11 Setembro 2001 Forex

O impacto de 911 em negócios Quando a América foi atacada por terroristas islâmicos em 11 de setembro de 2001, toda a comunidade empresarial sentiu o golpe. Os mercados de ações noticiaram, e quase todos os setores da economia foram danificados pelo sucesso. A economia dos EUA já estava sofrendo uma recessão moderada. E os ataques terroristas adicionaram mais feridos à comunidade empresarial em dificuldades. Milagrosamente, no entanto, o mercado e as empresas em geral se recuperaram em um tempo relativamente curto. Ao final do ano, o Produto Interno Bruto (PIB) dos EUA. O valor total de todos os bens e serviços, aumentou em relação ao ano anterior, cerca de 1, para mais de 10 trilhões, demonstrando que a economia não sofreu uma grave ferida pelos ataques do 911. Na verdade, de acordo com o Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), o PIB aumentou 2,7 no quarto trimestre de 2001. (Para mais sobre o PIB, veja o que é o PIB e por que é importante) O negócio atinge o impacto imediato nas empresas Foi significativo. Os preços do ouro saltaram de 215,50 onças para 287, refletindo a incerteza e o vôo para a segurança dos investidores nervosos. Os preços do gás e do petróleo também dispararam para cima, à medida que surgiram receios de que as importações de petróleo do Oriente Médio fossem reduzidas. No entanto, dentro de uma semana, esses preços recuaram para seus níveis aproximados de pré-ataque, uma vez que não ocorreram novos ataques e as entregas de petróleo bruto aos EUA de suas fontes usuais continuaram sem restrições. (Para leitura relacionada, veja Ouro: A outra moeda.) O setor de seguros foi atingido com créditos relacionados ao 911 estimados em cerca de 40 bilhões, embora a maioria das empresas tenha reservas de caixa adequadas para cobrir essas obrigações. O impacto na viagem aérea Em agosto, antes de 911, a viagem aérea dos Estados Unidos estabeleceu um recorde com 65,4 milhões de passageiros. As viagens aéreas pós-911 diminuíram substancialmente. O volume do passageiro não aumentou acima da pré-911 alta pela primeira vez até julho de 2005, um aumento de cerca de 9,7. As falências e o desaparecimento de muitas transportadoras aéreas, a descontinuação de muitas rotas aéreas e destinos, e uma triagem de segurança mais rigorosa, contribuíram para os problemas da indústria. Mesmo antes do 911, a indústria aérea dos EUA sofria por causa da recessão. O governo federal ofereceu um pacote de ajuda de 15 bilhões de dólares, mas várias companhias aéreas, no entanto, arquivaram em bancarrota. Quando a comercialização de futuros de commodities foi temporariamente interrompida, e as exportações internacionais e as importações transfronteiriças de mercadorias perecíveis do Canadá e do México foram interrompidas brevemente, o setor agrícola sofreu grandes perdas financeiras. O comércio de commodities eo tráfego de importação continuaram rapidamente, e o setor logo se recuperou. (Para leitura relacionada, veja Uma Introdução aos Futuros Gerenciados.) Ferindo Confiança de Pequenas Empresas e Consumidores O setor de pequenas empresas, especialmente as empresas nas proximidades do World Trade Center em Manhattan, sofreram grandes perdas. Quase 18 mil pequenas empresas foram encerradas ou destruídas. Novamente, o governo através da Administração de Pequenas Empresas e grupos do setor privado, fez empréstimos e subsídios em dinheiro para empresas qualificadas em Manhattan, Virgínia, perto do Pentágono, no Aeroporto Nacional Reagan e para empresas em todo o país que sofreram danos financeiros devido aos ataques. O Índice de Confiança do Consumidor e o Índice de Sentimentos do Consumidor da Universidade de Michigans caíram para níveis não vistos desde 1996 e 1993, respectivamente. Os dois índices são baseados em pesquisas que medem o clima dos consumidores e sua propensão para comprar vários bens e serviços grandes e pequenos. (Observamos o indicador econômico observado de perto para ver o que significa e como é calculado. Para mais informações, consulte Compreendendo o Índice de Confiança do Consumidor.) 911 Não é culpado No entanto, o tamanho, alcance e força da economia dos EUA foi tão imenso que, quando Todos os cálculos foram concluídos, o dano foi relativamente pequeno. Além disso, os efeitos mais severos foram sentidos em uma área geograficamente limitada - Manhattan, Washington, DC e Virgínia - de modo que o dano econômico não se afastara muito do ponto zero. Uma série de sérios problemas econômicos atingiram os EUA nos anos que se seguiram ao 911, muitos dos quais a economia está lutando atualmente. Mas os trágicos ataques do 911, citado pelo extinto líder terrorista, Osama Bin-Laden, como um esforço para destruir a economia americana, não produziram o efeito desejado. The Bottom Line Alguns economistas afirmam, talvez justificadamente, que muitos de nossos problemas econômicos estão indiretamente relacionados com o 911 - as guerras no Iraque e no Afeganistão, nossos esforços de segurança e inteligência e a guerra em curso contra o terrorismo são todas as despesas resultantes dos ataques Daquele dia fatídico. (Para leitura relacionada, veja Black Swan Events And Investment). Como 11 de setembro afetou o mercado de ações dos EUA Para evitar uma crise do mercado de ações, a Bolsa de Valores de Nova York (NYSE) e a Nasdaq não abriram para negociação na manhã de terça-feira, 11 de setembro , 2001. Quando o voo 11 da American Airlines entrou na torre norte do World Trade Center às 8:46 da manhã e o voo 175 da American Airlines atingiu a Torre do Sul às 9h03, era óbvio que o americano estava sob ataque. (Para mais, leia Terrorisms Effects On Wall Street.) A suposição de que um assalto terrorista coordenado por radicais islâmicos visou algumas das estruturas e instituições mais icónicas do país foi confirmado algum tempo depois naquela manhã, quando um avião atingiu o Pentágono e um quarto O avião seqüestrado para Washington, DC foi derrubado pelos passageiros em Shanksville, PA. Reação do mercado Antecipando o caos do mercado, a venda de pânico e uma desastrosa perda de valor na sequência dos ataques, a NYSE e a Nasdaq permaneceram fechadas até 17 de setembro, o desligamento mais longo desde 1933. Além disso, muitas empresas de comércio, corretagem e outras empresas financeiras possuíam escritórios No World Trade Center e foram incapazes de funcionar na sequência da trágica perda de vidas e do colapso de ambas as torres. No primeiro dia de negociação da NYSE após o 911, o mercado caiu 684 pontos, um decréscimo de 7,1, estabelecendo um recorde para a maior perda de histórico de trocas por um dia de negociação. No final da negociação na sexta-feira, terminando uma semana que viu as maiores perdas na história da NYSE, o Dow Jones baixou quase 1.370 pontos, representando uma perda de mais de 14 anos. O índice Standard and Poors (SampP) perdeu 11,6. Um valor estimado de 1,4 trilhão foi perdido nos cinco dias de negociação. As principais vendas de ações atingiram a linha aérea e os setores de seguros conforme previsto quando as negociações foram retomadas. O mais atingido foram American Airlines e United Airlines, transportadoras cujos aviões foram seqüestrados pelos ataques terroristas. As ações do Financial Aftermath American Airlines (NYSE: AMR) caíram de um fechamento de 29,70 por ação de 11 a 18 de setembro por ação fechada em 17 de setembro, um declínio de 39. O estoque da United Airlines (NYSE: UAL) caiu de 30,82 por ação perto de 17,50 por ação no fechamento em 17 de setembro, um declínio de 42. Decisões íngremes semelhantes atingiram os setores de viagens, turismo, hospitalidade, entretenimento e serviços financeiros, já que uma onda de medo temporário e incerteza varreu a nação. Entre os gigantes dos serviços financeiros com as maiores taxas de preços das ações, Merrill Lynch perdeu 11,5 e Morgan Stanley, que perdeu 13. As empresas de seguros acabaram por pagar cerca de 40,2 bilhões em 911 reivindicações relacionadas. Entre os maiores perdedores foi Warren Buffets Berkshire Hathaway. A maioria das empresas de seguros abandonou a cobertura terrorista. Investir na proteção Alguns setores, no entanto, prosperaram como resultado dos ataques. Certas empresas de tecnologia, bem como os empreiteiros de defesa e armamento viram os preços de suas ações aumentarem substancialmente, antecipando um aumento nos negócios governamentais como o país preparado para a longa guerra contra o terrorismo. Os preços das ações também aumentaram para as empresas de comunicações e farmacêuticas Nas bolsas de opções das nações, incluindo o Chicago Board Options Exchange (o maior do mundo), o volume de chamadas e chamadas aumentou de forma correspondente. Coloque opções. Que permitem que um investidor se beneficie se uma ação específica declinar no preço, foram comprados em grande número em ações aéreas, bancárias e de seguros. Opções de chamada. Que permitem que um investidor aproveite as ações que subissem no preço, foram adquiridas em empresas de defesa e militares. A curto prazo. Os investidores que compraram essas opções ganharam dinheiro. The Bottom Line A economia dos EUA é lendária por sua força e resiliência, e o caráter nacional é persistentemente otimista. Não passaram mais de um mês antes do Dow Jones, o Nasdaq e o SampP recuperaram os níveis de preços anteriores a 911. Os problemas econômicos atuais das Américas podem não estar diretamente relacionados aos ataques do 911, embora se possa argumentar persuasivamente que uma grande porcentagem da nossa dívida nacional é atribuída à guerra de terror extremamente cara no Iraque, no Afeganistão e em outros lugares, o que aumentou os EUA. Dívida nacional em trilhões de dólares. (Para saber mais sobre como investir nestes tempos, confira Buy When Theres Blood In The Streets.) 11 de setembro de 2001: Insider Trading 9118230 Os fatos colocados descobertos Existe alguma verdade nas alegações de que os círculos informados fizeram lucros substanciais nos mercados financeiros Em conexão com os ataques terroristas de 11 de setembro de 2001, nos Estados Unidos. Provavelmente, o melhor lugar para começar é examinando as opções de venda, que ocorreram em torno de terça-feira, 11 de setembro de 2001, em uma extensão anormal e, no início, via software Que desempenhou um papel fundamental: o Sistema de Informação de Gestão do Procurador, abreviado como PROMIS. I PROMIS é um programa de software que parece estar equipado com habilidades quotmagicalquot quase. Além disso, é objeto de uma disputa de décadas entre seu inventor, Bill Hamilton e várias instituições de pessoas associadas a agências de inteligência, empresas militares e de consultoria de segurança. 1 Uma das quotmagicalquot capacidades do PROMIS, é preciso assumir, é que ele está equipado com inteligência artificial e aparentemente desde o início ldquoable para ler e integrar simultaneamente qualquer número de diferentes programas de computador ou bancos de dados, independentemente do idioma em que o Os programas originais haviam sido escritos ou os sistemas operacionais e as plataformas em que esse banco de dados estava atualmente instalado. quot 2 E então, torna-se realmente interessante: o que você faria se possuísseis software que pudesse pensar, entender todas as principais línguas do mundo, que Forneceu pisões em todos os quartos de computador, que poderiam inserir dados em computadores sem conhecimento de pessoas, que poderiam preencher espaços em branco além do raciocínio humano, e também prever o que as pessoas fazem antes de fazê-lo. Você provavelmente usaria isso, não seria você 3 Concedido, essas capacidades soam pouco credíveis. De fato, toda a história do PROMIS, que Mike Ruppert desenvolve no decorrer de seu livro Crossing the Rubicon em todas as suas facetas e voltas esquisitas, parece como se alguém tivesse desenvolvido uma novela no estilo de Philip K Dick e William Gibson. No entanto, o que a Ruppert coletou sobre PROMIS baseia-se em fontes respeitáveis, bem como nos resultados de investigações pessoais, que aguardam um júri para ter um primeiro olhar crítico. Isso parece ser mais urgente se você adicionar aos recursos do PROMIS que foi um dado que o PROMIS foi usado para uma ampla variedade de propósitos pelas agências de inteligência, incluindo o monitoramento em tempo real de transações de estoque em todos os principais mercados financeiros mundiais. 4 Estamos, portanto, lidando com um software que a) Infiltra sistemas de comunicação e computador sem ser notado. B) Pode manipular dados. C) É capaz de rastrear o comércio global do mercado de ações em tempo real. O ponto c é relevante para tudo o que aconteceu em conexão com as transações nunca completamente esclarecidas que ocorreram antes dos 11 de setembro e do qual o ex-presidente do Deutsche Bundesbank Ernst Weltke disse que não poderia ter sido planejado e realizado sem um certo conhecimento . 