According to Catherine Austin Fitts, the shadow trading economy comprises a larger and larger slice of the pie. Shadow trading? This is the term Ms. Fitts used to describe the growing amount of money being traded off the exchange – which simply means outside the normal, regulated ebb and flow of Wall Street machinations. Remember, how Jason talks about the Wall Street conspiracy?
Wrap your mind around this. The regulated exchange stock market that everyone is familiar with and is foisted upon the public as the American way to build wealth, is perhaps only the tip of the iceberg. It’s visual, a rigged game being played out for the sake of the average investor to churn his money away playing.
Maybe the real trading in this world between firms takes place in a setting outside the print of the Wall Street Journal and beyond the boundaries of what any SEC regulator can touch – it’s shadow trading. Fitts went on to hypothesize that schemes such as the one Bernie Madoff got busted on could be involved in shadow trading. Perhaps they’re even funding black operations for intelligence agencies. How would that work? Say Mr. Madoff got people to give him $50 billion on the promise of a 10% return. Let’s further say the CIA (or any other alphabet acronym agency) needed money to fund operations but Congress wouldn’t foot the bill. So the CIA decides to approach Madoff and offers him 12% return on a loan.
In a perfect scam, Madoff floats a loan to the CIA, collects the 12%, pays his investors back 10% and keeps the difference for himself. Theoretically, this could be going on time after time in scheme after scheme.
Shadow trading. Think about it. Still want to be in the stock market?
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