The good news is that it is not 1931 – that’s also the bad news. While the United States now has elaborate governmental and institutional control measures and procedures in place to “manage” today’s economic crisis – it still can’t stop it and it also can’t steer very well. Let’s run through the current state of affairs:
• The Bush and Obama Administrations’ infusions of Chinese-financed cash directly into financial institutions has accomplished very little by any measurable metric.
• The new administration’s Chinese-financed budget hopes to “invest” in projects to create jobs – we’ll see.
• Meanwhile, the largest banks in the country are being offered “unique public-private partnership opportunities” – also known as nationalization.
• Foreclosures, the mortgage crisis and the tumbling values of homes and real estate – the flashpoint for the economic collapse – have been largely ignored.
• Real accountability for government bailout funds (TARP) is virtually non-existent. “Kabuki theatre” performances before congressional committees do not count.
• The general public feels ripped-off, alienated from its government and distrustful of markets and banks. The two leading consumer items the public is purchasing: safes and guns.
• Automakers are poised to fail (again).
• Dr. Doom (Nouriel Roubini) and Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) – the economists who predicted two years (+) ago that our economy was nothing but a house of cards – see absolutely no hope for recovery in sight. None.
Our enemies are not missing any of this. Our economic system and its “organs” have long been the targets of terror. On September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded on Wall Street and turned the heart of America’s financial center into a war zone. With thirty-nine people dead and hundreds wounded, the Wall Street explosion was the worst terrorist attack to that point in U.S. history. The World Trade Center was bombed in ’93 and destroyed on 9/11 using similar “reasoning.”
Terrorists must be considering “Why not deliver the death blow to America right now?” The country is reeling, confused, filled with uncertainty and anxiety. Two of the longest wars in the country’s history have taken their toll in innumerable ways that neither the government nor the public is comfortable or willing to talk about in any real detail. We are vulnerable, distracted and primed for a devastating strike that would bring a radical and sudden end to the “American Century” and the era of Pax Americana.
The US Government has done some thinking on these matters, albeit not under these economic conditions. The "Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack" published a report in July 2008 that is worth your time to read. If you really don't have the time or inclination, here's what you need to know:
"EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences. EMP will cover the wide geographic region within line of sight to the nuclear weapon. It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of US society, as well as to the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power."
In the meanwhile, assorted bad guys -- both state and non-state actors -- are keenly aware of the advantages of attacking, disrupting and destroying US financial, military and governmental communications and information networks. An EMP strike would be an incredibly effective means of disabling all electronics for a very long time indeed.
So, how could it happen? The Iranians have successfully launched medium-ranged missiles from freighters and detonated the payload at apogee. Imagine an EMP weapon lobbed somewhere over the Eastern Seaboard and the subsequent detonation. Imagine the megalopolis stretching from Boston to Richmond instantly thrust back into the mid-19th Century -- for a long time. The bad guys have been thinking about it.
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