The Miscreants’ Global Bust-Out (Chapter 21): How a Small Gang of Organized Criminals Wrecked the World

The Miscreants’ Global Bust-Out (Chapter 21): How a Small Gang of Organized Criminals Wrecked the World

Posted on 18 August 2011 

It should be clear to anyone who has read the first 20 chapters of this series that manipulative short selling contributed to the financial crisis of 2008. And it could happen again. Or, rather, it may already be happening again. That’s why multiple governments in Europe last week took dramatic steps to curb short selling of financial stocks.

But expect no such action from U.S. regulators. No matter how brazen the attacks, no matter how far the markets sink, the Securities and Exchange Commission has stated unequivocally that it intends to do nothing. According to SEC spokesman John Nester (quoted by Bloomberg on August 12, 2011), the SEC “does not intend to further restrict short sales” because the SEC already has “sufficient rules” in place.

We at DeepCapture do not think that banning or even restricting legitimate short selling would be good for the markets. But the SEC’s claim that it is adequately protecting the nation from illegitimate (i.e., manipulative) short selling is laughable.

Recall that at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008, the SEC issued an “Emergency Order” stating (in careful, bureaucratic language, though the message was clear) that manipulative short selling had contributed to the demise of several big banks and brought the financial system to the brink of collapse. Three years later, the SEC has yet to prosecute a single one of the criminal short sellers who (according to the SEC) nearly brought the nation to its knees.

Meanwhile, the SEC continues to allow traders to short sell stock that they have not yet borrowed. That is, traders can still flood the markets with what is, in effect, phantom stock. When the SEC claims to have “sufficient rules” in place, it means that short sellers are required to locate and deliver real shares within three days. But there is little to prevent traders from flooding the markets in multiple, successive, three-day waves—over and over until stocks go into death spirals.

And even when traders fail to deliver stock within three days (as they still often do), the SEC does precisely–nothing. As for the many other tactics that short sellers use to manipulate the markets—well, the SEC doesn’t do anything about those either. Again, in the three years since the financial system nearly imploded up until today (when the financial system seems once again to be on the verge of imploding) the SEC has prosecuted exactly zero short-side market manipulators.

So maybe this is a job for some other agency. At a minimum, the national security community ought to be taking a close look at outfits like Penson Financial, the previously obscure brokerage that suddenly (in 2008) became the largest brokerage on the planet, by volume. As we have seen, most of that new volume was manipulative short selling targeting the big banks and a select number of other companies that were critical to the stability of the American financial system.

Indeed, as we know, the vast majority of the short selling targeting financial stocks leading up to and during the 2008 cataclysm was transacted through Penson Financial and one other relatively obscure brokerage, Wedbush Morgan. The short selling of financial stocks that went through these two obscure brokerages exceeded the total short selling of financial stocks transacted by Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan–combined.

The Wedbush and Penson data (showing a sudden and massive surge in new short selling targeting the same stocks and transacted by people who all, at the same time, chose to use the same two obscure brokerages) is strong evidence that there was a deliberate (and probably coordinated) attack on the U.S. markets. And we have a pretty good idea who was responsible. At least, we know enough about Wedbush and Penson to account for some significant portion of the manipulative short selling transacted during and leading up to the financial crisis of 2008.

Wedbush Morgan referred much of its trading to Bernard Madoff’s criminal brokerage. And, as we know, Madoff was using some significant portion of the money from his Ponzi fund to cover up “failures to deliver” liabilities that his brokerage had accrued as a result of transacting manipulative short selling for his clients (many of whom seem to have directed their trades through Wedbush, which referred them to Madoff).

It is almost certain that the people responsible for this manipulative short selling were the criminals (or entities closely affiliated with the criminals) who were “feeding” the Madoff Ponzi fund (i.e. the fund that was used, in part, to cover up the manipulative short selling). We know who was feeding Madoff’s Ponzi. And we know (though it took upwards of two years for DeepCapture to figure it out) who many of Penson Financial’s key clients were in 2008. And as it happens, there is considerable overlap between the two.

