There some really interesting stuff there: Quote from Salon:
Actually in Subject line, Mikel Faulkner was President not CEO.
<snip>
"On April 20, 1990, just two months before Bush sold his Harken stock, Harken president
Mikel Faulkner warned the board of directors, writing that "two events have occurred which
drastically affect Harken's current strategic plan with regard to seeking public funds to reduce
our debt and provide equity for current capital opportunities," and that the development
"greatly intensifies our current liquidity problem." <snip> End of Quote from Salon...........
GOOGLE SEARCH:
Bush bombs Baghdad to Save Stock Market (look for Mikel Faulner in this snip from the article)
<snip>
WARNINGS FROM WALL STREET
In the days leading up to the February 16 near-meltdown, stock market analysts had warned of a worst-case scenario.
High tech stocks were heavily overvalued. But that day at 1.00pm, a few hours before trading closed on the New York
Stock Exchange, American and British warplanes bombed Baghdad in what the Pentagon described as "a routine mission
of self-defense."
Routine self defense? The US media applauded. And on Wall Street, brokers did more than applaud; they gasped with
relief. For in a cruel irony, the bombing raids had saved the day. As one British financial analyst noted with contempt :
... the American market didn't collapse. It didn't plummet. Indeed, the fall was less than one per cent. This
was a routine day -- unless you happened to live in Baghdad. <1>
Meanwhile, with telecom and computer stocks in the doldrums, financial and defense analysts had been working hard to
rebuild "confidence in the stock market" :
Makers of the nation's warfare technologies along with Wall Street analysts and industry consultants spent a
week bragging about new opportunities and the likelihood of changes to Pentagon policy that would foster
growth after 15 years of strained budgets. What's more, defense and aerospace stocks ended on a high
note, climbing amid a broad market slump as 24 U.S. and British warplanes struck Iraqi military targets
using various long-range, precision-guided weapons. <2>
In the last hours of trading on the 16th, defense stocks spiraled; oil and energy stocks boomed following news that Iraq's
oil industry might be impaired. The value of Exxon, Chevron and Texaco stocks shot up. Harken Energy Corporation --
in which George W. Bush served as company director and corporate consultant before entering politics -- gained 5.4%
by the end of trading. Harken Energy happens to be a key player in Colombian oil (with a multi-billion dollar US military
aid package under "Plan Colombia" on hand to protect its investments). Harken Energy CEO Mikel Faulkner is a former
business associate of George W. Bush.
FINANCIAL MELTDOWN
The February 16th meltdown was already being predicted at the close of trading on the 15th. Business analysts on the
evening news said that a major "correction" in the value of high tech stocks was "inevitable". The financial press had
previously hinted that the US defense industry could also take a beating if the new Bush Administration were to curtail
military procurement.
A few days earlier, Lockheed Martin (LMT) -- America's largest defense contractor -- had announced major cuts in its
satellite division due to "flat demand" in the commercial satellite market. A company spokesman had reassured Wall
Street that Lockheed "was moving in the right direction" by shifting financial resources out of its troubled commercial (that
is, civilian) undertakings into the lucrative production of advanced weapon systems.
For weeks, defense contractors had been actively lobbying the new Administration. On Tuesday February 12th,
President Bush promised to hike defense spending based on "a comprehensive review of the military." According to The
New York Times (12 February 2001), George W. Bush said :
He planned to break with Pentagon orthodoxy and create 'a new architecture for the defense of America
and our allies,' investing in new technologies and weapons systems rather than making 'marginal
improvements' for systems in which America's arms industry has invested billions of dollars.
On the 14th, he confirmed a $2.6 billion increase in the Pentagon's budget as a 'down payment' on
new-weapons research and development. <3>
And two days later Baghdad was bombed by the US Air Force.
The raids were a signal to Wall Street that Bush's promise "to revitalize the nation's defense" should be taken seriously.
Had the Bush administration decided otherwise, Lockheed Martin's listing on the New York Stock exchange might well
have experienced the same fate as that of Nortel. In fact, while (civilian) high tech stocks (quoted on the NASDAQ) had
plummeted, Lockheed Martin stocks ended the day up a comfortable 1.6%. <snip>
http://www.thirdway.org/files/world/profitbomb.html
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