The policies put in place to address these two events – first the dramatic accumulation of foreign exchange reserves by Asian economies to bolster themselves against future crises, and then the monetary easing applied by the Federal Reserve to deal with the aftermath of the dotcom boom – were to lead directly to today's banking meltdown and accompanying, rolling series of debt crises.
Yet these events were only the beginning. What really set the future in stone was the policy response to 9/11, the shocking series of terrorist attacks which have their 10th anniversary this weekend. Not in his wildest dreams could Osama bin Laden have imagined the long-term damage his atrocities would unleash on Western economies.
Before the horrendous events of 10 years ago, the Independent's Robert Fisk, one of the few Western journalists to have interviewed Bin Laden, had managed to elicit the following extraordinary claim from the world's most notorious terrorist – that he would turn America into "a shadow of itself" in much the same way as the insurgency he had helped ferment in Afghanistan had helped destroy the Soviet Union.
At the time, these claims seemed ludicrous – no more than the puffed-up, delusional conceit of the hunted and, frankly at that time, largely insignificant fugitive. Yet there is a sense in which Bin Laden did indeed manage to deliver on his promises.
With all major catastrophes, the long-term damage tends to be inflicted not by the event itself but by the response to it. America's reaction to 9/11 was to rush headlong into two, essentially unaffordable wars. What is more, to keep the economy going during the turbulence of these years, the US and its European counterparts unleashed what was to become perhaps the biggest credit bubble of all time. » | Jeremy Warner | Thursday, September 08, 2011
I have been saying for a very long time that Bin Laden couldn't have wished, dreamed of a better outcome for 9/11 than the one he has brought about. He wanted to bankrupt the USA, and he has done so, with just two planes flying into the Twin Towers.
The money that the USA has spent on security and fighting wars ever since has depleted their resources. Nobody will ever tell me that the 9/11 event and the financial crisis we now find ourselves in are unrelated. Anyone who thinks they are should take a closer look at the events that have unfolded since that fateful day.
Thank you, Mr. Warner, for bringing this to people's attention. – Mark
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