That is, the people who were feeding Madoff and the traders who were Penson’s key clients inhabit the same distinct network of closely affiliated financial operators. I list them below, if only in furtherance of my contention that this might be a job for the nation’s national security officials (who tend to be honest and patriotic) rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawyers (who tend to be deeply captured and weaselly).

As we know from earlier chapters, the key feeders to Madoff’s criminal outfit (which operated with the full acquiescence and even the help of the SEC, which named one of its most important short selling loopholes “The Madoff Exemption”) included the following:
◦At least two of Al Qaeda’s most important financiers: Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, and (through others named below) “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” Yasin al Qadi;
◦the people (Apollo Management’s co-founders) who brokered the relationship between the Iranian regime and Credit Suisse, which transferred $1 billion to Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program;
◦Credit Suisse, which transacted trades (ultimately through Madoff) for secret accounts held by Libya, Sudan and a big, U.S.-based Iranian government outfit (the Assa Corporation) that was indicted in 2009 for espionage and funding Iran’s nuclear program;
◦Marc Rich (key financial advisor to the Iranian regime who rented office space in the 1980s from the above-mentioned Assa Corporation and was indicted in the 1980s for trading with Iran while U.S. soldiers were dying trying to rescue America diplomats who were held hostage in Tehran);
◦Ivan Boesky (financial advisor to the Iranian regime; shared Iranian Assa Corp. office space with Marc Rich in the 1980s);
◦The top financiers (e.g. Jeffrey Picower) of Ivan Boesky in the 1980s;
◦Many other key financial advisors to the Iranian regime–e.g. Ali Nazerali (hedge fund partner of “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” Yasin al Qadi); Abbas Gokal; Adnan Khashoggi. (all through Lines Overseas Management);
◦Key financial advisors to Libyan dictator Muammar Qadaffi (e.g., Martin Schlaff; Adnan Khashoggi; Mufti al Abbar);
◦The Mogilevich organization (a Mafia outfit closely intertwined with the Russian intelligence services);
◦Russian oligarchs closely tied to Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence apparatus (through Bank Medici, which also fed Madoff Mogilevich money);
◦Russian spies (through Lines Overseas Management);
◦La Cosa Nostra;
◦The ruling families of Abu Dhabi and Dubai;
◦many of financial criminal Michael Milken’s closest associates, most tied to Russian organized crime.
◦It should be noted that a number of those named above are also among Milken’s closest associates.

As we know from earlier chapters, the clients of Penson Financial and its partner brokerages (i.e. the clientele responsible some significant portion of the volume that made Penson the world’s largest brokerage in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis) included:
◦many of Al Qaeda’s most important financiers (including the two involved with Madoff);
◦traders tied to Hamas (e.g. Omar Amanat, who brokered many of Penson’s other client relationships);
◦the Muslim Brotherhood;
◦traders tied to Palestinian Islamic Jihad;
◦traders tied to Hezbollah;
◦traders tied to the Iranian regime, Iran’s terrorist proxies, and Russian intelligence assets (generating at least 20 percent of Penson’s volume in the month before the 2008 collapse of Bear Stearns);
◦a large network of jihadi and Russian Mafia traders who had been involved with a brokerage (Global Securities) that was affiliated with the Assa Corp. (Iranian government outfit indicted for espionage in 2009);
◦key financial advisors to Libyan dictator Muammar Qadaffi (e.g. Al Qaeda operative and Saudi billionaire Abdurrahman Alamoudi; also the above-mentioned Madoff feeders);
◦the ruling families of Abu Dhabi and Dubai;
◦traders tied to Pakistani and Saudi intelligence;
◦a billionaire leader of the Marxist Naxalite terrorist group (linked to Al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence);
◦D-Company (Mafia outfit and Al Qaeda affiliate trained by Pakistani intelligence);
◦the largest financier of the Tamil Tigers (linked to Al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence);
◦a fund manager who commands a paramilitary army allied with Hezbollah in Lebanon;
◦the Mogilevich organization (Russian Mafia outfit closely intertwined with the Russian intelligence services);
◦hedge funds and traders linked to Russian spies;
◦Russian spies (through Lines Overseas Management);
◦Russian oligarchs closely tied to Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence apparatus;
◦Multiple traders implicated in the 1999 scandal that saw the Russian government and the Mogilevich organization manipulating the U.S. markets, and laundering money through Bank of New York
◦Traders who perpetrated the financial terrorism (timed to coincide with Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon) that destroyed MJK Clearing, then the largest clearing brokerage in America;
◦La Cosa Nostra;
◦Michael Milken’s closest associates (i.e., America’s most notorious short-side market manipulators, most tied to Russian organized crime and/or La Cosa Nostra)
◦All of Bernie Madoff’s key feeders.

