Pentagon, Military Actively War Gaming 'Large Scale Economic Breakdown' and 'Civil Unrest'

Interesting coverage...of course ending in a positive spin on what the military has to think about going into this new world economy.  Hogwash.  But here is the report.

The Strong Watchman

Original Article at: marketoracale.co.uk

source: see CNBC video report below

The majority of Americans believe that recent government intervention into financial markets, the economy and corporate insolvency has reversed the economic downturn which was described by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as being “on the brink” in 2008. The stimulus, bailouts and unrelenting quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve have thus far been perceived as having averted the further erosion of the U.S. real estate and equities markets. And though the Federal Reserve and economic analysts have recently readjusted their economic growth forecasts downward for the next six months, Americans no longer have to worry about, as Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said on the house floor in October of 2008, the sky falling, multi-thousand point drops in stock markets and martial law in America.

The recovery - if our government, the Federal Reserve and mainstream media are to be believed - is on the road to recovery - albeit slowly and with some more pain ahead.

If we’ve “prevented economic collapse” and “avoided the depression many feared,” according to President Obama, inquiring minds are asking why the Pentagon and US Military are actively and aggressively engaged in planning responsive action to large scale economic breakdown and civil unrest scenarios:

Ever since the crash of 2008 the defense intelligence establishment has really been paying a lot of attention to global markets and how they can serve as a threat to U.S. national security interests. At one upcoming seminar next month they’re taking a look at a lot of the issues.

According to the report, the Army has spent time on financial market trading floors with JP Morgan and others, in the hopes that they can learn more about how a financial and economic attack may occur, and what the ramifications of such attacks on US stocks and bonds may be.

The Army, in a year-long war games series called Unified Quest 2011, is looking at a variety of possibilities and how to deal with them, including:

• the implications of “large scale economic breakdown” inside of the United States
• how to maintain “domestic order amid civil unrest”
• and ways to deal with fragmented global power and drastically lower budgets

Clearly, the U.S. government is making contingency plans to deal with a worst-case, all-out-collapse scenario of not only the economy, but our social and political systems.

The war gaming, according to reports, began in 2008 at the onset of the economic crisis, but planners from not just the United States, but around the globe, may have been aware of the dire possibility of economic collapse even earlier. It’s well known that the U.S. government as well as foreign counterparts have been preparing bunkers and continuity of government for decades, but recent preparedness activities suggest that the planning in some aspects has been expedited. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the US government has been the leading buyer of freeze died foods for the last couple of years, and private emergency shelter contractors have reported a shortage in equipment and supplies for building personal-sized bunkers.

In a previous report titled Homeland Security To “Regionalize” Emergency Supplies Over Next 90 Days, we pointed out that FEMA, headed by Department of Homeland Security, is decentralizing emergency supplies from one main distribution facility in Washington D.C. to fifteen regional facilities around the country. Even the Russians and the EU are in high gear. Russia has reportedly begun planning and development of 5,000 new underground bunkers for the city of Moscow scheduled for completion no later than 2012. The EU, in 2006, commissioned the building of a “Doomsday Seed Vault” in a mountainside several hundred miles above sea level. The facility was built and fully stocked with millions of seeds from around the world within 18 months.

Though the activities of global governments in recent years could potentially be chalked up to standard national security preparedness and contingency planning, the most alarming indicator that the U.S. government is not just looking at one-in-a-million possibilities in terms of economic collapse is the training of several thousand U.S. Army soldiers to respond to domestic policing and enforcement issues that may include evacuation, detainment and riot response. The real possibility of the need to deploy U.S. military under martial law exists, and the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars training and equipping soldiers to do so if necessary.

For those who may have their doubts about some of the scenarios these soldiers are training for, we point out the sign being held by one of the riot role players below.

(Photo taken by U.S. Airforce Tech. Sgt. Brian E. Christiansen, North Carolina National Guard at Vigilant Guard training exercise Ft. Richardson, Alaska - April 2010)