Originally posted by Bourbon:
I firmly of the believe that persons connected to bin Laden, and/or AQ, are profiting handsomely in commodity and financial markets. These are smart people, they've read Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, they know high finance, they know oil. They could have readily anticipated the cascading effects of a surge in oil prices. I think it is likely that they did, and that they consider it a pillar in their strategy of defeating the US by leading it blindly to its fiscal demise.
There's just way too much smart money out there for this to happen. Besides, the last time around where there was cascading oil prices worldwide, the whole ag community took it in the shorts. Not happening this time around. Actually, it's going 180 degrees this time around.

Looking back at the last 12 to 18 months, there were a few people who predicted this, but not many (I mean like a handfull). Most missed big time on the whole ag commodities market (too much time spent on Hedge funds, with all the CDO's and SIV's in the subprime markets).

Truthfully, we here at SWJ did a better job of seeing the effects even before the MSM starting running all their "scare" stories.

If this is their version of our "financial demise", well, they may hit Wall Street (although methinks Wall Street pretty much did it to themselves without a whole lot of outside help), but in the MidWest and the other ag production areas of the US, Main Street is doing pretty well, thank you. Not perfect, but pretty well.