6 Perguntei especificamente ao jornalista financeiro Max Keizer, que durante anos trabalhava em Wall Street como comerciante de ações e opções, sobre as operações de opção de venda. Keizer apontou neste contexto que ele falou com muitos corretores nas torres do World Trade Center naquela época. Eu ouvi de primeira mão sobre a companhia aérea trocar de corretores em Cantor Fitzgerald dias antes. Então ele falou comigo sobre um problema explosivo, no qual Ruppert elaborou detalhadamente em Crossing the Rubicon. Max Keizer: Existem muitos aspectos relativos a essas compras de opções que ainda não foram divulgadas. Eu também trabalhei no Alex Brown amp Sons (ABS). O Deutsche Bank comprou Alex Brown amp Sons em 1999. Quando os ataques ocorreram, o ABS era propriedade do Deutsche Bank. Uma pessoa importante no ABS era Buzzy Krongard. Eu o conheci várias vezes nos escritórios em Baltimore. Krongard transferiu para se tornar diretor executivo na CIA. As compras de opções, nas quais o ABS foi envolvido, ocorreram nos escritórios do ABS em Baltimore. O ruído que ocorreu entre Baltimore, Nova York e Langley foi interessante, como você pode imaginar, para dizer o mínimo. Em consideração, aqui está o fato de que Alex Brown, uma subsidiária do Deutsche Bank (onde muitos dos supostos invasores do 911 manusearam suas transações bancárias 8211, por exemplo, Mohammed Atta) negociou compras de opções de venda maciças na United Airlines Company UAL através da Chicago Option Option Exchange ( CBOE) 8211 para o constrangimento dos investigadores, como o jornal britânico The Independent informou. 7 Em 12 de setembro, o presidente do conselho do Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, Mayo A Shattuck III, renunciou repentinamente e silenciosamente à sua postagem, embora ainda tivesse um contrato de três anos com um salário anual de vários milhões de dólares. Pode-se perceber que, de alguma forma, é estranho. Poucas semanas depois, o porta-voz da Agência Central de Inteligência (CIA) naquela época, Tom Crispell, recusou todos os comentários, quando foi contactado para um relatório do site Ruppertacutes From the Wilderness, e foi perguntado ao Departamento do Tesouro ou O Bureau Federal de Investigação do FBI questionou o diretor-executivo da CIA e o ex-diretor executivo do CEO da Alex Brown, AB 39Buzzy39 Krongard, sobre o monitoramento da CIA dos mercados financeiros usando o PROMIS e sua posição anterior como superintendente do cliente privado39 de Brown39. Justo antes Ele foi recrutado pessoalmente pelo ex-chefe da CIA George Tenet para a CIA, Krongard supervisionou principalmente bancos de clientes privados em Alex Brown. 9 Em qualquer caso, após o 911 no primeiro dia de negociação, quando os mercados de ações dos EUA estavam abertos novamente, o preço das ações da UAL diminuiu em 43. (As quatro aeronaves seqüestradas em 11 de setembro foram American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 e UAL vôos 175 e 93.) Com seus antecedentes como ex-comerciante de opções, Keizer me explicou uma questão importante a esse respeito. Max Keizer: as opções de colocação são, se forem empregadas em um comércio especulativo, basicamente apostas que os preços das ações cairão abruptamente. O comprador, que entra em um contrato específico do tempo com um vendedor, não tem que possuir o estoque no momento em que o contrato é adquirido. Em relação à questão do abuso de informação privilegiada através de opções (colocar ou chamar), também há uma definição notável dos economistas suíços Remo Crameri, Marc Chesney e Loriano Mancini, notadamente que uma opção de comércio pode ser identificada como informada 8211, mas ainda não (legalmente ) Comprovada em 8211 quando caracteriza-se por um grande aumento incomum em interesse e volume aberto, induz grandes ganhos e não está coberto no mercado de ações. 10 O interesse aberto descreve contratos que não foram resolvidos (foram exercidos) até o final da sessão de negociação, mas ainda estão abertos. Não coberto no mercado de ações significa que o comprador de uma opção (colocação ou chamada) não detém ações do ativo subjacente, pelo qual ele poderá mitigar ou compensar perdas se o seu comércio não funcionar ou formulado de forma diferente: um faz Não é hedge, porque é desnecessário, uma vez que se sabe que a aposta é uma, o perdão, o quotdead certo. (Nesse sentido, não é, portanto, uma aposta, porque o resultado não é incerto, mas uma conclusão inevitável.) Em Este caso, o veículo do cálculo foi quotridonicamente barato, colocou opções que dão ao titular o lsquoright39 por um período de tempo para vender certas ações a um preço muito inferior ao atual preço de mercado 8211, que é uma aposta altamente arriscada, porque você perde Dinheiro se, no vencimento, o preço do mercado ainda for superior ao preço acordado na opção. No entanto, quando essas ações caíram muito mais profundamente após os ataques terroristas, essas opções multiplicaram seu valor várias centenas de vezes, porque agora o preço de venda especificado na opção era muito maior do que o preço de mercado. Esses jogos arriscados com opções curtas são uma indicação certa para os investidores que sabiam que dentro de alguns dias aconteceria algo que reduziria drasticamente o preço de mercado dessas ações. Um software como o PROMIS, por sua vez, é usado com a intenção precisa de monitorar o Mercados de ações em tempo real para rastrear os movimentos de preços que parecem suspeitos. Portanto, os serviços de inteligência dos EUA devem ter recebido avisos claros do singular, transações visíveis antes de 911. De grande importância em relação à faixa, o que deveria levar os perpetradores se você estava pensando seriamente em persegui-los, é isso : Max Keizer: A Options Clearing Corporation tem o dever de lidar com as transações, e sim anonimamente 8211, enquanto o banco que executa a transação como intermediário pode determinar a identidade de ambas as partes. Mas isso pode ter sido apenas a intenção das autoridades reguladoras quando a pista levou, entre outros, a Alvin Bernard quotBuzzyquot Krongard, Alex Brown amp Sons e a CIA. Ruppert, no entanto, descreve este caso em Crossing the Rubicon em toda a extensão, na medida do possível. 12 Além disso, também há maneiras e meios para que os iniciados veiculem suas faixas. A fim de ser menos óbvio, os insiders da Quotthe poderiam trocar pequenos números de contratos. Estes poderiam ser negociados em várias contas para evitar chamar a atenção para os grandes volumes de negociação através de uma única conta em grande. Eles também podem trocar pequenos volumes em cada contrato, mas negociar mais contratos para evitar chamar a atenção. À medida que o interesse aberto aumenta, os insiders podem detectar um sinal percebido e aumentar sua atividade comercial. Insiders podem então voltar a entrar em mais transações com base em um sinal comercial aparentemente significativo do mercado. A este respeito, seria difícil para o CBOE divulgar os insiders dos não-iniciados, porque ambos estão negociando pesadamente. 13 O assunto que precisa de esclarecimentos aqui é geralmente julgado pela Keizer da seguinte forma: Max Keiser: Meu pensamento é Que muitos (nem todos) aqueles que morreram em 911 eram mercenários financeiros e devemos sentir o mesmo sobre eles como nos sentimos sobre todos os mercenários que são mortos. A tragédia é que essas empresas misturaram civis com mercenários e que também foram mortos. Assim, as empresas em Wall Street usaram civis como escudos humanos. De acordo com um relatório da Bloomberg publicado no início de outubro de 2001, a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) iniciou uma pesquisa em certas transações no mercado de ações em torno de 911 que incluíram 38 empresas, entre elas : American Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corp. American Express Corp. American International Group, AXA SA, Bank of America Corp. Bank of New York Corp Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Morgan Stanley, General Motors e Raytheon. 14 Até agora, tão bom. No mesmo mês, no entanto, o jornal San Francisco Chronicle informou que a SEC tomou o passo sem precedentes para deputar centenas, senão mesmo milhares de principais interessados ​​no setor privado para sua investigação. Em uma declaração que foi enviada para quase todas as empresas listadas nos EUA, a SEC solicitou às empresas endereçadas que atribuíssem pessoal sênior para a investigação, que estariam atentos a quitação da natureza sensível do caso e poderiam ser invocados para classificar a discrição apropriada. 15 Em essência, tratava-se de controlar informações, não de fornecimento e divulgação de fatos. Esse curso de ação envolve consequências comprometedoras. Ruppert: o que acontece quando você deputa alguém em uma investigação de segurança nacional ou criminal é que você torna ilegal que eles divulguem publicamente o que eles conhecem. Jogada inteligente. Com efeito, eles se tornam agentes do governo e são controlados por regulamentos governamentais em vez de sua própria consciência. Na verdade, eles podem ser jogados na prisão sem uma audiência se eles falam publicamente. Eu vi isso implicar uma ameaça, uma vez após a outra, com pesquisadores federais, agentes de inteligência e até membros do Congresso dos Estados Unidos, que são obrigados tão fortemente por juramentos de sigilo e acordos que nem sequer conseguem divulgar atividades criminosas dentro do governo por medo do encarceramento . 16 Entre os relatórios sobre suspeita de informações privilegiadas que são mencionados em Crossing the RubiconFrom the Wilderness é uma lista que foi publicada sob o título quotBlack Tuesday: The World's Maior Insider Trading Scamquot pelo Instituto de Política Internacional Herzliyya de Israel para o Contra-terrorismo em 21 de setembro de 2001: Entre 6 e 7 de setembro, o CBOE viu compras de 4.744 opções de venda na United Airlines, mas apenas 396 opções de compra. Supondo que 4.000 das opções foram compradas por pessoas com conhecimento prévio dos ataques iminentes, esses quotinsidersquot teriam lucrado quase 5 milhões. Em 10 de setembro, 4,516 opções de venda da American Airlines foram compradas na bolsa de Chicago, em comparação com apenas 748 chamadas. Mais uma vez, não havia notícias nesse momento para justificar esse desequilíbrio novamente, assumindo que 4.000 dessas operações de opções representam quotinsidersquot, representariam um ganho de cerca de 4 milhões. Os níveis de opções de compra comprados acima foram mais de seis vezes maiores do que o normal. Nenhuma negociação similar em outras companhias aéreas ocorreu na bolsa de Chicago nos dias imediatamente anteriores à terça-feira negra. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter amp Co, que ocupou 22 andares do World Trade Center, viu 2.115 de suas opções de compra de outubro compradas nos três dias de negociação antes da terça-feira negra, compara-se com uma média de 27 contratos por dia antes de 6 de setembro. Morgan Stanley39s O preço da ação caiu de 48,90 para 42,50 após os ataques. Supondo que 2.000 desses contratos de opções foram comprados com base no conhecimento dos ataques que se aproximavam, seus compradores poderiam ter lucrado em pelo menos 1,2 milhão. O Merrill Lynch amp Co, com sede perto das Torres Gêmeas, viu 12,215 de outubro de 45 opções de compra compradas nos quatro dias de negociação antes dos ataques, o volume médio anterior dessas ações tinha sido de 252 contratos por dia (um aumento de 1200). Quando a negociação foi retomada, as ações da Merrill39 caiu de 46,88 para 41,50, supondo que 11 mil contratos de opção foram comprados por quotinsidersquot, seu lucro teria sido cerca de 5,5 milhões. Os reguladores europeus estão examinando trades na Alemanha de Munique Re, Swiss Re Swiss Re e AXA da França, todos os principais resseguradores com exposição ao desastre da terça-feira negra. (Nota: AXA também possui mais de 25 ações da American Airlines, fazendo com que os ataques sejam um quotdouble whammyquot para eles.) 17 Sobre as declarações do antigo presidente do Deutsche Bundesbank Ernst Welteke, seu conteúdo em vários relatórios de imprensa juntos é o seguinte : O presidente alemão do banco central, Ernst Welteke, mais tarde relata que um estudo de seu banco indica, há sinais mais claros de que houve atividades nos mercados financeiros internacionais que devem ter sido realizadas com o conhecimento especializado necessário, não apenas em ações altamente afetadas Indústrias como companhias aéreas e companhias de seguros, mas também em ouro e petróleo. Daily Telegraph, 9232001 Seus pesquisadores encontraram provas quase irrefutáveis ​​de negociação de informações privilegiadas. Miami Herald, 9242001 quot Se você olhar para os movimentos nos mercados antes e depois do ataque, ele faz o sulco da frente. Mas é extremamente difícil verificá-lo. No entanto, ele acredita que quotin um ou outro caso, será possível identificar o sourcequot. Fox News, 9222001 Welteke relata uma subida fundamentalmente inexplicável dos preços do petróleo antes dos ataques Miami Herald, 9242001 e, em seguida, um aumento adicional de 13% no dia seguinte aos ataques. O ouro aumenta sem parar por dias após os ataques. Daily Telegraph, 9232001 18 Relativamente a essas observações, enviei um pedido por e-mail para o escritório de imprensa do Deutsche Bundesbank em 1º de agosto de 2011, da qual eu esperava aprender: como o Bundesbank lidava com essa informação? As agências federais pedem para ver o estudo Com quem o Bundesbank compartilhou esta informação e, adicionalmente: 1. Você pode confirmar que existe um estudo do Bundesbank relativo a 911 insider trading, que foi realizado em setembro de 2001 2. Se sim: o que É o título 3. Se sim: quem foram os autores 4. Se sim: o estudo já foi disponibilizado ao público. Em 2 de agosto, fiquei informado: o seu e-mail foi recebido por nós e está sendo processado sob o número 2011 011551.quot Em última