In the financial world, the month of October is synonymous with stock market crashes. So will a massive stock market crash happen this year? You never know. The truth is that our financial system is even more vulnerable than it was back in 2008, and financial experts such as Doug Short, Peter Schiff, Robert Wiedemer and Harry Dent are all warning that the next crash is rapidly approaching.

We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and Wall Street has been transformed into a giant casino that is based on a massive web of debt, risk and leverage. When that web breaks we are going to see a stock market crash that is going to make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic.

Yes, the Federal Reserve has tried to prevent any problems from erupting in the financial markets by initiating another round of quantitative easing, but 40 billion dollars a month will not be nearly enough to stop the massive collapse that is coming. This will be explained in detail toward the end of the article. Hopefully we will get through October (and the rest of this year) without seeing a stock market collapse, but without a doubt one is coming at some point. Those on the wrong end of the coming crash are going to be absolutely wiped out.

A lot of people focus on the month of October because of the history of stock market crashes in this month. This history was detailed in a recent USA Today article....

When it comes to wealth suddenly disappearing, October can be diabolically frightful. The stock market crash of 1929 that led to the Great Depression occurred in October. So did the 22.6% plunge suffered by the Dow Jones industrial average in 1987 on "Black Monday."

The scariest 19-day span during the 2008 financial crisis also went down in October, when the Dow plunged 2,675 points after investors fearing a financial collapse went on a panic-driven stock-selling spree that resulted in five of the 10 biggest daily point drops in the iconic Dow's 123-year history.

So what will we see this year?

Only time will tell.

If a stock market crash does not happen this month or by the end of this year, that does not mean that the experts that are predicting a stock market crash are wrong.

It just means that they were early.

As I have said so many times, there are thousands upon thousands of moving parts in the global financial system. So that makes it nearly impossible to predict the timing of events with perfect precision. Financial conditions are constantly shifting and changing.

But without a doubt another major financial collapse similar to what happened back in 2008 (or even worse) is on the way. Let's take a look at some of the financial experts that are predicting really bad things for our financial markets in the months ahead....

Doug Short

According to Doug Short, the vice president of research at Advisor Perspectives, the stock market is somewhere between 33% and 51% overvalued at this point. In a recent article he offered the following evidence to support his position....

● The Crestmont Research P/E Ratio (more)

● The cyclical P/E ratio using the trailing 10-year earnings as the divisor (more)

● The Q Ratio, which is the total price of the market divided by its replacement cost (more)

● The relationship of the S&P Composite price to a regression trendline (more)

New York - A US judge formally ordered Iran, Al-Qaeda and several other defendants Wednesday to pay $6 billion compensation to the victims of September 11, 2001, in a largely symbolic ruling.

Although Iran denies any connection to 9/11, it was included in the list of alleged culprits by the US District Court in New York, along with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Afghanistan's Taliban guerrillas and Al-Qaeda, which took credit for the massive terror attack.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is also named.

However, the money, awarded for economic, personal and punitive damages for a total of $6,048,513,805, is unlikely to be recovered.

On the FBI website, you'll find a recording of accused terrorist Ahmad Abousamra. Investigators hope someone will hear his voice, recognize him and turn him in.

"It's often easy for individuals to change their appearance through clothes, makeup, facial hair -- it's not often easy for them to disguise their voice," said Special Agent in charge of the investigation Richard DeLauriers.

Though they won't comment on the timing, Wednesday, the FBI launched a social media campaign and put up a reward of $50,000 for information leading to the arrest of Abousamra.

The 31-year-old computer programmer and UMass Boston graduate was indicted a few years ago on nine terrorism-related charges, including trying to train to kill US service members overseas and conspiring to provide material support to Al-Qaida.

"Detecting, preventing and deterring a terrorist attack here inside the United States is the FBI's top investigative priority," said DeLauriers in a conference room in the FBI's Boston office.

Abousamra has dual citizenship in the US and Syria; investigators think he fled to Syria with his wife and young daughter in 2006 after being questioned by the FBI about trips he took to Pakistan and Yemen.

California, Sacramento - A U.S. Senate report has found massive spending leading to few results from a national anti-terror program, including questionable purchases at one of the so-called "fusion centers" based in San Diego.

That center is one of four regional information-sharing centers created in California after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The report released Wednesday questioned the San Diego fusion center's $25,000 purchase of tiny cameras hidden in shirt buttons, hats and water bottles, as well as $75,000 on 55 flat-screen televisions that officials used to watch the news.

A former director of the center lost his job over the TV purchases.

Kelly Huston, a spokesman for the California Emergency Management Agency, defended the fusion centers but says officials intend to learn from the report. The agency has oversight of the centers.

Source: The Associated Press

Istanbul - Turkish artillery fired on Syrian targets Wednesday after shelling from Syria struck a border village in Turkey, killing five civilians, sharply escalating tensions between the two neighbors and prompting NATO to convene an emergency meeting.

"Our armed forces at the border region responded to this atrocious attack with artillery fire on points in Syria that were detected with radar, in line with the rules of engagement," the Turkish government said in a statement from the prime minister's office.

The artillery fire capped a day that began with four bombs tearing through a government-held district in Syria's commercial and cultural capital of Aleppo, killing more than 30 people and reducing buildings to rubble.

