link for above article

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/01/27/the_black_box_economy/

[investors worldwide hold more than $500 trillion worth of derivatives. This number now dwarfs the global GDP, which tops out around $60 trillion.Essentially unregulated and all but invisible, over-the-counter derivatives comprise a huge web of bets, touching every sector of the world economy, that entangles a massive amount of money.. . .]

"The black box economy
Behind the recent bad news lurks a much deeper concern: The world economy is now being driven by a vast, secretive web of investments that might be out of anyone's control. . . .

"A lot of financial innovation is designed to get around regulation," says Richard Sylla, professor of economics and financial history at NYU's Stern School of Business. "The goal is to make more money, and you can make more money if you don't have to keep capital to back up your investments."

The hiding places for these financial instruments are called conduits. They go by various names - the SIV, or structured investment vehicle, is one that's been in the news a great deal the past few months. These conduits and the various esoteric investments they harbor constitute what Bill Gross, manager of the world's largest bond mutual fund, called a "Frankensteinian levered body of shadow banks" in his January newsletter.

"Our modern shadow banking system," Gross writes, "craftily dodges the reserve requirements of traditional institutions and promotes a chain letter, pyramid scheme of leverage, based in many cases on no reserve cushion whatsoever."

The mortgage-driven securities that have been making headlines are but the tip of a much larger iceberg. Far larger categories of investment have sprung up, with just as much secrecy, and even less clarity into who holds them and how much they are truly worth.

Many of these began as conventional instruments of finance. For instance, derivatives - the broad category of investments whose value is somehow based on other assets, whether a stock, commodity, debt, or currency - have been traded for more than a century as a form of insurance, helping stabilize otherwise volatile markets.

But today, increasingly, a new generation of derivatives doesn't trade on markets at all. These so-called over-the-counter derivatives are highly customized agreements struck in private between two parties. No one else necessarily knows about such investments because they exist off the books, and don't show up in the reports or balance sheets of the parties who signed them.

As the derivatives business has grown more complex, it has also ballooned in scale. Broadly speaking, Das - author of a leading textbook on derivatives and complex securities - estimates that investors worldwide hold more than $500 trillion worth of derivatives. This number now dwarfs the global GDP, which tops out around $60 trillion.

Essentially unregulated and all but invisible, over-the-counter derivatives comprise a huge web of bets, touching every sector of the world economy, that entangles a massive amount of money.. . . "

Did Soros thump the market last week?
N Sundaresha Subramanian
Monday, January 21, 2008  03:04 IST
            

-Two basket-selling deals in Nifty — of 21 lakh  contracts on Friday, and 54 lakh contracts earlier in the week — hit the markets hard
-One entity said to be still short on 75 lakh Niftys
-Falling put-call ratio hints at bounceback

MUMBAI: Did George Soros short the Indian markets last week?

Over 15 years after he winningly shorted the British pound in September 1992 and earned a billion dollars, local market sources said one of his funds may have shorted the Nifty last week.

DNA Money could not independently confirm this, nor could it touch base with Soros’ operations in India.

But some senior marketmen, who did not wish to be named, said there were two cases of basket-selling last week which clearly was to break the market’s back.

“On Friday, this dealer shorted 21 lakh Nifty contracts triggering a late crash. The same entity had earlier shorted 54 lakh Niftys in the middle of last week,” one source said.

“What the entity doesn’t know is by shorting the Nifty it is trying to bring down heavyweights such as Reliance Industries, Larsen & Toubro and NTPC. This cannot go on. Right now, the entity is sitting on a short of 75 lakh Nifties. So further room for shorts is limited. There seems to be strong buying in Nifty at these levels too. That’s why you saw a premium on Nifty January futures,” the source added.

Nifty January futures closed at a premium of 25 points 5730.

A heavy open interest of over 4.5 crore shares on the Nifty near-month contract remains a cause for concern.

But a falling put-call ratio, analysts said, is a positive sign.

source: http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1146424

"DAVOS, Switzerland: The United States has filled various roles at the World Economic Forum over the past decade: dot-com dynamo, benevolent superpower, feared aggressor, and now, wounded giant.

On the first day of this conference, a parade of bankers, economists, and political officials expressed deep fears about the faltering American economy, peppered with blunt criticism of its institutions, chiefly the Federal Reserve, which some accused of sowing the seeds of today's crisis.

George Soros, the financier who made a fortune betting against the pound, went so far Wednesday as to say that the downturn would put an end to the long status of the dollar as the world's default currency.

