Economic terrorism?

I was half-listening to the news the other day when a concerned security analyst mentioned that not only has the economic crisis risen higher on the priority list of security-minded government agencies and think tanks, it has surpassed terrorism as a threat to our nation. This made sense to me. Poor countries tend to be more unstable and the ensuing social unrest due to the inability of governments to promote prosperity has toppled many a regime in the past. But then the analyst began talking about economic terrorism in relation to countries like China. The idea is that China could do sneaky things like stop buying our government bonds or, worse, start cashing them in. This would in turn destabilize our already stressed economic system and lead to some unspoken cataclysm. 

There are several obfuscations going on in this line of discussion. First, through a kind of willful ignorance that borders on the criminal,  regulatory agencies in the United States government let the dogs run wild on Wall Street and in the banks for years. If there is a culprit in the current crisis, an underwriter of the current global social and economic chaos, if you will, it is the US. It seems kind of, well, predictable, that in the middle of a mess of our own creation, government officials would start fishing for a new, immediate, less tired, distraction for people to get worked up over. Second, the exact definition of economic terrorism is left open. Some say that an economic terrorist must be a non-state actor bent on wrecking havoc on our economy. Others use the term to indicate states that might use economic means to weaken our position in the world. In using the first definition, I give you Lehman, Abermoff, Stanford. In using the second, may I present the Clinton and Bush administrations. Finally, as this meltdown is really a problem with an economic philosophy that has prevailed in many countries, especially over the last twenty years, it would be more than a little ironic to begin fingering so-called communist nations like China. If there is such an animal as economic terrorism, the US would do well to adopt a more humble posture.