End Times File: Berlusconi: World leaders must close markets, banks, rewrite rules of international finance; China hacks World Bank computers

- Indonesia, Iceland Close Markets for Second Day while Russia and Ukraine Suspend Trading Indefinitely (source)

- Temporary Suspensions Hit Financial Markets in Vienna and Bangkok Due to Global Credit Crunch

- US Treasury Explores Option of "Recapitalizing" (Nationalizing) Banks as Federal Reserve and Five Other Central Banks, Including China's, Approve Coordinated Rate Cut (source)

- Nicaragua's Marxist President Ortega: God Punishing USA with Financial Crisis for Imposing "Flawed" Economic Policies on Developing Countries (source)

- Socialist Worker Party Cadres and Students Protest British Bailout Today, Clash with London Police outside Bank of England (source)

- Riots Rock (Communist-Ruled) Hong Kong on Wednesday Following Heavy Losses on Hang Seng Index (source)

Today the DJIA dropped below 8,000 points for the first time since 2003. "European stock markets slumped further on Friday," announced the MSM, moreover, "following massive losses on Wall Street and Asia on mounting fears that this week's efforts by central banks and governments to break the logjam in credit markets have failed to ease lending rates between banks."

In response, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is a good buddy of Russia's KGB-communist dictator Vladimir Putin, is urging the statesmen and bankers to close down the world's markets and banks until they can "rewrite the rules of international finance" and formulate a new economic order that will replace Bretton Woods. "The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,'' Berlusconi intoned after a meeting of his government cabinet, "A solution to the financial crisis can't just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.'' Bloomberg reports that world leaders will hold discussions on these topics today during a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers in Washington, DC, as well as upcoming meetings of the European Union and Group of Eight (which includes neo-Soviet Russia).

Berlusconi Says Leaders May Close World's Markets (Update1)
By Steve Scherer

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world's financial markets while they "rewrite the rules of international finance.''

"The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,'' Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis "can't just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.''

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much 8.1 percent in early trading and pared most of those losses after Berlusconi's remarks. The Dow was down 0.5 percent to 8540.52 at 10:10 in New York.

Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers are meeting in Washington today, and will stay in town for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings this weekend.

European Union leaders may gather in Paris on Oct. 12, three days before a scheduled summit in Brussels, Berlusconi said today, while Group of Eight leaders may hold a meeting on the crisis "in coming days,'' he said.

Berlusconi didn't give any details about what kind of rules leaders were looking to change, except to say that leaders are "talking about a new Bretton Woods.''

The Bretton Woods Agreements were adopted to rebuild the international economic system after World War II in a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The aim of the agreements was to establish a monetary management system, initially by pegging currencies to gold. The IMF was set up later to help manage the international financial system.

Meanwhile, David Gilmore, who works at Foreign Exchange Analytics, anticipates that governments around the world will call for a "global bank holiday" beginning next week and remarks that normally scheduled bank holidays will take place in the USA and Japan on Monday. Forbes quotes Gilmore as saying:

Markets should prepare for another coordinated rate cut next week, and this time I predict that Japan, with its 0.5 pct benchmark rate, will participate. While I would not count on a global bank holiday next week, one would make sense to me, particularly with scheduled U.S. and Japanese bank holidays on Monday. Again this is a remote option, but not to be ruled out. The main focus must be on government efforts to restore solvency in the banking system, and that process will be taking place in Washington not on Wall Street.

Based in Washington, DC the World Bank is part of the United Nations System of Organizations and one of several international financial institutions that emerged from the Bretton Woods Agreement, signed by the Allied Powers at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire, in 1945. The World Bank is an internationally supported bank that provides financial and technical assistance to developing countries for development programs. Communists and hard-core leftists generally view the World Bank as an agent of US "neoliberalism." This is one reason why seven South American countries under the leadership of Venezuela's red dictator Hugo Chavez formed the Bank of the South last year, to minimize US and World Bank influence in the region.

We have already documented on many occasions the Communist Bloc's intention to bring down the Western economies, thereby promoting a state of revolutionary ferment leading to rise of leftist leaders (like Barack Obama) and undermining the West's economic capacity to sustain its militaries. In an exclusive feature Fox News reports today that hackers in Macao, China have breached the security of at least 40 computer servers in the World Bank. "In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues," the news outlet states, "the bank's senior technology manager referred to the situation as an 'unprecedented crisis.'" Fox reveals: "[B]ank officials and its executive director for China clashed behind closed doors over whether or not China's government is involved in the break-ins."

World Bank Under Cyber Siege in 'Unprecedented Crisis'
Friday , October 10, 2008
By Richard Behar

The World Bank Group's computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned.

It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution's highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank's network for nearly a month in June and July.

In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month.

In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank's senior technology manager referred to the situation as an "unprecedented crisis." In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution. And it has left bank officials scrambling to try to understand the nature of the year-long cyber-assault, while also trying to keep the news from leaking to the public.

The crisis comes at an awkward moment for World Bank president Robert Zoellick, who runs the world's largest and most influential anti-poverty agency, which doles out $25 billion a year, and whose board represents 185 member nations. This weekend, the bank holds its annual series of meetings in Washington — and just in advance of those sessions, Zoellick called for a radical revamping of multilateral organizations in light of the global economic meltdown.

Zoellick is positioning himself and the bank as an institution that can help chart a new path toward global financial stability. But that reputation, more than ever, depends on the bank's stable information infrastructure.

The fact that the information vaults of the World Bank have been repeatedly pried open won't help Zoellick's case.

While it remains unclear how much data has been pilfered from the bank, it's a lot. According to internal memos, "a minimum of 18 servers have been compromised," including some of the bank's most sensitive systems — ranging from the bank's security and password server to a Human Resources server "that contains scanned images of staff documents."

One World Bank director tells FOX News that as many as 40 servers have been penetrated, including one that held contract-procurement data.

Despite the gravity of the break-ins, the bank is trying hard to pretend to outsiders it didn't happen. "There were attempts to hack the bank's computer systems last summer," says a World Bank spokesman. "However, there was no compromise of confidential information." Requests for on-the-record interviews with Zoellick and other top officials were declined.

SNIP

From the vantage of Bible prophecy, the timing of the current global financial crisis is intriguing. The bailout debate in the US Senate and House of Representatives, in particular, coincided with the beginning of the fall cycle of Israel's feast days--which includes the Feast of Trumpets/Jewish New Year, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles--and, more ominously, a new seven-year sabbatical cycle that may or may not represent Daniel's seventieth week, otherwise known as the tribulation period. During that period the Antichrist will restructure the global economy in such a way that no man can buy or sell without a mark on his right hand or forehead. Refusal to submit to that system will lead to martyrdom.