Two Trillion Dollars

Conspiracy theories are so much fun. You can use them to explain almost anything, they are unprovable, and if you have a cynical turn of mind, they make perfect sense.

Take 9-11 for instance. The day before, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave a press conference complaining about the two trillion dollars that had disappeared down some rat hole in the Pentagon. The next day, 9-11 happened, and all of a sudden we are at war, and everyone forgets about the two trillion dollars. Coincidence? I think not.


Donald Rumsfeld 2.3 Trillion Dollars Just Gone Sept 10, 2001
Actually I do think it was a coincidence, but hey, it makes good fodder for conspiracy theorists. Of course, it could also be explained by black projects. The goal of any defense contractor with larcency on his mind is get his project classified as secret. That way there is no accounting for the money that is spent on it. It's just part of the budget for secret stuff. Wouldn't surprise me if that's where the two trillion dollars went.

Jody dropped me a note about foreign countries not using dollars for oil any more and pointed me to The Drudge Report where I found several links on the subject. Here we have a report that all the big consumers and producers, except the US, are conspiring to stop using the dollar for oil trading, which is of course denied by official sources. I found a couple of quotes I really liked in the story by Robert Fisk. Here we go with the two trillion dollars again:

An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.

And here's the conspiracy theory:

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

Then there's this story about the UN wanting to move away from the dollar. Ain't this stuff just great?

Update January 2017 replaced missing video. I think I got the right one, I remember seeing all those pallets stacked with money before. Half the links are dead, but I don't have the energy to track down replacements right now.