I began publishing my monthly newsletter The Bob Livingston Letter™ (subscription required) in 1969. The following is the first column I wrote in the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks and it appeared in the October 2001 issue of The Letter. In it, I predicted the result would be a declining social mood, a rise in terror attacks, along with government-fomented citizen-government confrontations, dissolution of old alliances, racial and ethnic polarization, separatist movements, money printing and assaults on liberty, and posited whether it was an engineered event designed to cover the worldwide bear market. We are days away from the 15^th anniversary of the 9/11 attack; and 15 years of continuous war in Afghanistan (and more than 26 years of Middle East war) for which there seems to be no end, or any effort to bring about an end. I noted Russia’s experience in Afghanistan, and that the U.S. would not win a war there without resorting to the nuclear option.
Government is papering over a bad economy by printing money and manipulating the economic signals to paint a false and rosy picture of prosperity. Americans have been indoctrinated to perceive a rising stock market as a sign of economic recovery. I believe we are on the brink of another bear market (if we ever actually exited the one that began in 2008). Quarterly earnings in a year-over-year basis as measured by the largest American companies are on track to log their fifth consecutive decline. In the last 80 years, earnings contractions of three consecutive quarters have triggered bear markets 82 percent of the time. If it happens again, only another “significant event” like a large-scale attack on the U.S. (perhaps on the electrical grid or some other infrastructure) can stave off collapse and allow the system to continue.
You should prepare for the worst with food and water storage, gold and silver for wealth protection, and guns and sufficient ammunition. I fear another earth-shaking event on the magnitude of 9/11 is near — not necessarily an attack but something that will shake the nation’s foundations in order to goad people into giving up even more of their liberties. The signs are there…
 
Is anyone surprised that there are people in the world who bitterly hate the United States and its rulers?
It is very difficult to get any truth in America from the politicians or the controlled media. It is risky to believe anything official.
It is important to know the philosophical and the religious orientation of the U.S. establishment in order to decipher news stories. There are things to consider here. This attack happened at a time when the economy is going into a black hole, and it is proven so far that the Federal Reserve is helpless to stop it. This attack provides the best excuse imaginable to create $3 trillion or $4 trillion with which to crank up the military industrial complex and many related industries.
This in no way says that this attack was planned by U.S. authorities. But it is to say that the timing is an amazing coincidence. If the powers lose the economy on the downside, they very easily could lose their system. Their options are now limited to trying to create inflation. Before the bombing it was looking hopeless and it now may be more hopeless.
Think now, just four airplane bombs almost shut down the United States. In fact, U.S. commercial airlines will be bankrupt without immediate government aid.
Airline stocks have already fallen substantially in Europe since September 11. U.S. stocks lost $6 billion in capital on the September 17th crash of the market.
The Fed has already started mad pumping of paper money. I predict they will now create $3 trillion of “new money.” Result: The bear market and hard times will continue. The Federal Reserve is the world’s number one money machine, but they now have a huge economic black hole to fill.
Congress is now considering $15 billion to bailout the airline industry. The airline industry, like the hospital industry and most anything else, are defacto government industries.
Just two commercial airliner bombs destroyed 20 percent of the office space in lower Manhattan. What could a dozen have done???
Most of you will remember a bit of history about The Great Depression. The U.S. government literally failed to pull the U.S. economy out of the depression until the beginning of the buildup of the war armaments industry and World War II.
The building of war materials and the subsequent destruction of most of it no doubt provided the stimulus to restart the U.S. economy.
Now, after all these years, it is now a documented fact that U.S. authorities knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
This is not to say in the strictest terms that the U.S. insiders directly caused the Pearl Harbor attack. But if they caused the attack by limiting Japan’s oil options beyond U.S. strategic interest, they indeed created the circumstance for the attack. Add to this that certain people knew the attack was coming or had been warned that it was coming and did nothing, they created the attack by omission.One can indeed commit a crime by omission as well as commission.
Throw on this the fact that the United States had broken the Japanese Navel code before Pearl Harbor. This doesn’t leave much speculation.
Enter Osama bin Laden, the terrorist most named by the U.S. press. Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist has been known by U.S. security people for a long time. You may be sure that a lot is known about bin Laden, in fact minute details of his organization and what his capabilities are.
I have to believe that at the very least U.S. authorities knew that he had the capability and the will to do what was done on September 11th. If this is true, then they allowed this bombing, no different from Pearl Harbor 60 years ago.
Even though it would be difficult to prove any direct commission or “calculated negligence,” the fact of omission is without doubt.
I want to candidly remind you that governments, all governments, need crisis no matter how much lip service they give to “peace.” Crisis is a well-known Machiavellian strategy to gain and solidify political power and persuade public opinion.
Crisis provides the stage where governments can control all sides. At least they can arrange events to “naturally” unfold.
Governments must have scapegoats and phony enemies. The people must have perceived threats to their security, and so naturally government is there to “protect.”
Governments must have enemies to the extent that they finance them. There can be no military budgets without perceived enemies.
Osama bin Laden may very well not be guilty of the hijacking tragedy. U.S. authorities may be using bin Laden as a convenient scapegoat. I suspect too much notoriety has been given bin Laden for several years. He may be expendable, like Oswald, to cover a bigger crime. Decoys are very important.
At any rate, ask the Russians who just a few years ago with their modern military machine were soundly defeated in the guerrilla war with Afghanistan who was supplied by the U.S. Nor can the U.S. win short of turning the whole country into a cinder.
Is the New York bombing an outgrowth or manifestation for the now beginning negative social mood evolving out of the worldwide bear market? We are indeed in a major bear market.
Fear, suspicion and hatred are major social moods in all bear markets leading to global atrocities, terrorism and war.
We are now beginning a long period of social unrest as has happened in past bear markets. The New York event is the beginning.
Many people will now be focused on survival rather than the good feeling of the past long bull market.
I expect the United States, as a meddler in world affairs, should expect hatred to be vented in acts of crime and violence for several years to come. This is the beginning of dangerous times.
Whereas the social mood of the long bull market provided for harmony and tranquility, the bear market will bring citizen-government confrontation, dissolution of old alliances, racial and ethnic polarization, separatist movements and scary terrorist attacks on the U.S. by foreigners.
Our politicians and bureaucrats have just about guaranteed a long period of violence against Americans. Our greatest fear is the real danger that “our” government will impose police-state controls under the pretense of public safety and security.
Younger generations have not lived when the social mood was anger, fear, intolerance, conflict, disagreement and general violence. They along with most generations will not understand that bad economic times bring a widespread negative social mood.
Social moods go up and down in cycles. In bull markets, the social mood is up. In bear markets, the social mood is down. Violence and atrocities become widespread. Governments impose police-state controls on personal liberty.
A bit of history from The Elliott Wave Theorist special report dated September 11, 2001 from Elliott Wave International, PO Box 1618, Gainesville, GA:

