Now, I'm becoming more and more convinced that Wall Street started this.

[elleng]

13. Posted at DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4659127

'Somewhere in the middle of 2008, after the horses bolted from the barn, the barn collapsed, the barn burned, and the barn’s ashes scattered to the four winds, the federal government decided to close the barn door."'

[960]

2. no, but it was carelessly brought on by greed and theft.

from wall street fraud to looting the coffers by bushco.

[janx]

9. Yes, it was.

And welcome to DU, by the way!

[Incitatus]

3. follow the money?

[rwheeler31]

4. The gop has very bad timing.

[midnight]

5. I'm working on a theory that it may possibly be brought to us with

intent from the same group who gave us shock and awe!

[elleng]

8. starve the beast,

pnac, etc?

Will think about it too, but seems pretty extreme and HUGELY chancey.

[Lex]

7. Read "The Wrecking Crew" by Thomas Frank.

You will have your answers.

http://www.amazon.com/Wrecking-Crew-How-Conservatives-Rule/dp/0805079882/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236395762&sr=8-1

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. The "co-incidence" of Bush passing law of no tax on capital gains

for 2008-09-10 strikes me as interesting.
And strangely forward thinking for an administration that famously could do nothing right.

The "co-incidence" that the boomer retirement funds were due to be collected starting this year strikes me as interesting.

The "co-incidence" of Haliburotn moving to Dubai a few years ago and spinning off KBR struck me as odd..
right up until the lawsuits against KBR.

I am very much for the "take the money and run" theory of this mess.

[conscious evolution]

26. boomer retirement funds

I saw a graph once that compared the retirement rates and the DJIA.
Very interesting.The when more people retire the stock market drops,When the rate of retirees goes down the stock Market goes up.
When do the boomers start retiring?

[dixiegrrrrl]

29. 2009 for the majority.

They actually counted "boomers" as 1947 and up.
Those of us born in 45, 46 are labled "early" boomers.
Fortunately, some of us were also early retirement fund withdrawers.

[baldguy]

12. Of course it is.

Rome was sacked by a Christian army, after holding out against the barbarians for 500 yrs.

The people who are currently plundering the American economy WHILE WE WATCH are the same multinational corporations that it created. 30 yrs of deregulation & GOP government made it possible - and the GOP is still advocating the expansion of the very same policies that brought us to this point.

[rurallib]

14. you could see it coming for years

basically a campaign trick that got a little out of hand. Set things up to collapse beginning in the spring of 2009. Blame the Dems for another "Carter administration." Then the tough tlking repugs come in and save the day with (wait) TAX CUTS for the rich.

[asjr]

17. I think it is the culmination

of the last 20 years--or rather when American companies began to move to other countries. One after another was doing it. I know it was for cheaper labor but it seems the only thing we manufactured was cars--and we can see how that is going. It all began right under our noses and no one seemed to catch on until now. It just keeps slip sliding away.

[Andy823]

18. I have wondered that myself

What I think is that the republican party pretty much knew they didn't have a chance to keep control of the country, no matter who they picked as the candidate. I think that for years, 8 of them, the big money in the republican party did as they pleased. No regulation. No bid contracts. Billions of money spent on the wars with no accountability as to where that money went. Fortunes made on wall street illegally. All kinds of things were done to this country with the idea they would keep control of things when Bush left. As long as the same crooks are in control, you can do what you want and juggle the books. But old W screwed that idea up just like all the other things he has done in his life, so they had to come up with plan B. We are living in plan B now. Plan B was to destroy the economy, and they did just that. Now we are bailing out the rich while the republicans in congress fight the president to keep him from doing any of the things he planned on to change this country. They want it back, they would rather see the country in shambles than allow the democrats to keep control. The problem is that they don't have a clue as to how to get it back, so they have become the party of NO with a drug addict, loud mouth bigot as their spokesperson, which I don't really believe was part of the plan, but since nobody else knew what to do, they followed Rush, and that will be a disaster for them!

I think the whole mess we are in was planned by the so called "powers that be" in corporate america. The greedy republicans that don't give a damn about anything by their profits. I don't think it is going to work, but they have made it much harder for president Obama to accomplish the things he really wanted to do his first term. I do think we will come out of this mess, in time, and I think the republicans have taken the path that will keep them in the darkness for years to come. Sadly even though they will be the minority in a divided party, those with the big money who caused this mess will still be the ones with the big money! They won't have the power they want, but they will keep their fortunes, and won't suffer from this mess they put us in.

