21st Century Wire says…
A lot of people are making a lot of money from the rise of terrorism.
Watch a video of this report here:
While travel and tourism-related stocks have suffered since last Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, defence industry stocks have seen all-time highs since the rise of ISIS as investors keep pouring their cash into weapons.
Military Industrial Complex heavyweights had a great opening at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, with Lockheed Martin trading 3.5 percent higher, Northrop Grumman up 4.4 percent, and Raytheon up 4 percent.
Despite French markets being down overall, stocks of Thales, a French defence giant, were up 3 percent.
The rise of terrorism has been very good for business in the defence sector, and the post-9/11 ‘War on Terror’ was even credited with driving the American economy back into good standing.
David Berteau, a defense industry analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told USA Today back in 2011 that “We’re about to go into the downhill side of the roller coaster here,” as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down.
The rise of ISIS has, however, re-inflated the Military Industrial Complex’s bubble. Northrop Grumman is trading at $263 a share, up 160 percent from 2013, and Lockheed Martin is up 150 percent, at $221 a share. Thales stocks were also up 160 percent, at $102.
Meanwhile in the UK, while citizens are being forced to accept devastating austerity cuts, £1.9 billion ($2.9B) is about to be injected into ‘cyber security’ to counter ISIS hackers.
David Cameron has also announced that £2 billion ($3B) will be spent on British special forces units, meanwhile British schoolchildren are suffering from a crisis of malnutrition.
How exactly can it be right to force austerity cuts onto the population while making huge investments into the military industrial complex?
If, perhaps, the ISIS threat could not be traced back to Western roots, then maybe it would make sense!
READ MORE ON THE PARIS ATTACKS: 21st Century Wire Paris Files