"The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom," Soros said. "It's basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/23/business/davos.php?page=1

"Amid collapsing stock prices worldwide, the billionaire investor George Soros has told an Austrian daily, the Standard, that the United States is threatened with recession and the world is facing the worst financial crisis in half a century. "The situation is much more serious than any other financial crisis since the end of World War II," Soros was quoted as saying."

source: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/people%2C601%2Csoros-predicts-worst-recession-for-50-years%2C13683

Interesting how on the heels of a global downturn in the stock markets on a U.S. holiday (1/21/08), the U.S. stock market indicators managed to gain close to 300 points. This is obvious a little dance done for the World Economic Forum being held in Davos Switzerland. The stock market is being revealed for what it is - a very controlled mechanism.

"Stocks Reverse Early Losses, Close Up 2.5%"

By TOM LAURICELLA and PETER A. MCKAY
January 24, 2008; Page A1
The nation's stock market did an about-face, rising nearly 600 points from its morning low to finish deep in positive territory, as investors put aside worries about struggling banks and declining profits and poured money into shares.

The rally, which followed two days in which anxious investors drove stocks sharply lower around the globe, culminated in a 30-minute buying frenzy that left the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 12270.17, up 298.98 points, or 2.5%. (Please see related article.)"

source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120113496995911803.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080117/wl_uk_afp/stockschinabritaincompanylse_080117081715

It's no mistake that the London Stock Exchange officially opened its office in Beijing precluding the huge crash that has occurred(1/21/08) -http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23433407-details/Miserable+Monday%3A+Biggest+FTSE+crash+since+911+wipes+off+more+than+£75bn+in+shares/article.do

(and will continue tomorrow(1/22/08) in the U.S.)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7813

http://axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/12641

Blackwater - The Knights Templar Live
 
By W R Marshall
(AXcess News) Washington - Back in the old days, way back before all these annoying laws about individual rights and international treaties and some bizarre notion of universal equality, there were a group of guys who were sent east to take care of business.
They were the Knights Templar; ass-kickin' monks, European bad boys who joined the Crusades to protect high value Christian assets in the Holy Land . They showed up and showed the Infidel who was the boss of bosses down Jerusalem way. The Templars were devout true believers who read the Good Book but found when the stuff hits the fan, turning the other cheek was a mugs game and you could get the job done better by sticking a dagger up the other guy's strap, then heading down the ol' pilgrim trail with a trunk full of his goodies.
These dudes weren't just knights, they were connected knights. Thanks to their fundamentalist C.E.O., Bernard de Clairvaux (who, when he got out of the death and plunder business got a sweet appointment to sainthood), the Knights Templar got a fat, no bid contract from Pope Honorius II and zero oversight - except from the Pope, who was too busy deciding a lot of other decisions to worry about a bunch of gung-ho contractors just doing their job.
Things were going great, the Templars were getting rich and powerful, they were given land and titles, and it was all good. Then, as occupations often go, the Muslim world united, there was more and more Christian factionalism, and by the early 14 th Century the Templars, along with the rest of the Christian crusaders, had their rear ends kicked all the back to Europe. (Don't worry about this happening again. First; America is farther from Jerusalem than Europe. More importantly, no one in the Bush administration has ever read any history, so it can't repeat itself, right?)  Eventually the Templars lost their patron (he either died or lost the mid-term) and the Knights were going to be brought up on charges. But word was leaked and the Templars loaded their enormous wealth on their enormous fleet of ships and were never seen again.
Some say they went underground and were part of that DaVinci Code nonsense where they hid a pregnant Mary Magdalene somewhere in southern France, and right now the great-great-great-great-great grandson of Jesus himself is buying a baguette and some brie in a little shop on Rue de Nutjob.
Then there's a theory they came to America. Think like a Templar for a minute: you have a lot of money, you're real smart, you're a devout fundamentalist, and you have an empty land in which to prosper. You just didn't figure closet atheists like Jefferson and Washington would end up in charge when the new nation formed.
But since you're familiar with things going wrong - you're still a little miffed about being chased out of Europe - you have a backup plan. You've put most of your money and effort into Michigan.
Michigan is pretty much Canada , so as a place for major industry to serve the rest of an enormous nation, it doesn't make much sense. But if you wanted to somehow legitimize millions of dollars while at the same time fly under the political radar -  Michigan's a great choice. Is it a coincidence that it's also home to tens of thousands of right‑wing, heavily armed, highly organized militia loonies? If you have a gun, a grudge, and a uniform, Michigan is the place for you. (A similar ad for Malta ran in 1486.)
So you're a lonely, rich, devout Templar living in Michigan, investing in this new nation and biding your time. You even take an American name, although you don't want to be that American, so you keep a little touch of the old royalty and call yourself, Prince.
And, lo, seven hundred years after the Templars get a Middle Eastern ass-whoopin' the nation elects a guy, who, it turns out doesn't want to be king, he wants to be Pope. (Cheney wants to be king.) Better yet, he wants to be an old school Pope so he starts a new Crusade in the Holy Land.
Now the patience of the Templars pay off, especially for the Prince family, who've spent their considerable wealth supporting evangelical candidates for elected office, and, in their spare time, bought six thousand acres in North Carolina and started a Templar training facility known as Blackwater-USA.
Just like in the days of Honorius II, Pope Dubya I has given his close friend Erik Prince a no-bid contract to protect modern State Dept. pilgrims - and future Halliburton execs. Equipped with the latest and best equipment money can buy, much better than what the Pope sees fit to give his own military (wait, Templar/Blackwater is his army), they crusade against the Infidel with no accountability and a simple motto: shoot anything that isn't Christian...and maybe some stuff that is.
This may seem a bit disturbing, but frankly with all the revelations of mismanagement that have attended this war, it's nice to see some planning went into this latest Crusade. Quite a bit actually, this Iraqi adventure was seven hundred years in the making. ( Iraq is not quite the Holy Land, but the day ain't over.)   I know many of you have become rather cynical about all the "not nation building" going on over there, but I have a feeling it's all going to work out this time - really.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wvatican105.xml

