Much has been said about the youth vote over the past six months.  There is a new army of young people who were just fourteen years old when the last election rolled into town.  Most of them were too pre-occupied with video games and the opposite sex to pay much attention.  This time around however, they are of age to cast their own opinion.  They fill in a dot that will help determine which man becomes the most powerful leader in the world.  That's a lot to take in for an eighteen year old who's biggest decision previous to this one was which acne medication to buy.

You might think the young voter takes it lightly, but you would be mistaken.  The young voter is one who is used to research and study and many of them put more effort into it than many adults.  Some even took to the streets, exercising their right to free speech.

The buzz around young voters has been predominantly for the young, mild mannered Obama.  Sometimes the buzz doesn't make it this far south.  Only time will tell how the youth vote in Panama City effected the election, but however the chips fall it is good to see civic minded young people in the voting lines.

Story & Photo by Dustin Bryson

(Appearing in front page photo from left to right: Terry-Lee Kirkland, Anna Husfelt, Sara Hitt.  Inset: Street sign organizer, Cory Gann)

As a general rule I have not had a history of chasing conspiracy theories. Nevertheless after observing the chaotic mess that is the stock market over the last few days, I am getting a picture in my head that something is very wrong with the way things are working. In fact, I have developed my own conspiracy theory. Give a listen and then some thought to this historical review and hypothetical scenario.

You will recall that it was Osama Bin Laden's stated purpose to ruin the financial systems of the United States and the rest of the world by attacking the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. His goal was to cripple the economic brain center and subsequently sow panic and collapse to the capitalistic system he detests. After the attack the US stock market did take a serious hit, retreating to the 7000 range in the Dow Jones Industrial average. It took a couple of years for us to recover, but recover we did.

Now fast-forward to 2008. After seven years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, radical elements of Islam known as Al Quida, have found their immediate objective in the United States very difficult to attain. The US military in partnership with other free-world nations have taken the battle to the enemy and for at least the last seven years have prevented further attacks on US soil. All of this leads me to the theory at hand.

Suppose Osama has rethought his strategy during this seven year period. He has had little trouble recruiting suicide bombers in the Middle East. When it comes to getting a big bang for the buck (you will pardon the obvious pun here), the strategy of one bomber for 50 or 60 Iraqi civilians, and maybe one or two US soldiers, doesn't really do it for him. And a war requiring explosive ordinance is pretty expensive as well. So what's a terrorist to do?

How about this? Osama trains a thousand agents around the globe to use a personal computer to buy and sell stocks on the world-wide market. Instead of strapping explosives on them, he straps on a PC. He gives them a way to electronically "reach out and touch America", though they needn't go through any border screening process. He then gives each one the capital they need to do a million dollars worth of transactions every day, all coordinated to drive the market in a particular direction. Then arises the "sub-prime mortgage crisis", an event that becomes the opportunity for Bin Laden to ratchet up his market attack and take us to the tipping point. Now the daily market "explosions" strategically timed to drive the market up one day and down the next creates huge swings, and the "volatility" creates a public panic that generates a huge sell-off in the market producing a catastrophic plunge in the DOW, and with it goes the rest of the world's markets.

Now enters in the world's governments to restore confidence in the economic systems of the globe. Is this exactly what the world's leading terrorist has anticipated? With the governments of the world becoming the banks of the world, if the banks go down, will they take the governments with them?

And with the stage set, what if a single suicide bomber penetrates the security of the New York Stock Exchange and detonates a device large enough to take out hundreds of floor traders and knock out the computers at the site. Moreover, what if that attack is coordinated world-wide with the other exchanges of the major players in the world economy. How much panic would that incite? How great would the world crisis be then?

It is my hope that none of the events described above will ever happen, but if they or something like them occur, Bin Laden could still emerge as the victor.