In the long run the people will win also with president Obama getting us the health care we need, jobs for those who have lost them, better education for our children and grand children, and many other things that will really tick off the republicans. The country has suffered for 8 long years, and it isn't over yet. It will take time but even those who took us into this mess won't be able to keep us there.

[stillcool]

20. I think it's a natural progression..

of all that went before. Who intended and designed would be the usual suspects..those that can. It would be hard to figure out who benefited because there are layers upon layers of stock transfers, and money laundering on a global basis. It isn't confined to a country, a corporation, or an industy.

[BushSpeak]

21. Think JP Morgan

It's all about consolidating financial power among the wall Street elite, with the bigs buying out the smalls.

It all started in the mid 90s when a Cambridge graduate created the system of using loans as a financial product for JP morgan.
(Google: William Engdahl "The Financial Tsunami, chapter 4)

Then they repealed the Glass Steagall Act in '99 and tacked on the "Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000" to the 2000 budget. Thanks Phil Gramm. This removed all the remaining obstacles and legalized using private loans as investment tools.

Then Greenspan lowered the interest rate to 1-2% for 3 years beginning in 2001. The result was quite predictable, knowing human tendencies.

If you look closely, JP Morgan is the one that is buying out the others and is connected to spreading rumors that hastened the fall of Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros.

Not surprising when you look at the history of the House of Morgan.

Their fortune started in 1857 when they collapsed the New York grain market. The Rothschilds gave Morgan (& Peabody) ~£5 million to buy up companies on the cheap. Since then Morgans have been behind every economic crisis, using the same tactics. Crash the economy, spread rumors to weaken competitors, then buy up failed banks & companies on the cheap.

The formula has worked for centuries, I'm quite surprised that the public hasn't caught on yet.

I've got tons of documents on my hard drive and am preparing a conference on the subject here in France.

Hope this will give you a starting point to look in the right direction.

Also Google: "The Money Masters" video This was the biggest eye opener to understanding what goes on behind the scenes.

[Warpy]

22. I don't think so

Oh, I think all the scammers knew they had a limited life span of being able to keep scamming the system, but I think they all expected to cash out and retire to the Caribbean before anybody was the wiser.

This has hit them all hard and unexpectedly. Very few of them had the brains to get out in 2006 before the shit started to hit the fan.

[No.23]

23. Fruit of a poisonous tree.

Poisonous tree?

The drastically disproportionate redistribution of wealth, of course.

Which is always an intentional act.

[TexasObserver]

24. No. In fact, it's worse because it was artificially delayed.

Remember back to summer 2007. Wall street was drunk with highs. Like hard partiers late on Saturday night, they didn't want it to end. And what's more, the Bush administration and the GOP overlords didn't want it to end.

Enter Bernanke and crew. Recall the late summer 2007 infusions of liquidity by the Fed into the financial system. They began juicing the economy at that time, and their goal was to hobble through the election and put off the inevitable economic decline.

They almost succeeded, but in mid Sept 2008, it all came crashing down. The intent was to keep the party going until after the election of 2008, then dump the whole mess on the Democratic administration coming in, and that's what happened. However, the collapse that began over the summer and into the fall began before the election, and for that we are fortunate.

The recession was not contrived, but it was made worse by these efforts to keep the recession's effects from hurting Wall Street and the GOP until after the election.

[GoesTo11]

25. Of course not.

Even now, the whole country is politically and financially united in trying to end the downturn.

[begin_within]

27. I thought Limbaugh wanted Obama to fail - that doesn't sound too united

[GoesTo11]

28. Well except for wanting Obama to fail and Wall St. hands in the cookie jar

Other than that, we're all united. Actually, I am surprised at how united much of the country is, although those bad eggs are going to make it much more difficult and they are a real shame.

[libodem]

30. I think the neocons are happy about it

and have another 30 year plan cooking in the think-tanks. This current crisis is the launching pad for 2010 elections. They already have the the theme: Democrats have destroyed the economy with tax and spend programs saddling your children with the burdens for generations.....