Things that make you go
"SPECTRE always delivers what it promises. Our entire organization survives upon the keeping of those promises..."
– Ernst Stavro Blofeld,
From Russia With Love
Vol.02 Issue 22 | 08 November 2015
SPECTRE
"This organization does not tolerate failure"
– Ernst Stavro Blofeld,
You Only Live Twice
Things that make you go
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Table of Contents
THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM..... ..................................................................................3I’ll Eat My Hat If We Are Anywhere Near A Global Recession ............................................25Why 2016 May Be The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime ........................................26The Devil’s In The Debt .......................................................................................................28No Team? No Idea? No Problem! This VC Will Fund Your Startup Anyway ... .....................29Companies Cash In Through Creative Bond Scheme.........................................................31Change In The Air ...............................................................................................................33Cracks Are Showing In The American Dream .....................................................................35The German Government’s Role In The VW Scandal .........................................................36Communists Ready To Assume Power In Portugal & Topple Conservative Government ....38Deflation Risks May Warrant Radical New Central-Bank Thinking .....................................39CHARTS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM... ................................................................................41WORDS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM... .................................................................................44AND FINALLY... .........................................................................................................................45
Things that make you go
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THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM...
SPECTRE
T
he
Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion is an organization which despite its menacing name, has spawned nothing but wonderment and joy in the minds of multiple generations of spy novel fans all around the world.I know. I was (and unashamedly remain) one of them.Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels gripped espionage fans in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until 1962 and the appearance on movie screens of Sean Connery, an unknown Scottish actor who first brought the role of James Bond to life, that the whole world fell in love with Fleming’s gentleman spy.Beginning with 1963’s From Russia With Love and continuing with Thunderball in 1965, You Only Live Twice in 1967, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service two years later and Diamonds Are Forever in 1971, though the various threats to the world took the form of distinctly different dastardly plots, each designed to secure world domination, one single, shady organization, from which this week’s Things That Make You Go Hmmm... (and, I should probably add, the latest James Bond movie) takes its title, was behind them all.SPECTRE was a commercial, very much for-profit enterprise led by Ernst Stavro Blofeld and run like a multi-national company. The ‘board’ was populated by 21 people—18 of whom were responsible for the handling of the company’s day-to-day affairs. Those 18 people were drawn, in groups of three, from six of the world’s most nefarious organizations; the Gestapo, SMERSH (Spetsyalnye MEtody Razoblacheniya SHpyonov, a fictional Soviet counter-intelligence agency whose name, when translated, is: Special Methods of Spy Detection), ex-Yugoslavian dictator, Josip Tito’s Secret Police, the Mafia, the Franco-Italian Unione Corse (subject of the movie The French Connection) and a Turkish heroin smuggling syndicate.In short, not the sort of people you’d choose to do business with.Fleming fails to document which of SPECTRE’s various criminal factions was responsible for the HR department or for procuring all those single-colour jumpsuits that the organization’s employees seemed to always be forced to wear, but he did at least identify the super-secretive organization’s mailing address (Paris, 136 Boulevard Haussmann).
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