1990’s Canada

And so, shortly thereafter, along these lines was created a brief financial crisis in Canada. Several intellectuals led by the Fraser Institute think tank started a rumour that Canada's credit security and stock rating were about to collapse. After pressuring a senior credit analyst to drop Canada's credit rating, Fraser Institute members attended a meeting of civil servants and economists to plan the best 'solution', ie the best use, of this opportunity. Apparently the cause of the decline was Canada's high social spending, and so the remedy they recommended was cutting social spending, followed by a cut in taxes to encourage business and investment to return to Canada. Indeed, the government (which was?) dutifully cut spending to welfare and unemployment programs, inflicting damage to these services that would last a decade. All this occurred despite several analysts openly tracking and commenting on the planned and deceitful announcements of impending crisis.

Lesson learned: With their influence, advisors and economists could create a financial crisis simply by suggesting major flaws in a certain economy, and then use this crisis to benefit big business and international investors. A planned crisis would indeed work as well as one that developed organically.