Al Qaida and Wall Street understand how to use terror!

First, you place American citizens in deep fear of some unimaginable catastrophe by destroying two very tall skyscrapers full of people, or by sending the global economy into an almost irreversible tailspin.  Second, you continually remind them through repetitive conditioning (suicide bombers on planes or wide-spread bankruptcies and unemployment) that it could happen again tomorrow.  Finally, you then reap the results of their irrational behavior from the resulting Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD):  1) two debt-laden wars, with the associated horrific physical deaths and wounding of tens of thousands of innocent  young soldiers; 2) financial system-breaking bailouts, with huge profits for a select group of well-connected banks, as well as obscene bonuses for the well-heeled financial terrorist executives who reside at the top of those businesses.

The answer to the problem?

Well on the first front, President Obama and his advisers seem to understand that General McChrystal’s “urge to surge” in Afghanistan was only an appeasement to military strategists, and simply moves more targets (soldiers) into closer proximity for the Islamic terrorists to attack.  More importantly, Obama and company also understand that terrorizing the Islamic Terrorists is a far more effective and efficient use of resources.

This strategy was first articulated in Obama’s campaign for President, wherein he declared that he would not hesitate to send large numbers of drones into the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area to bring the fight to our enemies in their own backyard.  Guess what?  It is working.

As one resident of the region was recently quoted, “[w]e have become used to the drone attacks, but now people are scared as they are coming every night.” Israr Khan Dawar, a 17-year-old student in Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan which is controlled by Islamic militants, said “more noise means they are flying lower, and that means an attack is more likely.”  Sadly, these civilians are collateral damage in an unfortunate war that they have been drawn into as a result of the reckless behavior of those around them. 

As for the second front (the Financial Terrorists), we need a scorched-earth strategy like Colonel Kurtz employed in the movie Apocalypse Now, and not some lame federal “banking fee“.  Obama should temporarily nationalize the ten largest U.S. banks, starting with Goldman Sachs, throw their management out, replacing them with people who will act without reckless abandon in search of profits and then make money the old-fashioned way – loaning it out at reasonable rates of interest.

Now THAT would sufficiently terrorize Wall Street.

Unfortunately, it is likely far too late.  The time to have moved on this would have been one year ago, when they were at the mercy of the Feds.  They won that war, and now we ARE screwed.

P.S.  For all you “Capitalists” out there who would label such a drastic measure as “Socialism” – that’s what we have been doing for the past year - you better find a more cogent response.  Besides, as Nouriel Roubini (”Dr. Doom”)suggested in the Wall Street Journal inteview, we would only ”nationalize” this sector of our financial system temporarily.  It would seem prudent at that point to break up these banks into smaller entities, impose moderate regulations on them (especially with usury rates of 18% on credit cards), and spin off the trading and investment side of the firms - regulating them in move inventive ways.  We would have then re-privatized them all within twelve months.

President Obama, that would have sufficiently vanquished the Financial Terrorists, and further given pause to Wall Street’s minions, forcing them to rethink how they are going to conduct business going forward.