By Marc Keyser
Editor’s note: This is part two of a Q&A series with Marc Keyser, ex-con whistleblower and author of ANTHRAX: Shock and Awe Terror. Read part one on our Web site at www.fresnoalliance.com. Stay tuned for more in future publications.
Q: What’s so different about the 9/11 attack?
A: The extent of the economic damage. When we have another major shock-and-awe terror attack, there will undoubtedly be mass panic in the volatile financial markets just as there was in the 9/11 attack— only on a much larger scale because investors now know that in a major terror attack the stock market will crash because it crashed in the 9/11 attack. A large-scale terror attack will ignite a fire sale on Wall Street. Big investors and day traders will be the first react to the news and sell out to cut their losses guaranteeing that the stock market will plunge.
Q: So investors will save themselves and sell out?
A: In the 9/11 attack, the economy was strong, the national debt was a manageable $5 trillion, the dollar was stable and the banks appeared sound. Today, investors know the economy is unstable because of the $18 trillion national debt, and the banks are holding toxic mortgages left over from the economic meltdown in 2008.
Should we have a major terror attack, big investors will not only dump their stocks in a panic but smart investors will also try to get their cash out of the banks, which will set off both a stock market crash and a run on the banks. Everyone has to know that our government does not have another $10 trillion to bail out the economy again, and in a major crisis investors will want to sell their stocks and people are going to want their money in cash. It will set off a fire sale, and when that happens the government will default.
Q: You are predicting that a major terror attack in the United States will not only crash the stock market, but it will likely set off a run on the banks simultaneously, and leave the government bankrupt.
A: Let me give you an example of a traditional anthrax terror attack. Homegrown terrorists use small aerosol spray cans filled with weaponized anthrax to infect a subway station in New York. The area is cordoned off, people are rushed to the nearest hospital, a few people are sick and dying, and it makes the news, but it is business as usual for the rest of the nation.
However, in a shock-and-awe anthrax attack things are quite different. Homegrown terrorists dressed in service uniforms spray weaponized anthrax in the air conditioners at a few Starbucks and a few elementary schools in a few cities over the weekend. Days later, people are getting sick and dying of anthrax. The news of the anthrax terror attack goes viral in the news media and on the Internet.
The people know from the reports that there is anthrax at a few locations in a few cities, but every day new locations are being reported feeding the public panic. But no one knows what other public places in what other cities have been contaminated and/or will be contaminated. There is no way to know who else among 310 million unvaccinated inhabitants might be infected unless everyone goes to a medical facility to be tested and vaccinated. It is the unknown that drives the panic among the unvaccinated masses.
If you are not treated in the first 48 hours after being exposed, anthrax is a death sentence, so everyone in a population of 310 million has to reach their families and loved ones and drive to the nearest medical facility.
Not only is there no room for this many people to come rushing into clinics and hospitals, but there is also no room in the streets and on the freeways for millions of desperate motorists to try and get through traffic to reach the clinics and hospitals without creating a mass traffic jam in every city. As new sites of infection are reported, and the attack reaches critical mass, public panic will go nuclear. The streets and freeways will be blocked, and the cities will erupt in a conflagration of confusion and chaos.
The network news media has live coverage of cities like Los Angeles, for example, one of the most traffic-congested cities in the world, as millions of terrified people try to reach to a medical facility, and they are suddenly stuck in traffic that does not move.
Desperate people start abandoning their vehicles, and LA turns into a massive parking lot with people trapped in millions of vehicles that cannot move or be removed. The news media and the Internet feed the bonfires of panic. There is rumor upon rumor, and it is a terror just to hear the reports as the cities become a death trap.
Q: Granted, the 9/11 attack crashed the stock market, but did not set off a run on the banks.
A: When the stock market reopened a few days after the attack, the panic in the financial sector drove the market down some $1.4 trillion. Fortunately, the stock market bottomed and slowly recovered because the attacks stopped.
Q: And if the 9/11 attacks had continued?
A: You must understand that our monetary system is faith based. There is a combination of billions of paper dollars along with trillions of digital dollars in computers. In order for the economy to function, people have to believe that their money is in the bank when they want it in cash.
But when everyone wants their money in cash, not only is the cash not there but also there is no room in the congested city streets and freeways during rush hour traffic for a sudden, spontaneous run on the banks among hundreds of millions of people in hundreds of millions of vehicles relentlessly bombarded with the news—on top of the run on the clinics and hospitals. And in order for the stock market to keep from crashing investors have to believe that it is not going to crash right now.
To be continued.
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Marc Keyser is author of ANTHRAX: Shock and Awe Terror. Contact him at ogkeyser@gmail.com or visit www.occupysolidarity.us.