Vatican paper set to clear Knights Templar

By Malcolm Moore in Rome
Last Updated: 2:08am BST 05/10/2007

The mysteries of the Order of the Knights Templar could soon be laid bare after the Vatican announced the release of a crucial document which has not been seen for almost 700 years.

Guardians of the Grail
    
Knights Templar are rumoured to guard the Holy Grail

A new book, Processus contra Templarios, will be published by the Vatican's Secret Archive on Oct 25, and promises to restore the reputation of the Templars, whose leaders were burned as heretics when the order was dissolved in 1314.

The Knights Templar were a powerful and secretive group of warrior monks during the Middle Ages. Their secrecy has given birth to endless legends, including one that they guard the Holy Grail.

Recently, they have been featured in films including The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

The Order was founded by Hugues de Payns, a French knight, after the First Crusade of 1099 to protect pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem. Its headquarters was the captured Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, which lent the Templars their name.

But when Jerusalem fell to Muslim rule in 1244, rumours surfaced that the knights were heretics who worshipped idols in a secret initiation ceremony.

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In 1307, King Philip IV "the Fair" of France, in desperate need of funds, ordered the arrest and torture of all Templars. After confessing various sins their leader, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at the stake.

Pope Clement V then dissolved the order and issued arrest warrants for all remaining members. Ever since, the Templars have been thought of as heretics.

The new book is based on a scrap of parchment discovered in the Vatican's secret archives in 2001 by Professor Barbara Frale. The long-lost document is a record of the trial of the Templars before Pope Clement, and ends with a papal absolution from all heresies.

Prof Frale said: "I could not believe it when I found it. The paper was put in the wrong archive in the 17th century."

The document, known as the Chinon parchment, reveals that the Templars had an initiation ceremony which involved "spitting on the cross", "denying Jesus" and kissing the lower back, navel and mouth of the man proposing them.

The Templars explained to Pope Clement that the initiation mimicked the humiliation that knights could suffer if they fell into the hands of the Saracens, while the kissing ceremony was a sign of their total obedience.

The Pope concluded that the entrance ritual was not truly blasphemous, as alleged by King Philip when he had the knights arrested. However, he was forced to dissolve the Order to keep peace with France and prevent a schism in the church.

"This is proof that the Templars were not heretics," said Prof Frale. "The Pope was obliged to ask pardon from the knights.

"For 700 years we have believed that the Templars died as cursed men, and this absolves them."

". . . religion and religious education were not the only propagational vehicle of patriarchal ideas; other systems of thought and value also delivered the message. One of these was science, which emerged in the seventeenth century mainly in England; its first  and greatest propagandist was Francis Bacon.