In upcoming chapters, I will add to the list, but this will only reinforce my conclusion that the clientele of Penson Financial and Bernie Madoff’s brokerage (the two brokerages responsible for most of the short selling targeting financial stocks in 2008) was comprised largely of market manipulators with ties to either organized crime, rogue states, jihadi terrorist groups, or (in a number of cases) all of the above.

Moreover, this should not be at all surprising. As I have shown, organized crime has a massive presence on Wall Street. And naturally enough, organized criminals are often responsible for the sorts of financial crimes (such as coordinated, manipulative short selling) that require a degree of…organization.

Moreover, it is not at all conspiratorial to suggest that financial operators tied to organized crime inhabit a close-knit “network” that also includes financial operators tied to jihadi terrorist groups and hostile foreign governments. As I have shown, terrorist financiers and the governments of rogue states have developed remarkably close relationships with organized crime and American financiers tied to the Mafia.

In demonstrating this fact, I merely confirm what Admiral Dennis Blair, then Director of National Intelligence, said in his 2010 report to Congress. Recall that Admiral Blair said that there was “dangerous nexus” between terrorist groups, organized crime, and the governments of rogue states. Admiral Blair also said that organized crime “almost certainly will increase its penetration of legitimate financial and commercial markets, threatening U.S. economic interests and raising the risk of significant damage to the global financial system.”

On July 25, 2011, the White House not only reinforced this assessment, but also issued an unprecedented Executive Order declaring it to be a “national emergency.”

Amazingly, not one major newspaper reported on this “national emergency.” So I will stress that the White House, for the first time in history, issued an Executive Order stating that the President was “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat that significant transnational criminal organizations pose to national security…”

In explaining why this is a “national emergency”, the White House stated that Mafia groups (a report issued the same day by the President’s national security staff singled out the Moscow-based Mogilevich organization) “have increased and deepened their ties to foreign governments and the international financial system…There is also evidence of growing ties between significant transnational criminal organizations and terrorists.”

The White House stated further that transnational criminal organizations were “undermining economic markets” and “currently pose significant threats to U.S. domestic and foreign economic interests, as well as…the stability of the international political and financial systems.”

The White House did not specify what it meant by the “stability” of the financial system. But it seems to me that the information we have about Penson Financial and Bernie Madoff’s operation is evidence enough that the American financial system has indeed been penetrated by organized crime and its affiliates (e.g., financiers tied to hostile foreign governments and jihadi terrorists).

It also seems to me that anyone who accepts that manipulative short selling does serious damage to the American economy would rightly view the above lists of Penson clients and Madoff feeders (most of whom are still active in the markets) as evidence that we do indeed face a “national emergency.”

Of course, there are many intelligent people who believe that manipulative short selling did not contribute to the financial crisis of 2008. These people say that the financial system melted down because the banks were extremely weak in 2008. And the banks were weak because their highly leveraged balance sheets were loaded with bad mortgages, collateralized debt obligations and property that had been massively devalued as a result of the mortgage crisis that began in 2007.

