For The Record #651: The Engineer Has Wrecked The Train

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Introduction: Supplementing a prediction from FTR #412 (June of 2003), this program notes that the engineer–the Bush administration–has wrecked the train. As we passengers stumble from the economic wreckage, identifying the causes of the disaster is as important as pursuing the malefactors behind the decisive actions. The program begins with review of an article by Lucy Komisar stressing that the U.S. government should use its stewardship of AIG to investigate the offshore operations through which it conducted business in the past. In addition to reviewing AIG’s pioneering development of “captive” reinsurance companies to launder profits and evade taxes, the article highlights AIG’s use of Coral Reinsurance for a variety of illegal gambits. It should be noted that AIG’s illegal operations have been aided by a number of powerful and influential people. Much of the first side of the program consists of analysis of why AIG was central to the institutional financial collapse of September 2008. Among those who note the role of what Lucy Komisar calls “offshore” in the current economic debacle is Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who helped investigate the BCCI affair. Concluding with information from FTR #412, the program sets forth a column by Paul Krugman of The New York Times (a professor of economics at Princeton University.) In numerous recent broadcasts, Mr. Emory has used the phrase “the engineer is out to wreck the train” to describe the direction of the Bush administration and the forces that drive it. For some time, the For The Record series has advanced the working hypothesis that this administration is a front for the Underground Reich, with the goal of the political, economic and/or physical destruction and/or subjugation of the United States as its goal. By maniacally reducing the federal budget and dramatically increasing federal expenditures, the GOP extremists are going to destroy the country. Now, the notion that “the engineer intends to wreck the train” is not just Mr. Emory’s refrain.

Program Highlights Include: Detailed discussion of the role of AIG’s credit default swaps in first buttressing and then undermining the subprime market; a stunning recap of the grim statistics concerning the looming deficit picture; review of the fact that Karl Rove and Grover Norquist are the architects of both fiscal disaster through massive tax cuts and the forgers of the GOP/Muslim Brotherhood alliance. See entire post.