There is no question that Bacon in his many writings and experiments sought knowledge for the advancement of human good-he died from a cold that developed after he buried a chicken in the snow to see what would happen to flesh that was frozen. And it is understandable that he and others would at that time believe that human good was dependent upon control over nature. Bacon wrote: "My only eartlhy wish is . . . to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man's dominion over the universe to their promised bounds"; "I am come in very truth leading you to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave"; he justified the right of man to dominate nature by invoking the command, given in Genesis, to have dominion, to subdue. The scientist could lead mad to this level of power: "the mechanical inventions of recent years do not merely exert a gentle guidance over Nature's courses, they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her very foundations." Although Bacon believed that "we cannot command Nature except by obeying her," that it was essential to understand the workings of nature in order to control them, and that this understanding was an act of obedience, he also saw nature as female and "rebellious." Bacon set science on a course which has not been questioned ntil this decade: a course of attempting to dominate rather than understand and cooperate with nature, based on a belief that dominance hierarchies exist in nature. This belief has been undermined by study in ecology and of subatomic phenomena.

Descartes was important, if not alone, in furthering the kind of thinking Bacon had advocated. Descartes posited a split between mind and matter which was extended to fragment mind and body, mind and feeling. This may not seem a new idea, since it was in some sense implicit in the Greek belief in reason as the controller of impulse, and the Catholic belief in human ability to control emotion through faith and submission of will. Yet the context of Enlightenment thought was new. in earlier Western societies, production and consumption were inevitable parts of everyday life. There was a network of obligations linking members of communities. These factors prevented people from seeing others simply as objects, or seeing objects as mere items for use.

THE NEW MODE OF THOUGHT USHERED IN WHAT IS CALLED INSTRUMENTALITY, THAT IS, PEOPLE BEGAN TO VIEW OTHER PEOPLE AND THINGS NOT AS ENDS IN THEMSELVES BUT AS INSTRUMENTS FOR THE FURTHERANCE OF THEIR OWN ENDS. THOSE ENDS INVARIABLY INVOLVED POWER, WHICH IS ITS OWN MOTOR, SINCE ONE CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH OF IT. INSTRUMENTALITY IS THEREFORE LIMITLESS: IT IS A CONTINUING
SEARCH FOR AN END THAT IS PRECLUDED BY THE VERY NATURE OF THE MEANS USED. WITHOUT INSTRUMENTAL THOUGHT, SCIENCE WOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THE COURSE IT DID. "

source: "Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals" by: Marilyn French

...and another thing. This film itself was really manipulative. It inexorably leads to this one conclusion. My son pointed out to me how today, all the financial markets all over the world shuddered, China, China, China... and he reminded me of that Curtis Mayfield song: if we're going to hell we all go together. Whatever the ultimate outcome, not even the evil financiers have the situation in pocket. One world government...good luck, philosopher kings...

* we see today how blatant and "in control" these folks want to pretend to be with their creation of events. this is the great age old story of the person who thinks they know it all and eventually falls. history has seen this before, time and time again. the amount of dependency people have on the system and the scale of destruction which technology has amassed in the hands of the delusional is something the world may have never seen before - and Mr. Mayfield may very well be right this time. 

So bleak.

I have been thinking a lot since watching this about people's need for religious devotion to a personified symbol, whoever it may be: Jesus, H.I.M., the Blessed Virgin (and I can't really help being fond of her in all manifestations). In the future age of Aquarius we may indeed all of us develop th desire or ability to conceive spirituality aligned with science and history, but there is something about this devotion to symbols that stir the heart, some kind of resonance and mystery which seems to have its own value, which is why we do it so persistently...I don't think devotion to an image is the problem, but the manipulation of people through the images which is the problem. If we could conceive them as symbols, and appreciate the loveliness of everyone's expressions of their understandings of the deepest truths...

There is a steep learning-curve here, and I hope Buckminster Fuller was right that we learn what is necessary in the nick of time, just when all seems lost.

* i agree with you. i know personally from my mother the power of the devotional image and the strength it can give to ones. it is indeed as you pointed out the abuse of the symbol to lead ones astray that is the problem - it is an abuse of power.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

Thank you for your interest in Zeitgeist.
Zeitgeist was created as a not for profit expression to inspire people to start looking at the world
from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the
population at large think they are. The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period
of research and the current Source page on this site lists the sources used / referenced.
Soon, an interactive transcript will be online with detailed footnotes and links.