Quote: “Aside from a slew of terrorist incidents in the 1910s, a decade dominated by a long bear market in stocks, the idea of“terrorism” as a social force began with the 1966-1982 bear market. {The first act of terrorism listed in American Decadesis the explosion of the Los Angeles Times Building in October 1910, which was linked to organized labor. The last one of note was a bomb that rocked Wall Street on September 16, 1920. The scars of the blast can still be seen in the façade of 23 Wall Street, then as now the offices of J.P. Morgan, Inc. The financial attack centered on Wall Street became physically manifest. Almost the same thing has happened today.} A 10- volume chronology of American social history over the last 100 years (American Decades, Manly, Inc.) lists no acts of terrorism in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s or the 1960s. In early 1970 when the Dow was in a bear market, the age of terrorism began. An Arab terrorist strike killed one person and injured 23 in Munich. On February 21, 1970, another group of suspected Arabian terrorists hijacked a Swissair flight and crashed it. On September 6- 9, 1970, Palestinian terrorists hijacked five planes and blew up three. Unlike the earlier period of “scattered terrorist bombings” in the 1910s, this era was distinguished by the frequency, extent and organization behind the attacks. As the bear market continued, the events grew in size and complexity. The increasing sophistication of terrorist tactics and their rising political power is revealed by the progression from the scattered strikes in 1970 to the PLO raid on the Olympic Village in Munich in 1972 and eventually to a state-sponsorship takeover of the U.S. embassy in Iran in 1979.
“The worst of it ended approximately when the bear market did, as Iran finally released U.S. hostages in January 1981. In those first terrorist acts committed against the United States, we caught a glimpse of the style of conflicts that we would have to endure when the bear market of next bigger size arrived, which it certainly has done.” End quote

From Bloomberg, dateline New York, September 11:

The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon today are the worst acts of terrorism ever on U.S. soil and change the scope of foreign policy experts say.
Never before has a large-scale terrorist attack on the U.S. been coordinated successfully in more than one U.S. city. At this point, no organization has taken responsibility.
“It’s just an attack of extraordinarily sophisticated planning,” said Michael R. Fischbach, a professor of history specializing in the Middle East at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. “The world that we know has now changed.”

Whereas the social mood of the long bull market provided for harmony and tranquility, the bear market will bring citizen-government confrontation, dissolution of old alliances, racial and ethnic polarization, separatist movements and scary terrorist attacks on the U.S. by foreigners.
It is worth a lot to be aware of what and why crowd psychology turns negative. The reason is to make preparations for your own safety and survival. Due diligence commands that we live, think and prepare differently.
We had better expect anything, including further violations of personal liberty.
In the beginning of this article I said that it is important to know the religious and philosophical orientation of the U.S. politicians and the U.S. establishment in order to decipher news stories, national and international events.
I won’t be specific in this letter only to say that the religion of Islam and the religion of the Washington cabal is one and the same. This, of course, is a dimension that only you readers of this letter are privy to. There are some others, but you are the hard-core seekers and readers.
An understanding of this religious identity is the only way to understand in depth and to develop the conviction to identify criminal politics in the United States and the world.
Politics is criminal in the U.S. and it does have a religion. It is this religious undertow out of which universal anti-Christian One Worldism springs. It is a brotherhood that unites the world system against Christian morality.
It’s the political system that has created the environment of social and religious multicultural mix with mass immigration of many races and religions into the U.S. (7 million Muslims). The results were known in advance to the insiders and their politicians and only now becoming visible to the American people. The great universal brotherhood of democracy has clearly turned to violence.
The 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act opened the immigration flood gates to all religions that had previously been restricted. This began a new religious revolution.
Nothing now will substitute for organized knowledge. The events to follow will be no Sunday school picnic. Only hard-core information will provide us with the correct perspective to live safely with the mental capacity to understand and deal with events of the next five to 10 years.