There is no doubt that the banks were weak. But as the SEC suggested in its September, 2008 “Emergency Order”, the weak banks would have survived if it were not for the sudden death spirals of their stock prices, which made it impossible for the banks to raise new capital.

And though the media seems incapable of absorbing this concept, virtually any executive on Wall Street (with the exception of short sellers) will tell you that manipulative short selling contributed to those death spirals in 2008. Actually, it is plain common sense that massive new volumes of short selling, combined with other panic inducing factors (such as steady bombardments of rumors like those that hit the markets in 2008) can create self-fulfilling prophecies, especially when it comes to the stock prices of financial firms.

But, yes, in 2008, the banks were already weak. And, yes, they were weak because they leveraged themselves to the hilt in order to buy mortgage derivatives and property whose value was wiped out as a result of the 2007 collapse of the mortgage markets.

However, I will remind you that there is a scheme known as a “bust-out”. This scheme (as I explained in earlier chapters) has intermittently wrought havoc on the economy since the 1980s, when dozens of major savings and loan banks were “busted out” – that is, leveraged to the hilt, looted and loaded with toxic assets purchased from others who were in on the scheme, and then finished off by affiliated short sellers.

And it is important to remember that most of the “bust outs” that fueled the “savings and loan crisis” in the 1980s were perpetrated by either: 1) organized crime; 2) a massive Pakistan-based criminal enterprise called the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI); and/or 3) the famous financial criminal Michael Milken and his closest associates.

When I write of Milken’s “closest associates,” I am not suggesting guilt by association. I am suggesting that Milken and the three dozen or so people who are his closest associates are in fact guilty. They regularly work together to bust-out companies. And they regularly collude to manipulate the markets.

As I have repeatedly stressed, there are surely hundreds of people who could be considered associates of Milken, and most of them are probably law-abiding people. However, Milken and his three-dozen or so closest associates comprise what is known in legal terms as a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO). Which is to say, they are like the Mafia. Indeed, in many cases (see earlier chapters for complete evidence), they are the Mafia.

As we have seen, the Milken organization’s bust-outs in the 1980s were, in many cases, perpetrated in league with BCCI, the massive criminal bank. As we have also seen, BCCI’s founding shareholders and its most important operators (many of them still among Milken’s closest associates) included: 1) key financial advisors to the regime in Iran; 2) financiers tied to Pakistani and Saudi intelligence; 5) people tied to La Cosa Nostra; 6) people who would later be tied to Russian organized crime 7) the Abu Dhabi and Dubai ruling families; and Saudi billionaires who would later be known as the most important financiers of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, and other jihadi terrorist outfits.

The “Miscreants’ Global Bust-Out” that wiped out our economy in 2007-2008 (and which continues to bedevil the markets today) involved pretty much this same demographic. And, yes, it began with the “mortgage crisis” of 2007. Except that is wasn’t a “mortgage crisis” in the sense that it was described by the media. The typical media story reported that “skyrocketing default rates on subprime mortgages” caused the mortgage markets to collapse. This was plainly false.

According to data provided by the Mortgage Bankers Association, default rates on subprime mortgages were above 8 percent every year from 1998 to 2002. In 2001, the default rate on subprime mortgages reached nearly 10 percent. But in those years there was no “mortgage crisis.” And after those years, subprime default rates steadily declined.

The 2006 vintage of subprime mortgages (the vintage of mortgages commonly blamed for the 2007 “mortgage crisis”) defaulted at an average rate of only 6.8 percent. The 2007 default rates were not much higher than that. And even by the second quarter of 2008, long after the mortgage markets had collapsed, the default rate was still only around 8 percent. So the link between default rates (even on the least credit-worthy subprime mortgages) and the mortgage crisis is not at all clear.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) said as much in its February 2011 report to Congress. According to the FCIC, the “mortgage crisis” was not primarily the result of “reckless” lending to subprime borrowers. It was, rather, largely the result of the 2007 collapse in the market for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). And the CDO market collapsed because more than half of all CDOs issued in 2006 and 2007 were so-called “synthetic” CDOs.