It's important to point out that there is a tendency to simply disbelieve things that are
counter to our understanding, without the necessary research performed.
For example, some information contained in Part 1 and Part 3, specifically, is not obtained
by simple keyword searches on the Internet. You have to dig deeper. For instance,
very often people who look up "Horus" or "The Federal Reserve" on the Internet
draw their conclusions from very general or biased sources. Online encyclopedias or text book
Encyclopedias often do not contain the information contained in Zeitgeist. However, if one takes
the time to read the sources provided, they will find that what is being presented is
based on documented evidence. Any corrections, clarifications & further points regarding the film
are found on the Clarifications page. Downloadable formats are also now available, along with DVDs
by request.

That being said, It is my hope that people will not take what is said
in the film as the truth, but find out for themselves, for truth is not told, it is realized.

Thank You

he has some great points here. and not to distract from the underlying truths that he espouses, but rather as a sidenote i'd like to say:

he still is buying into the fabricated reality that the perpetrators of 9/11 were who the powers that be say did it. i think going a step further - if ward were to pubilcly admit that 9/11 was an inside job, the logical extension would be that the cogs in the wheel(the little eichmanns working in the bureaucratic machinary of imperialism) were consumed by the agenda of the powers that gave them employment to further perpetuate(at a faster rate) that which they had been unconsciously working towards. they were the sacrificial wolves in sheeps clothing(lambs to the slaughter)

full interview: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20001571/site/newsweek/

" . . . NEWSWEEK: Any regrets over calling 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns”?
Ward Churchill: No. I never have any particular regrets about calling things by their right name. And it’s about time we stop pretending that Americans are in a completely different analytical category from everyone else in the world, and are somehow exempt from the consequences of their actions.

Let’s be clear for a moment: how do you define a “little Eichmann”?
Exactly as Hannah Arendt did. [Arendt was a German-Jewish political theorist whose work included coverage of the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel. She coined the phrase “banality of evil,” suggesting great evil emerges from ordinary people accepting and participating in misguided premises of the state, rather than driven by sociopaths and fanatics.]

And how do you think she defined it?
Well, that’s a scholar, a Jewish scholar … who very self-consciously (considered) the aftermath of what happened to the Jewish people in the hands of the Nazis. She attended the Eichmann trial. And she probably intimated as much that she intended in confronting a monster. And what she confronted was a little, nondescript mouse of man, a consummate bureaucrat, petty individual, who didn’t even necessarily agree with some of the policies he had been in a position to implement, but who took his identity, who took his sense of self-esteem, prestige, possibility of advancement—all which is fairly important to people—from discharging his organizational responsibilities in a superior manner.

(The public backlash) was just a visceral reaction. .…What Eichmann did was arrange train schedules, the logistic structure for the delivery of Jews and materials to the camps, and the transport from the camps, things like the gold fillings from teeth. We’re talking ugly business here. But he wasn’t handling the gold. He wasn’t killing the Jews. Not even the Israelis accused him of that. He was absolutely instrumental in a technocratic, bureaucratic, very sterile-organization sense for rendering the process efficient.

But how can you possibly compare the victims of 9/11 to that of a man shipping the gold fillings from murdered Jews?
Those (9/11 victims) who were engaged in the international-financial operations, which were the motive cause for U.S. policy … in full knowledge of what effects were on juvenile populations, sweatshops, and so forth—that’s the anchor there. Implement policy for profit, to maximize profit, to increase dividends, blah, blah, blah. Which also, by the way, increases their commission, establishes their stature, leads to their promotion trajectory, leads to their quality of life, and in full knowledge—they may suppress it—of the carnage that is induced in this profit-maximization profile. …Basically, I said you are accountable for what you do in the world. And … if you are profiting from carnage … you are the moral and philosophical equivalent of Adolf Eichmann. You don’t like that, change the behavior. That’s not who you want to be, stop acting like that.

So the behavior of every 9/11 victim is a moral equivalency to Eichmann’s support of the Holocaust?
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask what the moral equivalency would be of the half-million Iraqi children that died in Iraq from U.S. sanctions? Those children were reduced to less than no value. Now if you were the parent of one of those children … how are you going to ultimately respond? You want security from that kind of retaliation, stop killing their kids. Stop acting like your kids are important and theirs are utterly irrelevant.  Stop acting, as [former secretary of State Madeleine] Albright put it, that we have decided that it’s worth the cost of their pre-12-year-old children to convey what George Bush the first said, “What we say, goes.” . . . "