análise, no entanto, o escritório de imprensa do Deutsche Bundesbank só estava disponível para uma explicação oral no telefone. Com esta explicação, voltei para o escritório de imprensa do regulador financeiro federal na Alemanha, o Bundesanstalt fur Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, BaFin, com o seguinte e-mail 8211 e por razões óbvias: ontem, enviei um pedido (veja o final de Este e-mail) para o escritório de imprensa do Deutsche Bundesbank relativo a insider trading ligado aos ataques terroristas em 11 de setembro de 2001 e, respectivamente, relativo a um suposto estudo realizado pelo Deutsche Bundesbank. O pedido contém o número de referência 2011 011551. O escritório de imprensa ou, respectivamente, Peter Trautmann só estava disponível para uma explicação oral. Repito isso agora, porque está relacionado à sua entidade. Isto será seguido por minhas perguntas adicionais. De acordo com uma explicação oral do escritório de imprensa do Deutsche Bundesbank, nunca houve um estudo detalhado e oficial sobre informações privilegiadas do Bundesbank. Em vez disso, provavelmente houve análise ad hoc com gráficos correspondentes de movimentos de preços como briefings para o conselho do Bundesbank. Além disso, teria sido dever do Bundesfinanzaufsicht investigar este assunto. O escritório de imprensa do Bundesbank também não estava disposto a divulgar nenhuma informação escrita, nem mesmo depois de minha indicação de que este alegado estudo do Bundesbank flutuava pela Internet há anos sem qualquer contradição. Essa foi a informação oral do escritório de imprensa do Bundesbank, ou, respectivamente, de Peter Trautmann. Agora, minhas perguntas para você: 1. O BaFin já investigou o intercâmbio de informações do 911 2. Com qual resultado Os resultados foram divulgados 3. Não houve motivos de suspeita que justificariam uma investigação, por exemplo, como empresa danificada : Munich Re e como compradores de opções de venda da UAL39s United Airlines Company: Deutsche BankAlex Brown 4. O Deutsche Bundesbank perguntou com a BaFin quais as informações que eles têm sobre o 911 insider trading 8211, por exemplo, para a criação de análises ad hoc para O Bundesbank 5. As agências federais dos EUA sempre perguntaram se o BaFin poderia cooperar com eles em uma investigação. Poderia me responder por escrito, ao contrário do Deutsche Bundesbank, por favor, eu ficaria muito grato por isso. No dia seguinte eu realmente recebi uma E-mail sobre este assunto de Anja Engelland, assessora de imprensa do BaFin, na qual respondeu às minhas perguntas da seguinte forma: 1. Sim, o ex-Bundesaufsichtsamt fur Wertpapierhandel, BAWe (fe Supervisão de deral para negociação de valores mobiliários), realizou uma análise abrangente das operações. 2. Como resultado, nenhuma evidência de informações privilegiadas foi encontrada. Sua abordagem e resultados foram publicados pela BAWe ou BaFin nos relatórios anuais para os anos de 2001 (cf S 2627) e 2002 (cf p 156 acima do primeiro parágrafo). Aqui estão os links. Veja aqui e aqui. 3. Veja os relatórios anuais 2001 e 2002. As opções de venda da United Airlines não foram negociadas nas bolsas de valores alemãs (as primeiras opções de EUREX sobre as ações dos EUA foram introduzidas somente após os ataques em 9112001) houve garantias sobre a UAL e outras ações dos EUA, mas essas Comercializado apenas em baixos volumes. 4. Pessoalmente, não sei sobre tal pedido. Além disso, o próprio Bundesbank teria que comentar sobre isso. 5. A BaFin tem fundamentalmente o direito ao intercâmbio de informações com autoridades de supervisão estrangeiras, como a SEC, com base em acordos escritos, os chamados memorandos de entendimento (MoU). No que diz respeito a consultas potenciais de autoridades de supervisão estrangeiras, o BaFin pode, infelizmente, não comentar, isso seria uma questão de autoridade respectiva. Por isso, peço a compreensão. Então, escrevi outra breve nota para a BaFin, para evitar qualquer mal-entendido: suas respostas referem-se, na minha opinião, apenas aos mercados financeiros na Alemanha e em Frankfurt, ou não. A resposta da BaFin: as respostas referem-se ao financeiro alemão Mercado como um todo e não apenas na Bolsa de Valores de Frankfurt. Em termos de avaliação dos mercados financeiros estrangeiros, as autoridades competentes são os pontos de contacto competentes. Em minhas perguntas, mencionei, entre outras coisas, um estudo científico do economista dos EUA, Allen M Poteshman, da Universidade de Illinois em Urbana-Champaign, que havia sido realizado em 2006 sobre a opção de venda de opções em torno de 911 relacionada às duas companhias aéreas envolvidas , United Airlines e American Airlines. Poteshman chegou a esta conclusão: quotExamination of the option trading até 11 de setembro revela que havia um nível excepcionalmente alto de compra. Essa descoberta é consistente com os investidores informados que negociaram opções antes dos ataques. 19 Lars Schall é jornalista financeiro alemão. Este artigo publicado pelo Asian Times é um trecho ligeiramente modificado e atualizado do livro Mordanschlag 911. Eine kriminalistische Recherche zu Finanzen, Ol und Drogen (Assassinato 911: uma pesquisa criminalística sobre finanças, petróleo e drogas), publicado na Alemanha pela Schild Verlag . Disclaimer: O conteúdo deste artigo é de exclusiva responsabilidade do (s) autor (es). O Centro de Pesquisa em Globalização não será responsável por nenhuma afirmação incorreta ou incorreta neste artigo. The Center of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text amp title are not modified. 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Insider trading 911. the facts laid bare March 20, 2012 quot Asia Times quot - - Is there any truth in the allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in the financial markets in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States Arguably, the best place to start is by examining put options, which occurred around Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to an abnormal extent, and at the beginning via software that played a key role: the Prosecutors Management Information System, abbreviated as PROMIS. i PROMIS is a software program that seems to be fitted with almost quotmagicalquot abilities. Furthermore, it is the subject of a decades-long dispute between its inventor, Bill Hamilton, and various peopleinstitutions associated with intelligence agencies, military and security consultancy firms. 1 One of the quotmagicalquot capabilities of PROMIS, one has to assume, is that it is equipped with artificial intelligence and was apparently from the outset able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of different computer programs or databases, regardless of the language in which the original programs had been written or the operating systems and platforms on which that database was then currently installed. quot 2 And then it becomes really interesting: What would you do if you possessed software that could think, understand every major language in the world, that provided peep-holes into everyone elses computer quotdressing roomsquot, that could insert data into computers without peoples knowledge, that could fill in blanks beyond human reasoning, and also predict what people do - before they did it You would probably use it, wouldnt you 3 Granted, these capabilities sound hardly believable. In fact, the whole story of PROMIS, which Mike Ruppert develops in the course of his book Crossing the Rubicon in all its bizarre facets and turns, seems as if someone had developed a novel in the style of Philip K Dick and William Gibson. However, what Ruppert has collected about PROMIS is based on reputable sources as well as on results of personal investigations, which await a jury to take a first critical look at. This seems all the more urgent if you add to the PROMIS capabilities quotthat it was a given that PROMIS was used for a wide variety of purposes by intelligence agencies, including the real-time monitoring of stock transactions on all the worlds major financial marketsquot. 4 We are therefore dealing with a software that a) Infiltrates computer and communication systems without being noticed. b) Can manipulate data. c) Is capable to track the global stock market trade in real time. Point c is relevant to all that happened in connection with the never completely cleared up transactions that occurred just before September 11, 5 and of which the former chairman of the Deutsche Bundesbank Ernst Weltke said quotcould not have been planned and carried out without a certain knowledgequot. 6 I specifically asked financial journalist Max Keiser, who for years had worked on Wall Street as a stock and options trader, about the put option trades. Keiser pointed out in this context that he quothad spoken with many brokers in the towers of the World Trade Center around that time. I heard firsthand about the airline put trade from brokers at Cantor Fitzgerald days before. quot He then talked with me about an explosive issue, on which Ruppert elaborated in detail in Crossing the Rubicon . Max Keiser: There are many aspects concerning these option purchases that have not been disclosed yet. I also worked at Alex Brown amp Sons (ABS). Deutsche Bank bought Alex Brown amp Sons in 1999. When the attacks occurred, ABS was owned by Deutsche Bank. An important person at ABS was Buzzy Krongard. I have met him several times at the offices in Baltimore. Krongard had transferred to become executive director at the CIA. The option purchases, in which ABS was involved, occurred in the offices of ABS in Baltimore. The noise which occurred between Baltimore, New York City and Langley was interesting, as you can imagine, to say the least. Under consideration here is the fact that Alex Brown, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank (where many of the alleged 911 hijackers handled their banking transactions - for example Mohammed Atta) traded massive put options purchases on United Airlines Company UAL through the Chicago Board Option Exchange (CBOE) - quotto the embarrassment of investigatorsquot, as British newspaper The Independent reported. 7 On September 12, the chairman of the board of Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, Mayo A Shattuck III, suddenly and quietly renounced his post, although he still had a three-year contract with an annual salary of several million US dollars. One could perceive that as somehow strange. A few weeks later, the press spokesperson of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at that time, Tom Crispell, declined all comments, when he was contacted for a report for Rupperts website From the Wilderness, and had being asked quotwhether the Treasury Department or FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation had questioned CIA executive director and former Deutsche Bank-Alex Brown CEO chief executive officer, A B Buzzy Krongard, about CIA monitoring of financial markets using PROMIS and his former position as overseer of Browns private client relations. quot 8 Just before he was recruited personally by former CIA chief George Tenet for the CIA, Krongard supervised mainly private client banking at Alex Brown. 9 In any case, after 911 on the first trading day, when the US stock markets were open again, the stock price of UAL declined by 43. (The four aircraft hijacked on September 11 were American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 and UAL flights 175 and 93.) With his background as a former options trader, Keiser explained an important issue to me in that regard. Max Keiser: Put options are, if they are employed in a speculative trade, basically bets that stock prices will drop abruptly. The purchaser, who enters a time-specific contract with a seller, does not have to own the stock at the time when the contract is purchased. Related to the issue of insider trading via (put or call) options there is also a noteworthy definition by the Swiss economists Remo Crameri, Marc Chesney and Loriano Mancini, notably that an option trade may be quotidentified as informedquot - but is not yet (legally) proven - quotwhen it is characterized by an unusual large increment in open interest and volume, induces large gains, and is not hedged in the stock marketquot. 