Regular CDOs are packages of mortgages that trade like securities. So-called “synthetic” CDOs do not contain mortgages themselves. They contain bets against mortgages, usually in the form of credit default swaps. That is, the sellers of these “synthetic” CDOs (more than half of the overall CDO market in 2007) were people who were betting against mortgages and therefore wanted the mortgage markets to collapse.

As the FCIC also made clear, just a few specialist firms (working with no more than fifty short sellers) created all of the “synthetic” CDOs that came to comprise more than half of the overall CDO market. Importantly, those specialist firms did not package these “synthetic” CDOs with bets against average subprime mortgages. They and their short selling clients packaged them with bets against the worst possible mortgages in the nation—a select number of handpicked mortgages that seemed certain to default.

Thus, over half the market was actually comprised of securities that had been designed to implode by people who were betting that they would.

According to the FCIC, the firms that specialized in creating “synthetic” CDOs actually fueled a demand for fraudulent mortgages. Merely crappy (subprime) mortgages were not adequate because they were defaulting at a rate of less than 8 percent–and the short sellers were looking for default rates of 100 percent. The only kind of mortgages that defaulted at a rates of 100 percent were, of course, fraudulent mortgages—mortgages that were taken out by people who had zero intention of paying them back.

As is happened, there were people prepared to meet the demand for fraudulent mortgages. Beginning in early 2005, there was a massive surge in mortgage fraud. In March 2007, the FBI announced that known incidences of mortgage fraud had doubled over the past three years. And those were only the mortgage frauds that the FBI was investigating. It is more than likely that the actual incidences of mortgage fraud tripled or quadrupled between 2005 and 2007, when the mortgage markets collapsed.

This sudden surge in mortgage fraud correlated precisely with the proliferation of self-destruct CDOs. In fact, there appears little question that the creation of self-destruct CDOs could not have occurred without the mortgage fraud.

Even worse, as I will show in the remaining chapters, there is good reason to believe that the mortgage fraud industry was catering to the people who were creating self-destruct CDOs as part of a larger scheme to destabilize the financial system.

One reason to believe this is that many of the same people who were creating the self-destruct CDOs in 2006 had also seized control of major mortgage companies. Once in control of the mortgage companies, the financial operators loaded them with debt that they used to finance fraudulent mortgages, which were precisely the sort of mortgages they needed for their self-destruct CDOs (i.e., their bets against the fraudulent mortgages they had created).

In other words, with one hand they promoted the fraudulence that with the other hand they bet against. This is what is called a “bust-out.”

Indeed, the DOJ says that insiders at some mortgage companies worked in cahoots with organized criminal gangs that descended on cities buying as many homes as they could get their hands on. Often, these criminal gangs (with help from the mortgage company insiders) would take out mortgages valued at twice or more than twice the listed price of the houses they were buying.

Of course, the mortgage company insiders churned out these criminal mortgages knowing full well that the mortgages would never be paid back. That is, the insiders looted their companies—and in many cases the companies, of course, eventually imploded. If these actions were in fact connected, it means that those companies were deliberately destroyed—at great profit to affiliated short sellers who helped put them out of business, and at great profit to the people who used the fraudulent mortgages to create self-destruct CDOs.

Fraudulent mortgages represented only a small fraction of total mortgage lending, but bets against fraudulent mortgages were packaged into multiple “synthetic” CDOs. As a result, the health of the entire CDO market (and therefore the health of the mortgage market, the property market, and the banks that purchased property and CDOs) depended disproportionately on whether a relatively few fraudulent mortgages would, in fact, default. Which, of course, they would.

