I may be overblowing this, but former Treasury Secretary's Hank Paulson's revelation that Russia had conspired with China to take take down the US financial system is worrisome and dangerous. China for its part according to Paulson, declined the Russian plan, but did China give then President Bush a heads up?
We will know more about this when Paulson memoirs are published but the administration needs to at least look into this situation further. If it is found that Russia in effect declared war on the US financial system or in some way contributed to the escalation of the collapse in late 2008, then they have effectively declared war on the US and we need to respond strongly.
Russia urged China to dump its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies
Russia’s five-day war with U.S. ally Georgia started on Aug. 8, the same day as the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Games. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told U.S. President George W. Bush during those ceremonies that "war has started," according to Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman.
"The report was deeply troubling -- heavy selling could create a sudden loss of confidence in the GSEs and shake the capital markets," Paulson wrote. "I waited till I was back home and in a secure environment to inform the president."
The US of course, did in fact put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship and earlier this year. This is a very troubling set of circumstances, hopefully this is just a trip down the rabbit hole and leads to nothing. However, combined with China's alleged, computer espionage, this is troubling.
The US has not been this vulnerable on such a myriad of fronts in a long time, if ever. Including two wars, transitioning economy, a dysfunctional political environment, and now two arguably second world countries trying to take down the worlds largest economy through manipulation of financial markets.
Folks, politics traditionally needs to stop at the shores of the US and in this case we need to have a rational and unemotional analysis of what exactly happened. The fact that this never made into the MSM is a testament of how far our so called, 4th branch of government has fallen. Usually these types of things leak out and make into the news, but I can't find anything about this story. Whether this was just a normal tempest in a teapot story or not, a journalist worth his/her salt should have picked this up and see where it lead. Hopefully that will change soon.