10 Open interest describes contracts which have not been settled (been exercised) by the end of the trading session, but are still open. Not hedged in the stock market means that the buyer of a (put or call) option holds no shares of the underlying asset, by which he might be able to mitigate or compensate losses if his trade doesnt work out, or phrased differently: one does not hedge, because it is unnecessary, since one knows that the bet is one, pardon, quotdead sure thing. quot (In this respect it is thus not really a bet, because the result is not uncertain, but a foregone conclusion.) In this case, the vehicle of the calculation was quotridiculously cheap put options which give the holder the right for a period of time to sell certain shares at a price which is far below the current market price - which is a highly risky bet, because you lose money if at maturity the market price is still higher than the price agreed in the option. However, when these shares fell much deeper after the terrorist attacks, these options multiplied their value several hundred times because by now the selling price specified in the option was much higher than the market price. These risky games with short options are a sure indication for investors who knew that within a few days something would happen that would drastically reduce the market price of those shares. quot 11 Software such as PROMIS in turn is used with the precise intent to monitor the stock markets in real time to track price movements that appear suspicious. Therefore, the US intelligence services must have received clear warnings from the singular, never before sighted transactions prior to 911. Of great importance with regard to the track, which should lead to the perpetrators if you were seriously contemplating to go after them, is this: Max Keiser: The Options Clearing Corporation has a duty to handle the transactions, and does so rather anonymously - whereas the bank that executes the transaction as a broker can determine the identity of both parties. But that may have hardly ever been the intention of the regulatory authorities when the track led to, amongst others, Alvin Bernard quotBuzzyquot Krongard, Alex Brown amp Sons and the CIA. Ruppert, however, describes this case in Crossing the Rubicon in full length as far as possible. 12 In addition, there are also ways and means for insiders to veil their tracks. In order to be less obvious, quotthe insiders could trade small numbers of contracts. These could be traded under multiple accounts to avoid drawing attention to large trading volumes going through one single large account. They could also trade small volumes in each contract but trade more contracts to avoid drawing attention. As open interest increases, non-insiders may detect a perceived signal and increase their trading activity. Insiders can then come back to enter into more transactions based on a seemingly significant trade signal from the market. In this regard, it would be difficult for the CBOE to ferret out the insiders from the non-insiders, because both are trading heavily. quot 13 The matter which needs clarification here is generally judged by Keiser as follows: Max Keiser: My thought is that many (not all) of those who died on 911 were financial mercenaries - and we should feel the same about them as we feel about all mercenaries who get killed. The tragedy is that these companies mixed civilians with mercenaries, and that they were also killed. So have companies on Wall Street used civilians as human shields maybe According to a report by Bloomberg published in early October 2001, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began a probe into certain stock market transactions around 911 that included 38 companies, among them: American Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corp. American Express Corp. American International Group, AXA SA, Bank of America Corp. Bank of New York Corp. Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Morgan Stanley, General Motors and Raytheon. 14 So far, so good. In the same month, however, the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that the SEC took the unprecedented step to deputize hundreds, if not even thousands of key stakeholders in the private sector for their investigation. In a statement that was sent to almost all listed companies in the US, the SEC asked the addressed companies to assign senior staff for the investigation, who would be aware of quotthe sensitive naturequot of the case and could be relied on to quotexercise appropriate discretionquot. 15 In essence, it was about controlling information, not about provision and disclosure of facts. Such a course of action involves compromising consequences. Ruppert: What happens when you deputize someone in a national security or criminal investigation is that you make it illegal for them to disclose publicly what they know. Smart move. In effect, they become government agents and are controlled by government regulations rather than their own conscience. In fact, they can be thrown into jail without a hearing if they talk publicly. I have seen this implied threat time after time with federal investigators, intelligence agents, and even members of United States Congress who are bound so tightly by secrecy oaths and agreements that they are not even able to disclose criminal activities inside the government for fear of incarceration. 16 Among the reports about suspected insider trading which are mentioned in Crossing the Rubicon From the Wilderness is a list that was published under the heading quotBlack Tuesday: The Worlds Largest Insider Trading Scamquot by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism on September 21, 2001: Between September 6 and 7, the CBOE saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these quotinsidersquot would have profited by almost 5 million. On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent quotinsidersquot, they would represent a gain of about 4 million. The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal. No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter amp Co, which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October 45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanleys share price fell from 48.90 to 42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least 1.2 million. Merrill Lynch amp Co, with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October 45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day (a 1200 increase). When trading resumed, Merrills shares fell from 46.88 to 41.50 assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by quotinsidersquot, their profit would have been about 5.5 million. European regulators are examining trades in Germanys Munich Re, Switzerlands Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. (Note: AXA also owns more than 25 of American Airlines stock, making the attacks a quotdouble whammyquot for them.) 17Concerning the statements of the former chairman of the Deutsche Bundesbank Ernst Welteke, their tenor in various press reports put together is as follows: German central bank president Ernst Welteke later reports that a study by his bank indicates, quotThere are ever clearer signs that there were activities on international financial markets that must have been carried out with the necessary expert knowledge, quot not only in shares of heavily affected industries such as airlines and insurance companies, but also in gold and oil. Daily Telegraph, 9232001 His researchers have found quotalmost irrefutable proof of insider tradingquot. Miami Herald, 9242001 quotIf you look at movements in markets before and after the attack, it makes your brow furrow. But it is extremely difficult to really verify it. quot Nevertheless, he believes that quotin one or the other case it will be possible to pinpoint the sourcequot. Fox News, 9222001 Welteke reports quota fundamentally inexplicable risequot in oil prices before the attacks Miami Herald, 9242001 and then a further rise of 13 percent the day after the attacks. Gold rises nonstop for days after the attacks. Daily Telegraph, 9232001 18 Related to those observations, I sent a request via e-mail to the press office of the Deutsche Bundesbank on August 1, 2011, from which I was hoping to learn: How did the Bundesbank deal with this information Did US federal agencies ask to see the study With whom did the Bundesbank share this information And additionally: 1. Can you confirm that there is such a study of the Bundesbank concerning 911 insider trading, which was carried out in September 2001 2. If Yes: what is the title 3. If Yes: who were the authors 4. If Yes: has the study ever been made available to the public On August 2, I was then informed: quotYour mail has been received by us and is being processed under the number 2011 011551.quot Ultimately, however, the press office of the Deutsche Bundesbank was only available for an oral explanation on the phone. With this explanation, I then turned to the press office of the federal financial regulator in Germany, the Bundesanstalt fur Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, BaFin, with the following e-mail - and that because of obvious reasons: Yesterday, I sent a request (see end of this e-mail) to the press office of the Deutsche Bundesbank relating to insider trading connected to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and respectively relating to an alleged study carried by the Deutsche Bundesbank. The request carries the reference number 2011 011551. The press office or respectively Mr Peter Trautmann was only available for an oral explanation. I repeat this now, because it is related to your entity. This will be followed by my further questions. According to an oral explanation from the press office of the Deutsche Bundesbank, there has never been a detailed and official study on insider trading from the Bundesbank. Rather, there has been probably ad-hoc analysis with corresponding charts of price movements as briefings for the Bundesbank board. In addition, it would have been the duty of the Bundesfinanzaufsicht to investigate this matter. The press office of the Bundesbank was also not willing to give out any written information, not even after my hint that this alleged study by the Bundesbank has been floating around the Internet for years without any contradiction. That was the oral information from the Bundesbank press office, or respectively from Mr Peter Trautmann. Now my questions for you: 1. Has the BaFin ever investigated the 911 insider trading 2. With what result Have the results been made public 3. Have there not been any grounds for suspicion that would have justified an investigation, for example as damaged enterprise: Munich Re, and as buyers of put options of UALs United Airlines Company: Deutsche BankAlex Brown 4. Has the Deutsche Bundesbank ever enquired with BaFin what information they have regarding the 911 insider trading - for example for the creation of ad-hoc analysis for the Bundesbank 5. Have the US federal agencies ever inquired if the BaFin could cooperate with them in an investigation Could you reply to me in writing, unlike the Deutsche Bundesbank, please I would be very grateful for that The next day I did indeed receive an e-mail concerning this topic from Anja Engelland, the press officer of the BaFin in which she answered my questions as follows: 1. Yes, the former Bundesaufsichtsamt fur Wertpapierhandel, BAWe (federal supervisory for securities trading), has carried out a comprehensive analysis of the operations. 2. As a result, no evidence of insider trading has been found. Their approach and results have been published by the BAWe or BaFin in the annual reports for the years 2001 (cf S 2627) and 2002 (cf p 156 above first paragraph). Here are the links. See here and here . 3. See annual reports 2001 and 2002. Put options on United Airlines were not traded on German stock exchanges (the first EUREX options on US equities were introduced only after the attacks on 9112001) there were warrants on UAL and other US stocks, but those traded only in low volumes. 4. I personally do not know about such a request. Furthermore, the Bundesbank itself would have to comment on this. 5. BaFin is fundamentally entitled to the exchange of information with foreign supervisory authorities, like SEC, on the basis of written agreements, so-called memoranda of understanding (MoU). Regarding potential inquiries from foreign supervisory authorities, the BaFin can unfortunately not comment, this would be a matter of respective authority. For this I ask for understanding. Then I wrote another brief note to BaFin, quotin order to prevent any misunderstanding: your answers refers, as far as I understand, solely to the financial markets in Germany and Frankfurt, or notquot The reply from BaFin: The answers refer to the German financial market as a whole and not only on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. In terms of the assessment of foreign financial markets, the relevant authorities are the competent points of contact. In my inquiries, I mentioned, among other things, a scientific study by US economist Allen M Poteshman from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which had been carried out in 2006 regarding the put option trading around 911 related to the two airlines involved, United Airlines and American Airlines. Poteshman came to this conclusion: quotExamination of the option trading leading up to September 11 reveals that there was an unusually high level of put buying. This finding is consistent with informed investors having traded options in advance of the attacks. quot 19Another scientific study was conducted by the economists Wong Wing-Keung (Hong Kong Baptist University, HKBU), Howard E Thompson (University of Wisconsin) and Kweehong Teh (National University of Singapore, NUS), whose findings were published in April 2010 under the title quotWas there Abnormal Trading in the SampP 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacksquot Motivated by the fact that there had been many media reports about possible insider trading prior to 911 in the option markets, the authors looked in this study at the Standard amp Poors 500 Index (SPX Index Options), in particular with a focus on strategies emanating from a bear market, namely those under the labels quotPut Purchase, quot quotPut Bear Spreadquot and quotNaked ITM Call Writequot, as each of these are in accordance with the assumption that one would be betting on a general bear market if one wanted to profit in anticipation of the 911 event. 