This must be stressed: a small number of specialist firms and short sellers deliberately created financial weapons of mass destruction that they knew would destabilize the banks and the American economy. As U.S. Senator Carl Levine stated (singling out “synthetic” CDOs as evidence): “The recent financial crisis [of 2007-2009] was not a natural disaster; it was a manmade economic assault.” [the emphasis was Senator Levin’s]

To the extent that the media, regulators, and politicians have picked up on this scam, the focus has been on the banks (especially Goldman Sachs) that worked with some specialist firms and a few short sellers to broker the sale of self-destruct CDOs to unwitting customers. Goldman Sachs and a few other banks are certainly culpable. They knew that some CDOs were (in the words of one Goldman executive) “shitty”—and they sold them as if they were good investments.

However, Goldman’s executives did not know just how “shitty’ they were. They did not know that the CDOs were, in fact, guaranteed to self-destruct. That’s because the specialist firms that created these things “specialized” in hiding the outright fraudulent mortgages in the paperwork describing the CDOs.

Indeed, the specialist firms displayed a perverse sort of genius in admitting to Goldman and others that the CDOs were (in a general sense) “shitty”, but not revealing that they had a 100 percent chance of self-destructing and wiping out the markets, thereby paving the way for a financial crisis that would bring even Goldman Sachs to the brink of collapse.

The paperwork for a given CDO would state (vaguely) that it contained bets against a selection of mortgages that had been given to, say, especially low income people in Michigan. The paperwork (written up by the specialist firms) would also state that these low income people had poor credit ratings and thus a higher than average likelihood of default. The specialist firms then sold the CDOs as investments that were risky (perhaps even “shitty”), but nonetheless had the potential for a big payoff for anyone with an appetite for risk.

What the paperwork did not do was identify the individual mortgages. So while the banks that brokered the sales of the CDOs (and the banks that bought them) knew in a general sense that CDOs contained selections of risky mortgages, they did not know that many of those individual mortgages were outright fraudulent.

Again, only the specialist firms and the short sellers who picked the mortgages (and in many cases created the mortgages in cahoots with organized gangs) knew that they had manufactured instruments that were guaranteed to self-destruct. That’s why they were able to find people who were willing to take the other side of the bets.

The banks, the credit rating agencies, and others deserve blame for not scrutinizing these CDOs more carefully. But all of them genuinely (and not irrationally) believed that even if mortgages defaulted at rates higher than expected—even if there was a historic and disastrous upsurge in default rates—the buyers of these CDOs could still expect to recoup some portion of their investment.

Because they did not know about the organized criminals taking out the fraudulent mortgages that were being selectively inserted into the CDOs, they did not know that these CDOs would be worth nothing.

But the specialist firms and the short sellers knew. And because they knew the self-destruct CDOs comprised half the overall market, they knew what would happen when the CDOs destructed. They knew this would not be a mere correction, or crash, or bursting of a bubble. They knew that the market would be calamitously vaporized—the first time in history that a market for a class of securities would literally drop to zero.

They also knew that the collapse of the CDO market would seriously hobble the banks. Moreover, the creators of self-destruct CDOs and/or closely affiliated financial operators took other steps to ensure that the banks would be crippled. For example, as we will see, they worked with compromised insiders at some banks (notably Lehman Brothers) to get the banks to buy overvalued Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) that would be wiped out once property prices plummeted as a result of the collapse of the CDO market.

Unsurprisingly, these same financial operators and their affiliates perpetrated much of the manipulative short selling that finished off the banks that had been hobbled by CDOs and toxic REITs.

One reason why the banks were so easily induced to buy these toxic assets is that they were drunk with leverage and greedy for commissions. But it must be stressed that the banks did not ultimately collapse simply because of a generalized buying spree. They collapsed because they had bought a specific selection of especially toxic assets from a specific selection of financial operators who were deliberately poisoning the banks and would subsequently perpetrate the short selling attacks that would finish them off.

