Former arch-terrorist and aspiring financial manager Osama bin Laden didn’t buy into gold investments and told his followers not to get too excited about the potential collapse of the U.S. dollar.
The letter is one of dozens of documents declassified by the Director of National Intelligence Tuesday. The trove of letters and manuscripts were taken from bin Laden’s compound in Abottabad, Pakistan during the operation that killed him. Though the letter is not dated, it appears to have been written sometime shortly after the 2008 financial crisis.
“We constantly hear news of the weakness of the dollar, and how it is growing weaker day after day in the field of established reciprocal prices with the value of an ounce of gold reaching close to 1,200 dollars for the first time,” wrote bin Laden. “Some among us might think that the dollar’s weakness is a sign of pending collapse or of the weakness of the American economy, particularly after the unusual turn to precious metals – gold – by investors as a safe haven.”
Bin Laden agreed the American economy faces some “significant and dangerous challenges,” but was not convinced the prospect of a weakening dollar was a sign of economic collapse in the U.S.
Bin Laden seemed to be aware that his economic analysis would disappoint many crazed jihadists and murderous terrorists who wanted nothing more than to see the U.S. economy fall, so the armchair-economics professor provided an economics lesson, al-Qaida style.
“The decreasing value of the dollar serves none other than the American economy, and only hurts the industrialized exporter nations,” claimed bin Laden.
According to bin Laden, the U.S. was mirroring China’s economic strategy. He apparently believed that the Chinese yuan currency is not linked to the dollar, which allowed them to sell goods cheaply — a strange assertion considering China’s pegging of its currency to the U.S. dollar is widely considered to have been standard practice for some time.
It would appear the former economics major was a little rusty after several decades of engaging in terrorism and murder.
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