20 Along these lines, the authors refer to an article which Erin E Arvedlund published on October 8, 2001, in Barrons, the heading of which suggested precisely that thesis: quotFollow the money: Terror plotters could have benefited more from the fall of the entire market than from individual stocks. quot 21 Basically, Wong, Thompson and Teh came to the conclusion quotthat our findings show that there was a significant abnormal increase in the trading volume in the option market just before the 9-11 attacks in contrast with the absence of abnormal trading volume far before the attacksquot. More specifically, they stated, quotOur findings from the out-of-the-money (OTM), at-the-money (ATM) and in-the-money (ITM) SPX index put options and ITM SPX index call options lead us to reject the null hypotheses that there was no abnormal trading in these contracts before September 11th. quot Instead, they found evidence for quotabnormal trading volume in OTM, ATM and ITM SPX index put optionsquot for September 2001, and also in quotITM-SPX index call optionsquot for the same month. quotIn addition, we find that there was evidence of abnormal trading in the September 2001 OTM, ATM and ITM SPX index put options immediately after the 9-11 attacks and before the expiration date. This suggests that owning a put was a valuable investment and those who owned them could sell them for a considerable profit before the expiration date. quot From all of this, they took the position that whilst they couldnt definitively prove that insiders were active in the market, quotour results provide credible circumstantial evidence to support the insider trading claimquot. 22 Disambiguation: quotin the moneyquot means that the circumstances arise on which the owner of a put option is betting - the market price of the underlying asset, for example a stock (or in this case an index of shares), is lower at that moment compared to the price at the time when the transaction took place. quotAt the moneyquot means that the price of the underlying asset has remained equal or nearly equal. And quotout-of-the-moneyquot means that the price of the underlying asset has gone up, so the opposite of what the owner of the put option was betting on took place. quotIn the moneyquot: win. quotOut of the moneyquot: loss. There are also ITM, ATM and OTM options both for trading strategies with put and call options, depending on which kind of risk one would like to take. For example, according to Wong, Thomson and Teh, the quotPut-Purchase Strategyquot in the case of a downward movement of the underlying asset quotis a cheaper alternative to short-selling of the underlying asset and it is the simplest way to profit when the price of the underlying asset is expected to declinequot. The use of the OTM put option compared to the ITM put option, however, offers quotboth higher reward and higher risk potentials (. ) if the underlying asset falls substantially in price. However, should the underlying asset decline only moderately in price, the ITM put often proves to be the better choice (. ) because of the relative price differential. quot That is why speculators would fare best, if they bought ITM put options, quotunless the speculators would expect a very substantial decline in the price of the underlying asset. quot 23 After they calculated such strategies in the light of the available trading data in the CBOE relating to 911, the three economists ultimately do not accept a possible counter-argument that their results could be attributed to the fact that the stock markets were generally falling and that there had already been a negative market outlook. Finally they pointed out: quotMore conclusive evidence is needed to prove definitively that insiders were indeed active in the market. Although we have discredited the possibility of abnormal volume due to the declining market, such investigative work would still be a very involved exercise in view of the multitude of other confounding factors, quot such as confusing trading strategies, quotintentionally employed by the insidersquot in order to attract less attention. 24 That would be - and if only to invalidate these scientific results once and for all - primarily a task for the SEC, the FBI and other governmental authorities of the United States. However, we will have to wait for this in vain. I think that not less worthy of a mention is an article that the French financial magazine Les Echos published in September 2007 about a study conducted by two independent economics professors from the University of Zurich, Marc Chesney and Loriano Mancini. Journalist Marina Alcaraz summarized the content of the findings in Les Echos with these words and with these explanations by Professor Chesney, which I for the first time translated into German (and do now translate from French into English): quotThe atypical volumes, which are very rare for specific stocks lead to the suspicion of insider trading. quot Six years after the attacks on the World Trade Center this is the disturbing results of a recent study by Marc Chesney and Loriano Mancini, professors at the University of Zurich. The authors, one of them a specialist in derivative products, the other a specialist in econometrics, worked on the sales options that were used to speculate on the decline in the prices of 20 large American companies, particularly in the aerospace and financial sector. Their analysis refers to the execution of transactions between the 6th and 10th of September 2001 compared to the average volumes, which were collected over a long period (10 years for most of the companies). In addition, the two specialists calculated the probability that different options within the same sector in significant volumes would be traded within a few days. quotWe have tried to see if the movements of specific stocks shortly before the attacks were normal. quot We show that the movements for certain companies such as American Airlines, United Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, Marsh amp McLehnan are rare from a statistical point of view, especially when compared to the quantities that have been observed for other assets like Coca-Cola or HP, quot explains Marc Chesney, a former Professor at the HEC and co-author of Blanchiment et financement du terrorisme ( Money laundering and financing of terrorism ), published by Editions Ellipses. quotFor example 1,535 put option contracts on American Airlines with a strike of 30 and expiry in October 2001 were traded on September 10th, in contrast to a daily average of around 24 contracts over the previous three weeks. The fact that the market was currently in a bear market is not sufficient to explain these surprising volumes. quot The authors also examined the profitability of the put options and trades for an investor who acquired such a product between the 6th and 10th September. quotFor specific titles, the profits were enormous. quot quotFor example, the investors who acquired put options on Citigroup with an expiry in October 2001 could have made more than 15 million profit, quot he said. On the basis of the connection of data between volumes and profitability, the two authors conclude that quotthe probability that crimes by Insiders (Insider trading) occurred. is very strong in the cases of American Airlines, United Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan. quotThere is no legal evidence, but these are the results of statistical methods, confirming the signs of irregularities. quot 25 As Alcaraz continued to state for Les Echos, the study by ChesneyMancini about possible insider trading related to the 911 attacks was not the first of its kind but it was in sharp contrast to the findings of the US Securities and Exchange Commission SEC and the 911 Commission, since they classified the insider trading as negligible - the trades in question had no connection to 911 and had quotconsistently proved innocuousquot. Different in the assessment is also the scientific work that Chesney and Mancini had published together with Remo Crameri in April 2010 at the University of Zurich, quotDetecting Informed Trading Activities in the option markets. quot In the segment that is dedicated to the terror attacks of 911, the three authors come to the conclusion, that there had been notable insider trading shortly before the terrorist attacks on September 11 that was based on prior knowledge. Without elaborating on the detailed explanation of the mathematical and statistical method, which the scientific trio applied during the examination of the put option transactions on the CBOE for the period between 1996 and 2006, I summarize some of their significant conclusions. quotCompanies like American Airlines, United Airlines, Boeingquot - the latter company is a contractor of the two airlines as aircraft manufacturer - quotand to a lesser extent, Delta Air Lines and KLM seem to have been targets for informed trading activities in the period leading up to the attacks. The number of new put options issued during that period is statistically high and the total gains realized by exercising these options amount to more than 16 million. These findings support the results by Poteshman (2006) who also reports unusual activities in the option market before the terrorist attacks. quot 26 In the banking sector, Chesney, Crameri and Mancini found five informed trading activities in connection to 911. quotFor example the number of new put options with underlying stock in Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch issued in the days before the terrorist attacks was at an unusually high level. The realized gains from such trading strategies are around 11 million. quot 27 For both areas, the aviation and the banking sector, the authors state that quotin nearly all cases the hypothesisquot, that the put options were not hedged, quotcannot be rejectedquot. 28 Regarding the options traded on EUREX, one of the worlds largest trading places for derivatives, which in 1998 resulted from the merger between the German and Swiss futures exchanges DTB and SOFFEX, Chesney, Mancini and Crameri focused on two reinsurance companies, which incurred costs in terms of billions of dollars in connection with the World Trade Center catastrophe: Munich Re and Swiss Re. On the basis of EUREX trading data provided by Deutsche Bank, the three scientists detected one informed option trade related to Munich Re, which occurred on August 30, 2001. The authors write: quotThe detected put option with underlying Munich Re matured at the end of September 2001 and had a strike of 320 (the underlying asset was traded at 300, 86 on August 30th). That option shows a large increment in open interest of 996 contracts (at 92.2 quintile of its two-year empirical distribution) on August 30th. Its price on that day was 10, 22. On the day of the terrorist attacks, the underlying stock lost more than 15 (the closing price on September 10th was 261, 88 and on September 11th 220, 53) and the option price jumped to 89, 56, corresponding to a return of 776 in eight trading days. The gains. related to the exercise of the 996 new put options issued on August 30th correspond to more than 3.4 million. quot Similar is true, according to the authors, for one informed option trade on Swiss Re on August 20, 2001 with quota return of 4,050 in three trading weeksquot, or quotmore than 8 million. quot 29 In a new version of their study that was published on September 7, 2011, the authors stuck to their findings from April 2010. They added the emphasis that in no way the profits gained with the put options to which they point could have been achieved due to sheer fortunate coincidence, but that in fact they were based on prior knowledge which had been exploited. 