Along the volatile border, a shell fired from inside Syria landed on a home in the Turkish village of Akcakale, killing a woman, her three daughters and another woman, and wounding at least 10 others, according to Turkish media.

The shelling appeared to come from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, which is fighting rebels backed by Turkey in an escalating civil war.

If you thought the x-ray scanners at the airport were bad, wait until you find out that TSA employees will soon know what you had for breakfast and how pumped you are to sit on a plane for twelve hours.

Unfortunately, you won't know what they know, because Homeland Security's new toy is capable of detecting every molecule on your person from over 164 feet (50 meters) away - without your permission.

CIA-Backed Company Develops New Scanners

"Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body - agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you," reports Gizmodo.

The scanner was developed by Genia Photonics before being subcontracted by In-Q-Tel, a company founded in 1999 "by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and the support of the U.S. Congress." Although the technology is not new, In-Q-Tel made it exponentially faster and more convenient to use - which has its own implications.

Discussions are underway in the US Senate to forge a plan for sweeping cuts to social programs in the aftermath of the November 6 election. The New York Times reported Tuesday on moves by a bipartisan group of senators to come to an agreement so as to avert automatic spending cuts mandated in last year's deal to raise the debt ceiling. That agreement was signed by President Obama on August 2, 2011.

Under the debt ceiling deal, Congress' failure in 2011 to produce a deficit reduction bill with at least $1.2 trillion in cuts triggered some $1 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts or "sequestrations" - including to social programs such as Medicare and to the Defense Department - to begin in January 2013 and extend over 10 years.

These automatic cuts would coincide with the expiration in the new year of the Bush-era tax cuts as well as payroll tax reductions and federally funded extended unemployment benefits. The Obama White House and congressional Republicans agreed in December 2010 to extend the Bush tax cuts, including for the richest Americans, until the end of this year, while reducing the payroll tax and extending jobless benefits for the same period.

The combination of these expirations and the mandated deficit reduction measures has been called a "fiscal cliff" that threatens to plunge the economy into a deeper slump.

In the final years of the German Weimar Republic, between 1930 and 1932, the austerity program implemented by the Brüning government in response to the flight of capital and the world economic crisis precipitated the catastrophe that followed: mass unemployment, Nazism and war. For years, this has been regarded as evident and was taught in schools. However, the present developments in Europe show that the ruling class is not capable of learning from history.

In recent days, the Greek and Spanish governments have agreed to austerity measures that far exceed the emergency measures implemented by the Brüning government.

Even though Greece has been in recession for six years, the Greek government has agreed a further round of austerity amounting to €11.5 billion. According to the government's own calculations, economic output will sink by 25 percent compared to 2008 - a staggering decline. Most of the cuts are being made in pensions, health and social expenditure, impacting the poorest layers of the population.

Last week, the Spanish cabinet cut the budget for 2013 by an additional €40 billion. The five austerity packages passed by the Rajoy government in the last year now add up to €127 billion. This equates to a quarter of the annual national budget.

Why a special issue of The Nation devoted to the Supreme Court? Because with partisan gridlock paralyzing the president and Congress, the Court has more than ever become "the decider" - the most powerful branch of government, and one at the center of a controversy whose outcome may shape the course of democracy for generations to come.

By a paradox both historical and constitutional, the political appointees on the Roberts Court will never have to answer for their decisions to voters like you and me. Nor to the president or Congress: once they are confirmed, the Supreme Court's justices, like all federal judges, serve for life or "good Behaviour."

The Constitution's framers meant to secure the Court against political pressure from the electorate and arbitrary dismissal of its members from on high by presidents dissatisfied with their decisions. As the third branch of a new national government - one whose powers were to be divided to block overreach by any one of them - the Court would be equal to the executive and legislative arms, even though the president appointed its members with the concurrence of the Senate.

That changed dramatically when John Marshall became the fourth chief justice in 1801, shortly before Thomas Jefferson took office. The two brilliant men were bitter rivals, members of opposing parties. Marshall was a Federalist, Jefferson a Republican (no kin to the present GOP). So the supposedly neutral Court has been thrown since its infancy onto the partisan battleground, where it remains to this day.

A federal appeals court has extended a stay on the injunction blocking the notorious indefinite detention provision in the 2012 defense bill that lets the US government jail any American without end over even suspected terrorist ties.

This comes as attorneys for the White House fight to lift the order imposed by a federal judge last month that made permanent an injunction on a statute of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. On Tuesday, an appeals panel weighed in to offer the latest installment in the Hedges v Obama saga and agreed to side with the White House.

President Barack Obama signed the NDAA into law late last year, and the now infamous provision that allows for indefinite detention of US citizens without trial - Section 1021 - was challenged in court shortly thereafter by a team of plaintiffs led by former New York Times journalist Chris Hedges.

The Obama administration insists that the indefinite detention provisions of the legislation are necessary for the safety and security of the nation, a claim that Hedges and his colleagues have condemned whole-heartedly in the ten months since the NDA went on the books. Journalists and human rights activists insist that Section 1021 actually allows the government to label any American citizen as a suspected terrorist and then treat them accordingly.