The current global financial crisis has dominated headlines and affected the lives of millions of people around the world since it began in 2008. The recession – generally thought of as a perfect storm created by a series of unregulated, high-risk financial investments combined with other factors leading to a global market crash – has sparked debate across political parties and social classes.

With millions of people losing their jobs and wealthy investors hardly affected or even profiting from the event, groups such as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement set the blame on greedy executives and their unregulated power to manipulate the market to fit their needs.

In a recent Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Secretary of the Navy Guest Lecture (SGL) Freeman Global Holdings Chief Executive Officer Kevin D. Freeman gave a much more sinister theory.

Freeman proposed that the recession was the cause of financial subversion carried out by rogue elements in hostile nations, or terrorist groups targeting the United States economy.

“I believe the U. S. has been targeted,” said Freeman to the assembly of NPS students, faculty and staff. “There are financial weapons pointed at us right now.”

Although Freeman does not entirely lift the blame from failed regulation or greedy Wall Street executives, he suggests that the financial meltdown was the cause of what he calls economic terrorism.

Freeman talked about his book “Secret Weapon” in which he details his theories on what were the real causes of the 2008 financial crisis. He pointed out rogue elements in Communist China, Russia and Islamic financial terrorists as possible culprits of economic warfare against the United States.

He said that soon after the financial collapse he came upon a Chinese book written by top Chinese officials in which they advocated for unrestricted economic attacks against the U.S. He pointed out that before the financial crisis China was on the path to surpass the U.S. economically in 50 years but after the crisis that estimate was significantly lowered.

Freeman warned that the U.S. economic system is still vulnerable to an attack and he stressed that a new attack was not unlikely in the near future.

He said that the attack was launched in three phases – increasing oil prices, the attack on the stock market, and the elimination of the dollar as the world currency. The third phase, Freeman said, is going on now with economic terrorist working to eliminate the dollar as the world currency.

This is an issue that Freeman wanted to emphasize, saying that not enough attention was being paid to the risks posed by this ongoing attack.

In closing, Freeman praised the work of the military, and the students and faculty of NPS for their work and their contributions to ensuring the safety of the country, but he said that there was still more to be done.

“We need great strategic thinking,” said Freeman, “and that’s why I’m so honored to be at NPS because there are great strategic thinkers here. You’re writing theses, writing dissertations, studying topics and we should be thinking along these lines.”