30 With those results in terms of what went on at the EUREX according to Chesney, Crameri and Mancini, I again addressed the BaFin, which had written to me that for the financial centers in Germany insider trading around 911 could be excluded, and asked: How does this go with your information that the federal supervisory for securities trading (BAWe) could in its comprehensive analysis not find evidence for insider trading Do the authors, so to speak, see ghosts with no good reason In addition, I stated: If it is true what Chesney, Crameri and Mancini write, or if you at the BaFin cannot (ad hoc) refute it, would this then cause the BaFin to thoroughly investigate the matter again If the findings of Chesney, Crameri, and Mancini were true, this would constitute illegal transactions relating to a capital crime, which has no status of limitations, or not In case that a need for clarification had arisen at the BaFin, I added Professor Chesney to my e-mail-inquiry in the quotcarbon copyquo t - address field, as because these were the results of his scientific work. The response that I received from BaFin employee Dominika Kula was as follows: As I already told you in my e-mail, the former federal supervisory for securities trading (BAWe) carried out a comprehensive analysis of the operations in 2001. As a result, no evidence of insider trading has been found. For clarification purposes, I wish to point out that violations of statutory provisions of securities or criminal law can never be excluded with absolute certainty. In order to pursue and prosecute such matters concrete evidence of an unlawful act is required. Such evidence does not exist here. With regard to the sources you mentioned, I ask for understanding that I can neither comment on scientific analyses, nor on reviews by third parties. Regarding the statutes of limitations for offences relating to the violation insider trading regulations trading I can give you the following information: A violation of the law to prohibit insider trading is punishable with imprisonment up to 5 years or with fines. The statutes of limitations applied for crimes carrying this kind of penalty (section 78 paragraph 3 No. 4 Penal Code) are five years. These limitations are described in the statutes of limitations ( 78 et seq.) (Criminal Code). In addition, I turned to the EUREX with three questions: 1. How do you as EUREX comment on the findings of Messrs Chesney, Mancini and Crameri 2. Did you at EUREX perceive the particular trading in Munich Re and Swiss Re it in any way as strange 3. Have domestic (eg BAWe and BaFin) or foreign (such as the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission) authorities ever inquired if there may have been evidence of insider trading via the EUREX in connection with the 911 attacks I subsequently received the following response from Heiner Seidel, the deputy head of the press office of the Deutsche Borse in Frankfurt. We do not give you a public written response on behalf of the Deutsche Brse or Eurex regarding the topics of your inquiry. This is for the following reason: the trade monitoring agency (HSt) is part of the Exchange, but it is independent and autonomous. Their investigations are confidential and are carried out in close coordination with the BaFin. They are never public, a request which HSt is therefore not meaningful. I leave it to the reader to draw hisher conclusions from these two replies from the press offices of BaFin and Deutsche Borse. Regarding the topic of option trades related to 911, I once more talked with Swiss historian Dr Daniele Ganser (quotOperation Gladioquot), by asking him this time about the importance of those put options, which were traded shortly before the attacks of September 11, 2001. Daniele Ganser: This is an important point. This is about demonstrating that there was insider trading on the international stock exchanges before 11 September. Specifically put options, ie speculation on falling stock prices were traded. Among the affected stocks were United Airlines and American Airlines, the two airlines involved in the attacks. A colleague of mine, Marc Chesney, professor at the Institute of banking at the University of Zurich, has examined these put options. You first of all have to check if there may have been international speculation that the aviation industry would be experiencing a weak period and whether accordingly also put options on Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and Swiss were bought. This was not the case. Very significant put option trades were only transacted for these two airlines involved in the attacks. Secondly, you must examine the ratio of put options to call options and look if they had also been purchased to a similarly significant extent that would constitute speculations on rising stock prices. And that is also not the case. There were only significant put options and only significant transactions for United Airlines and American Airlines. Now you need to look further in order to see who actually bought the put options, because that would be the insider who made millions on September 11. Most people are unaware that money was also earned with the attacks on September 11. The Security and Exchange Commission, SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States, however, does not publish the information on who bought the put options, because you can do this anonymously. It is disturbing that this data is not made public. What you have is the 911 Commission report, and here it is pointed out. that there has been insider trading, but that this insider trading cannot be traced to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, which means that it is highly unlikely that it had been Bin Laden. Question: If this is not pursued any further, what does it mean Daniele Ganser: This means that the investigation of the terrorist attacks was incomplete, and always at the point where there are contradictions to the SURPRISE story, no further investigations are made. It looks very much as if one wants to examine only one story, the investigation is therefore one-sided. But this does not only apply to the put options. 31 Interestingly enough, when Dr Ganser points out in his reply that this important data is not published, it is actually only half of the truth. Why The answer is very simple and odd at the same time: David Callahan, the editor of the US magazine SmartCEO, filed a request to the SEC about the put options which occurred prior to September 11 within the framework of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The SEC informed Callahan in its reply of December 23, 2009 under the number quot09 07659-FOIAquot as follows: This letter is in response to your request seeking access to and copies of the documentary evidence referred to in footnote 130 of Chapter 5 of the September 11 (911) Commission Report. We have been advised that the potentially responsive records have been destroyed. 32 Therefore, we will unfortunately never know exactly how the SEC and the 911 Commission came to their conclusions regarding the 911 put options trading for their final report, because relevant documents were not only held back, but also destroyed - and that in spite of an agreement between the SEC and the National Archive of the United States, in which the SEC has agreed to keep all records for at least 25 years. 33 The 911 Commission report wrote this in footnote 130 of Chapter 5, which briefly focuses on the alleged insider trading: Highly publicized allegations of insider trading in advance of 9 11 generally rest on reports of unusual pre-911 trading activity in companies whose stock plummeted after the attacks. Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation. For example, the volume of put options - investments that pay off only when a stock drops in price - surged in the parent companies of United Airlines on September 6 and American Airlines on September 10 - highly suspicious trading on its face. Yet, further investigation has revealed that the trading had no connection with 911. A single US-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al-Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific US-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades. These examples typify the evidence examined by the investigation. The SEC and the FBI, aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. These investigators have found that the apparently suspicious consistently proved innocuous. (Joseph Cella interview (Sept 16, 2003 May 7, 2004 May 10-11, 2004) FBI briefing (Aug 15, 2003) SEC memo, Division of Enforcement to SEC Chair and Commissioners, quotPre-September 11, 2001 Trading Review, quot May 15, 2002 Ken Breen interview (Apr. 23, 2004) Ed G. interview (Feb. 3, 2004). The author Mark H Gaffney commented on this finding of Notice. the commission makes no mention in its footnote of the 36 other companies identified by the SEC in its insider trading probe. What about the pre-911 surge in call options for Raytheon, for instance, or the spike in put options for the behemoth Morgan Stanley, which had offices in WTC 2 The 911 Commission Report offers not one word of explanation about any of this. The truth, we must conclude, is to be found between the lines in the reports conspicuous avoidance of the lions share of the insider trading issue. Indeed, if the trading was truly quotinnocuousquot, as the report states, then why did the SEC muzzle potential whistleblowers by de putizing everyone involved with its investigation The likely answer is that so many players on Wall Street were involved that the SEC could not risk an open process, for fear of exposing the unthinkable. This would explain why the SEC limited the flow of information to those with a quotneed to knowquot, which, of course, means that very few participants in the SEC investigation had the full picture. It would also explain why the SEC ultimately named no names. All of which hints at the true and frightening extent of criminal activity on Wall Street in the days and hours before 911. The SEC was like a surgeon who opens a patient on the operating room table to remove a tumor, only to sew him back up again after finding that the cancer has metastasized through the system. At an early stage of its investigation, perhaps before SEC officials were fully aware of the implications, the SEC did recommend that the FBI investigate two suspicious transactions. We know about this thanks to a 911 Commission memorandum declassified in May 2009 which summarizes an August 2003 meeting at which FBI agents briefed the commission on the insider trading issue. The document indicates that the SEC passed the information about the suspicious trading to the FBI on September 21, 2001, just ten days after the 911 attacks. Although the names in both cases are censored from the declassified document, thanks to some nice detective work by Kevin Ryan we know whom (in one case) the SEC was referring to. The identity of the suspicious trader is a stunner that should have become prime-time news on every network, world-wide. Kevin Ryan was able to fill in the blanks because, fortunately, the censor left enough details in the document to identify the suspicious party who, as it turns out, was none other than Wirt Walker III, a distant cousin to then-president G W Bush. Several days before 911, Walker and his wife Sally purchased 56,000 shares of stock in Stratesec, one of the companies that provided security at the World Trade Center up until the day of the attacks. Notably, Stratesec also provided security at Dulles International Airport, where AA 77 took off on 911, and also security for United Airlines, which owned two of the other three allegedly hijacked aircraft. At the time, Walker was a director of Stratesec. Amazingly, Bushs brother Marvin was also on the board. Walkers investment paid off handsomely, gaining 50,000 in value in a matter of a few days. Given the links to the World Trade Center and the Bush family, the SEC lead should have sparked an intensive FBI investigation. Yet, incredibly, in a mind-boggling example of criminal malfeasance, the FBI concluded that because Walker and his wife had quotno ties to terrorism. there was no reason to pursue the investigation. quot The FBI did not conduct a single interview. 34 For this translation, I asked Kevin Ryan via e-mail if he could send me a link for his quotnice detective workquot. Ryan, whos in my humble opinion one of roughly 10 people around the world who have to be taken seriously regarding 911, replied: You are referring to my paper quotEvidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11.quot See here . The following two references from the paper are relevant to what you are describing. 2 911 Commission memorandum entitled quotFBI Briefing on Tradingquot. prepared by Doug Greenburg, 18 August 2003, 22. The 911 Commission memorandum that summarized the FBI investigations refers to the traders involved in the Stratesec purchase. From the references in the document, we can make out that the two people had the same last name and were related. This fits the description of Wirt and Sally Walker, who were known to be stock holders in Stratesec. Additionally, one (Wirt) was a director at the company, a director at a publicly traded company in Oklahoma (Aviation General), and chairman of an investment firm in Washington, DC (Kuwam Corp). Here are two other recent articles on Stratesec and its operators. See here and here . The stock of Stratesec, I should add by myself, increased in value from 0.75 per share on September 11 to 1.49 per share when the market re-opened on September 17. As a firm that provides technology-based security for large commercial and government facilities, Stratesec benefited from the soaring demand of security companies right after 911. It is also remarkable what Ryan wrote to me regarding a company on which he did some research, too: Viisage Corp, another high-tech security firm. Kevin Ryan: In late 2005, George Tenet became a director for Viisage, which had been flagged by the SEC for 911 trading but never investigated. Viisage was led by Roger LaPenta, formerly of Lockheed. Seven months later, in 2006, FBI director Louis Freeh also joined the Viisage board. One might think that when both the CIA director (on 911) and the FBI director (from 1993 to June 2001) joined a company suspected of 911 insider trading, we might want to go back and actually investigate the SECs flagging of that company. But, of course, that was not the case. In 2009, quotBandar Bushquot hired Freeh as his personal attorney. Freeh is nowadays the bankruptcy trustee of the alleged market manipulator MF Global. And about his client, the former Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, I should add that we know for sure that he bankrolled indirectly via his wife