So to summarize: various people in one small close-knit network of miscreants were involved in every every component of the “Global Bust-Out” that wrecked the economy. And, really, it was not so complicated: the network merely followed an eight-step course in how to create an economic cataclysm.

That is, the miscreants:
1.Worked with and perhaps controlled organized mortgage fraud gangs;
2.Controlled mortgage companies that issued fraudulent mortgages to the organized fraud gangs;
3.Used those fraudulent mortgages to create self-destruct CDOs;
4.Ensured that the CDOs would end up on the balance sheets of major banks;
5.Ensured that a few equally toxic assets (e.g. REITs) would end up on the balance sheets of a few major banks;
6.Conducted the manipulative short selling that finished off the looted mortgage companies;
7.Conducted the manipulative short selling that finished off the banks that had been hobbled by those self-destruct CDOs and REITs;
8.Orchestrated a few other hugely damaging schemes (to be discussed later) that rocked the markets in 2008.

This was the “Miscreants’ Global Bust-Out” that nearly brought the nation to its knees. And it will happen again, which is why I have devoted 20 long chapters to identifying (in admittedly excruciating detail) the miscreants who were responsible for much of the manipulative activities that occurred in 2008.

The remaining chapters of this series will identify more manipulators, as well as the people who were responsible for most of the mortgage fraud, most of the self-destruct CDOs, every scheme to sell overvalued REITs to targeted banks (with Lehman Brothers being the main example), and a few other factors that account for our present “national emergency.”

And in identifying those people, I believe that I will be able to persuade the reader that the once and coming economic cataclysm can (in significant part) be attributed to organized crime, financial operators with ties to jihadi terrorist groups and hostile foreign governments, and the closest associates of the famously destructive financial criminal Michael Milken.

To be continued…

http://www.deepcapture.com/the-miscreant....ked -the-world/

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Re: The Miscreants’ Global Bust-Out Chap 1 - 21
Post by sandi66 on Sept 18, 2011, 4:54pm

deepcapture/Patrick Byrne)9/16/11:Mark Mitchell’s writings seem to be striking a nerve


A Respectful Invitation to All Hoodlums, Cutpurses, Thugs and Assorted Miscreants Named Herein

Posted on 16 September 2011 by Patrick Byrne 

Mark Mitchell’s writings seem to be striking a nerve, at last. After months of no response but silence, in the last few weeks DeepCapture has suddenly been receiving all manner of Nasty-Grams and intimidating phone calls from various people and organizations mentioned in Mark’s work. The similarity of the threats would almost make one think there was a plan. In any case, I will lay out four ground rules here.


1) DeepCapture remains committed to the highest journalist standards. Any error in our work should be pointed out immediately, and we will rectify it .


2) DeepCapture is better than mainstream media, whose intellectual self-confidence, rigor, and integrity I described in my 2008 piece, “Carol Remond Tells a Joke She Doesn’t Get (DowJones)”:


“Before publishing the following critique of Carol Remond’s recent article on Copper River, I contacted Carol for comment. Unlike Joe Nocera and Floyd Norris (both of the New York Times), who have at least had the integrity to defend their work, however haplessly, Carol refused any on-the-record comment on this subject. Thus she joins that tradition of journalistic worthies which includes Bethany McLean, Herb Greenberg, and Roddy Boyd, who refuse to defend their work. They can critique, but not engage, opine, but not defend: the sophomores of intellectual discourse.“


Because DeepCapture is better, we are happy to engage, and self-confident enough in our work that we practice “right of response” journalism: We will publish, unedited, any response (of any reasonable length) by miscreants named in our stories. If Specially Designated Global Terrorists have spokesmen, we’ll publish them.


3) All goombas should understand that the day anything untoward occurs is the day that The Collected Works of Mark Mitchell 2008-2011 appears in the in-boxes of 41.7 million people.


4) Finally, Mark has been acting entirely at my direction. So all nastiness should be directed at me, not him.

Very respectfully,
Patrick Byrne
Editor-in-Chief
DeepCapture.com