two of the alleged would-be 911 hijackers, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi. 35 But lets get back to the subject of destruction. On September 11, not only human life, aircraft and buildings were destroyed in New York City, but also data on computers and in archives. For example, several federal agencies occupied space in Building 7 of the World Trade Center, including the Securities and Exchange Commission on floors 11 to 13. Those and other data could have given information about the alleged 911 insider trading (though it seems to be very unlikely that no backup existed elsewhere independent of the local computer systems). In fact, some technology companies were commissioned to recover damaged hard disks, which had been recovered from the debris and dust of Ground Zero. One of these companies was the English company group Convar, more precisely: their data rescue center in the German city Pirmasens. Erik Kirschbaum from the news agency Reuters reported in December 2001 that Convar had at that time successfully restored information from 32 computers, supporting quotsuspicions that some of the 911 transactions were illegalquot. The suspicion is that inside information about the attack was used to send financial transaction commands and authorizations in the belief that amid all the chaos the criminals would have, at the very least, a good head start, says Convar director Peter Henschel. quot 36 Convar received the costly orders - according to Kirschbaums report the companies had to pay between 20,000 and 30,000 per rescued computer - in particular from credit card companies, because: quotThere was a sharp rise in credit card transactions moving through some computer systems at the WTC shortly before the planes hit the twin towers. This could be a criminal enterprise - in which case, did they get advance warning Or was it only a coincidence that more than 100 million was rushed through the computers as the disaster unfoldedquot 37 The companies for which Convar was active cooperated with the FBI. If the data were reconstructed they should have been passed on to the FBI, and the FBI, according to its statutory mandate, should have initiated further investigation based on the data to find out who carried out these transactions. Henschel was optimistic at the time that the sources for the transactions would come to light. Richard Wagner, a Convar employee, told Kirschbaum that quotillegal transfers of more than 100 million might have been made immediately before and during the disaster. There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time of the plane crashes in order to move out amounts exceeding 100 million, he says. They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed. quot 38 Wagners observation that there had been quotillegal financial transactions shortly before and during the WTC disasterquot matches an observation which Ruppert describes in Crossing the Rubicon . Ruppert was contacted by an employee of Deutsche Bank, who survived the WTC disaster by leaving the scene when the second aircraft had hit its target. According to the employee, about five minutes before the attack the entire Deutsche Bank computer system had been taken over by something external that no one in the office recognized and every file was downloaded at lightning speed to an unknown location. The employee, afraid for his life, lost many of his friends on September 11, and he was well aware of the role which the Deutsche Bank subsidiary Alex Brown had played in insider trading. 39 I was curious and wanted more information from Convar regarding their work on the WTC-computer hard drives, but also about the statements made by Peter Henschel and Richard Wagner. Thus, I contacted the agency which represents Convar for press matters, with a written request. But their agency quotars publicandiquot informed me swiftly: Due to time constraints, we can currently offer you neither information nor anyone on the part of our client to talk to regarding this requested topic. I also approached KrollOntrack, a very interesting competitor of Convar in writing. Ontrack Data Recovery, which also has subsidiaries in Germany, was purchased in 2002 by Kroll Inc - quotone of the nations most powerful private investigative and security firms, which has long-standing involvement with executive protection US government officials including the president. This would require close liaison with the Secret Service. quot 40 At the time of the 911 attacks, a certain Jerome Hauer was one of the managing directors at Kroll Inc. He had previously established the crisis center for the mayor of New York City as director of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which occupied office space on the 23rd floor of the WTC Building 7. Hauer helped former FBI agent John ONeill to get the post of the head of Security Affairs at the WTC, and spent the night of September 11 with ONeill in New York before the latter lost his life on September 11 in the WTC. Hauer was most likely involved in the planning of quotTripod IIquot, the war game exercise at the port of New York City. 41 Therefore, I found it appealing to uncover some more details of this aspect, or, more accurately to find out if Ontrack or KrollOntrack had received an order in 2001 or after to rescue computer hard drives from the WTC. The answer I received from KrollOntrack said: Kroll Ontrack was not at the site of the data recovery - the devices at the Twin Towers have been completely destroyed or vaporized. The firm Kroll was, however, at that time active in the field of computer-forensic investigations, securing devices in the surrounding buildings. In essence, these two inquiries did not help me at all. If anything, a further question arose: why did KrollOntrack send me a response, where it was really obvious that the content did not match the facts After all, I had written in my inquiry that Convar had received orders to restore damaged computer hard drives from the World Trade Center. I sent a new inquiry, attaching a link for Erik Kirschbaums Reuters article and additional cinematic reports on Convars which showed that some of the WTC disks had not been quotcompletely destroyed or vaporizedquot. I stated to KrollOntrack: quotYour answer does not seem to match the facts, when it comes to completely destroyed or vaporized. Will you still stick to your answerquot KrollOntrack then replied that their previously given assessment constituted quotnot a statement, but an opinionquot. I do not find this assessment worthless, because it is in line with the knowledge of the general public and can easily be refuted in argumentum in contrario by Convars activities. One film report to which I referred to in my second inquiry to KrollOntrack originated from the German television journal Heute-Journal broadcast on March 11, 2002, on ZDF, and the other from the Dutch TV documentary Zembla, broadcast on September 10, 2006. The ZDF report showed that Convar received the WTC disks from the US Department of Defense and that Convar had managed until March 2002 to recover more than 400 hard drives. It also reported that the private companies that employed Convar had paid between 25,000 and 50,000 per hard drive. In the TV documentary Zembla, Convar essentially maintained its position as it had been reported by Erik Kirschbaum in 2001. Obviously, in connection with 911 there has not only been insider trading via put options, but there is additional evidence that there have been illegal financial transactions via credit cards through which more than 100 million US dollars were removed from the WTC computer systems. Those occurred shortly before and during the WTC disaster. It remains unclear what the FBI did later on with the data recovered by Convar. On the other hand, it may have been not very much, as can be seen from a memorandum from the 911 Commission, which was released in May 2009. The 911 Commission asked the FBI about the use of credit cards for insider dealing. On the basis of the information provided by the FBI, the commission came to the conclusion that no such activity occurred because quotthe assembled agents expressed no knowledge of the reported hard-drive recovery effort or the alleged schemequot - but above all quoteverything at the WTC was pulverized to near powder, making it extremely unlikely that any hard-drives survivedquot. 42 The activities of Convar, however, prove the exact opposite. But it gets even better. According to Zembla, the FBI was directly involved with the data rescue efforts of Convar. And on top of it, the broadcast of Heute-Journal reported that Convar worked in that quothighly sensitivequot matter with several federal agencies of the United States government. So there have been ample indications for insider trading based on foreknowledge of the attacks, but there are very few hard facts as Catherine Austin Fitts, a former managing director and member of the board of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read amp Co, Inc (now part of UBS), pointed out when I talked with her about this topic. Ms Fitts, what are your general thoughts related to the alleged 911-insider trading Catherine Austin Fitts: Well, Ive never been able to see concrete evidence that the insider trading has been proved. Theres a lot of anecdotal information from investment bankers and people in the investment community that indicate that there was significant insider trading, particularly in the currency and bond markets, but again it hasnt been documented. I think around situations like 911 weve seen things that can only be explained as insider trading. Therefore, it wouldnt surprise me if it turns out the allegations are true, because my suspicion is that 911 was an extremely profitable covert operation and a lot of the profits came from the trading. It wouldnt even surprise me if it turns out that the Exchange Stabilization Fund traded it and that some of the funding for the compensation fund for the victims came from the ESF. Insider trading happens around these kinds of events, but if you really want to produce evidence of insider trading, you need the subpoena powers of the SEC, and of course we know that they havent exercised them. If anything, right after 911, the government settled a significant amount of cases I presume because a lot of the documents were destroyed by the destruction of WTC building number 7, where the SEC offices and other governmental investigation offices were. 43 Fitts, who had written a longer essay in 2004 related to this, replied to my question about who had benefited from 911: Catherine Austin Fitts: 911 was extraordinarily profitable for Wall Street, they of course got a kind of quotGet Out of Jail Free cardquot as Ive just described. In addition, the largest broker of government bonds, Cantor Fitzgerald, was destroyed, and there was a great deal of money missing from the federal government in the prior four or five years. If you look at the amount of funds involved, it is hard to come to a conclusion other than massive securities fraud was involved, so I find it very interesting that this happened. 44 A short explanation: Cantor Fitzgeralds headquarters were located in the North Tower of the WTC (floors 101-105). On 911, the company lost nearly two-thirds of its entire workforce, more than any other tenant in the WTC. (Also two other government bonds brokers, Garbon Inter Capital and Eurobrokers, occupied office space in the WTC towers that were destroyed.) Back to Fitts and the question: quotCui bono 911quot Catherine Austin Fitts: In addition, the federal government took the position that they couldnt produce audited financial statements after 911, because they said the office at the Pentagon that produced financial statements was destroyed. Now given what I know of the federal set up of financial statements, I am skeptical of that statement. But needless to say, if you take the government on its word, you had another quotGet Out of Jail Free cardquot for four trillion dollars and more missing from the federal government. So if youre just looking at the financial fraud angle, there were a lot of parties that benefited from 911. But then of course what 911 did, it staged the passage of the Patriot Act and a whole series of laws and regulations that I collectively refer to as quotThe Control on Concentration of Cash Flow Act. quot It gave incredible powers to centralize. In addition, if you look at monetary policies right after 911 - I remember I was over in the City of London driving around with a money manager and his phone rang and he answered it on his speaker phone. It was somebody on Wall Street who he hadnt talked to since before 911, and he said to him: quotOh Harry, I am so sorry about what has happened, it must have been very traumatic. quot And the guy said: quotDont be ridiculous We were able to borrow cheap short and invest long, were running a huge arbitrage, were making a fortune, this is the most profitable thing that ever happened to usquot - So you could tell the monetary policies and sort of insider games were just pumping profits into the bank at that time, so that was very profitable. But of course the big money was used for a significant movement of the military abroad and into Afghanistan and then into Iraq. You could see that the country was being prepared to go to war. And sure enough, 911 was used as a justification to go to war in Afghanistan, to go to war in Iraq, and commit a huge number of actions, and now much of the challenges about the budget are the result of extraordinary expenditures on war including in Afghanistan and Iraq and the costs of moving the army abroad and engaging in this kind of empire building with ground military force. So I think if you ask Cui Bono on 911, one of the big categories was all the people who made money on engineering the popular fear they needed to engineer these wars. I believe whether it was financial fraud, engineering new laws or engineering wars, it was a fantastically profitable covert operation. 45 In that category of people who benefit from 911 are also the arms manufacturer Raytheon, whose share price gained directly from the 911 attacks. Trading of the shares of Raytheon, the producer of Tomahawk and Patriot missiles (and parent company of E-systems, whose clients include the National Security Agency and CIA), experienced an abrupt six-time increase of call option purchases on the day immediately before September 11. 46 The outright purchase of call options implies the expectation that a stock price will rise. In the first week after 911, when the New York Stock Exchange opened again, the value of Raytheon actually shot up considerably. Looking at the development of the stock price, the impression is a very weak performance before the attacks - and then, after resumption of trade, a quotgapquot (at substantial volume) upwards. In other words: just under 25 on September 10, the low in the period between August 20 to September 28, at 31, 50 on September 17 and up to 34, and 80 on September 27, 2001. With regards to government bonds, buyers of US Treasury securities with a maturity of five years were also winners. These securities were traded in an unusually large volume shortly before the attacks. The Wall Street Journal reported at least in early October 2001 that the Secret Service had started an investigation into a suspiciously high volume of US government bond purchases before the attacks. The Wall Street Journal explained: Five-year Treasury bills are the best investments in the event of a global crisis, in particular one like this which has hit the United States. The papers are treasured because of their safety, and because they are covered by the US government, and usually their prices rise if investors shun riskier investments, such as shares. 47 Adding to this phenomenon, the government issues these bonds that serve as a basis of money creation for funding a war such as the immediately declared quotwar on terrorquot, engaging the Tomahawks from Raytheon. And here it may again be useful to have a quick look at the quotcui bonoquot relationship: The US Federal Reserve creates money to fund the war and lends it to the American government. The American government in turn must pay interest on the money they borrow from the Central Bank to fund the war. The greater the war appropriations, the greater the profits are for bankers. 48 A multi-layered combination, one could say. I also talked about the topic of 911 insider trading with one of the worlds leading practitioners at the interface between the international capital markets, the national security policy of the US as well as geopolitics, James G Rickards. He gave me some answers in a personal discussion, which I am allowed to repeat here with his expressed approval. Question: Did suspicious trading activities of uncovered put options on futures markets occur shortly before 911 James G Rickards: Well, the trading documents certainly look suspicious. It is simply a fact that an unusually high volume of purchases of put-options for the two airlines occurred over the three trading days before the attacks. This is a mere fact, no speculation, no guessing around. This is clearly obvious from the documents of the trading sessions on the derivatives exchanges. Question: Do you think that the intelligence agencies could have got a warning signal based on this information James G Rickards: Theoretically that is possible, if are you are looking and watching out for this. But there was far more significant information, which was ignored. Question: Do you also think that some people with foreknowledge operated speculatively in the option markets James G Rickards: Based on the documentation of the trading session it seems that this has been the case, yes. Lets sum up a bit at the end. We have, among other things: The quotnice detective workquot by Kevin Ryan related to StratesecWirt Walker III. Some highly inconsistent information vis-a-vis Convarillegal credit card transactions. Scientific papers supporting the allegations that there were indeed unusual trading activities in the option market before the terrorist attacks of 911, although the 911 Commission (based on the investigation of the SEC and the FBI) ruled that possibility out. As it became clear that I would publish this article here at Asia Times Online, I contacted the US Federal Bureau of Investigation via its press spokesman Paul Bresson in order quotto give the FBI the opportunity to give a public statement with regards to three specific issuesquot. Those three specific issues were the ones I have just highlighted. Related to each of them Ive asked Mr Bressonthe FBI: quotCould you comment on this for the public, pleasequot Up to this moment, Mr Bressonthe FBI did not respond to my inquiry in any way whatsoever. Does this come as a surprise Ive also got back in touch with quotars publicandiquot, the firm that does public relations for Convar in Germany. The response said: quotUnfortunately I have to inform you that the status has not changed, and that Convar considers the issue of 911 as dead in general. quot As you have read, the status in August of last year was slightly different. At the end of this article, I should perhaps mention that this research ultimately led to negative consequences for me. After I contacted the FBI, I was informed by the publisher of a German financial website, for which I conducted interviews for a professional fee (and had already prepared more work), that no further cooperation was possible. Now that I will come in one way or another into the focus of the FBI, any association with me would be undesirable. Well, you know the rules. As far as the abnormal option trades around 911 are concerned, I want to give Max Keiser the last word in order to point out the significance of the story. Max Keiser: Regardless of who did it, we can know that more than a few had advance warning - the trading in the option market makes that clear. Notes i. PROMIS was first developed by Inslaw during the 1970s under contracts and grants from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). These guarantees gave the government licenses to use the early versions of PROMIS but not to modify them, or to create derivative works, or to distribute PROMIS outside the federal government. By 1982, because of strong disagreements over a fee-incentive, Modification 12 Agreement to the original contract, the United States Department of Justice and Inslaw Inc became involved in a widely-publicized and protracted lawsuit. PROMIS was originally designed as a case-management system for prosecutors. (Source Wikipedia.) 1. Compare Michael C Ruppert: Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age Of Oil . New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2004, page 152. 2. Ibid, page 153. 3. Ibid, page 154-155. 4. Ibid, page 170. 5. Ibid, page 238-253: quot911 Insider Trading, or You Didnt Really See That, Even Though We Saw It. quot 6. Ibid, page 239. 7. Compare Chris Blackhurst: quotMystery of terror insider dealers quot, published at The Independent on October 4, 2001, see here. 8. Compare quotProfits of Deathquot, published at From the Wilderness on December 6, 2001, see here. 9. For the fact, that it was George Tenet who recruited Krongard, compare George Tenet: At the Center of the Storm . Harper Collins, New York, 2007, page 19. 10. Compare Marc Chesney, Remo Crameri and Loriano Mancini: quotDetecting Informed Trading Activities in the Option Marketsquot, University of Zurich, April 2010, online here. 11. Nafeez M Ahmed: Geheimsache 0911. Hintergrnde uber den 11. September und die Logik amerikanischer Machtpolitik . Goldmann Verlag, Munich, 2004, page 182. (Translated back into English from German.) 12. Compare Michael C Ruppert: Crossing the Rubicon . page 244-247. 13. Wing-Keung Wong, Howard E. Thompson und Kweehong Teh: quotWas there Abnormal Trading in the SampP 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacksquot, published at Social Sciences Research Network, April 2010, see here. 14. Compare quotBank of America among 38 stocks in SECs attack probequot, published at Bloomberg News on October 3, 2001, archived here. 15. Michael C Ruppert: Crossing the Rubicon . page 243. 16. Ibid. 17. quotSuppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIAs Highest Ranksquot, published at From the Wilderness on October 9, 2001, see here. 18. Compare quotEarly September 2001: Almost Irrefutable Proof of Insider Trading in Germanyquot, published at History Commons, see here. 19. Allen M Poteshman: quotUnusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001quot, published in The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, 2006, Vol 79, Edition 4, page 1703-1726. 20. Wing-Keung Wong, Howard E Thompson und Kweehong Teh: quotWas there Abnormal Trading in the SampP 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacksquot, see end note 13. 21. Ibid. The authors refer to Erin E Arvedlund: quotFollow the money: terrorist conspirators could have profited more from fall of entire market than single stocksquot, published in Barrons on October 8, 2001. 22. Wong, Thompson, Teh: quotWas there Abnormal Trading in the SampP 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacksquot 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Marina Alcaraz: quot11 septembre 2001: des volumes inhabituels sur les options peu avant lattentatquot, published in Les Echos, page 34, September 10, 2001, online here. 26. Marc Chesney, Remo Crameri and Loriano Mancini: quotDetecting Informed Trading Activities in the Option Marketsquot, see end note 10. 27. Ibid. 28. ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Compare Marc Chesney, Remo Crameri and Loriano Mancini: quotDetecting Informed Trading Activities in the Option Marketsquot, published at the University of Zurich on September 7, 2011, see here. 31. Vgl Lars Schall: quotSapere Audequot, German Interview with Dr Daniele Ganser, published at LarsSchall on August 18, 2011, see here. 32. Compare a copy of the letter by the SEC on MaxKeiser, see here. 33. Compare related to this agreement Matt Taibbi: quotIs the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimesquot, published at Rolling Stone on August 17, 2011, see here . 34. Mark H Gaffney: quotBlack 911: A Walk on the Dark Sidequot, published at Foreign Policy Journal on March 2, 2011, see here. 35. Compare Peter Dale Scott: quotLaunching the US Terror War: the CIA, 911, Afghanistan, and Central Asiaquot, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 12, No 3, March 19, 2012, see online here. 35. Erik Kirschbaum: quotGerman Firm Probes Last-Minute World Trade Center Transactionsquot, published at Reuters on December 19, 2001, online here. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Michael C Ruppert: Crossing the Rubicon . page 244. 39. Ibid, page 423. 40. Ibid, page 423-426. 41. Commission Memorandum: quotFBI Briefing on Tradingquot, dated August 18, 2003, page 12, online here. 42. Lars Schall: quot911 Was A Fantastically Profitable Covert Operationquot, Interview with Catherine Austin Fitts, published at LarsSchall on September 3, 2011, see here . 43. Ibid. Compare further related to the quotcui bonequot topic Catherine Austin Fitts: quot9-11 Profiteering: A Framework for Building the Cui Bonoquot, published at GlobalResearch on March 22, 2004, see here . 44. Lars Schall: quot911 Was A Fantastically Profitable Covert Operationquot, see end note 42. 45. Compare quotBank of America among 38 stocks in SECs attack probequot, see end note 14. quotA Raytheon option that makes money if shares are more than 25 each had 232 options contracts traded on the day before the attacks, almost six times the total number of trades that had occurred before that day. A contract represents options on 100 shares. Raytheon shares soared almost 37 percent to 34.04 during the first week of post-attack US trading. quot 46. Compare Barry Grey: quotSuspicious trading points to advance knowledge by big investors of September 11 attacks, quot published at World Socialist Web Site on October 5, 2001, see here. 47. J S Kim: quotInside the Illusory Empire of the Banking Commodity Con Game, quot published at The Underground Investor on October 19, 2010, see here. Lars Schall is a German financial journalist. This article is an exclusive, slightly modified and updated excerpt from the book Mordanschlag 911. Eine kriminalistische Recherche zu Finanzen, Ol und Drogen (Assassination 911: A criminalistic research on finance, oil and drugs), published in Germany by Schild Verlag. Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. Scroll down to add your comments - Please read our Comment Policy before posting -