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From his hideout in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden detailed what he hoped would become of the group he created and chastised those who had veered off course.

“We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes,” states a 2010 letter from bin Laden to an ally in Yemen, which was uncovered in his Abbottabad compound after the Al Qaeda leader was killed.

Striking the tone of a perturbed CEO, bin Laden continued: “I need to remind you about the general politics of Al Qaeda … Al Qaeda concentrates on its external big enemy before its internal enemy.”

This was part of his vision — concentrate on hitting the U.S. and its allies at home in small-scale attacks that create panic, weaken the economy and force the U.S. to withdraw from Muslim lands.

Bin Laden would have been pleased lately.

On April 15, two bombs exploded within seconds at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 200.

On Monday, RCMP arrested Raed Jaser in Toronto and Chiheb Esseghaier in Montreal, following allegations they were planning Canada’s first known Al Qaeda-directed terrorist plot: an attack on the Toronto-New York train route.

Then there are the recent cases of Canadians going abroad to fight. Two young men from London, Ont — Xristos Katsiroubas was 24, Ali Medlej 22 — were confirmed as participants in a deadly, Al Qaeda-linked terrorist attack in Algeria. And Somali authorities believe Mahad Ali Dhore, a former university student from Markham, was among the suicide bombers who attacked Mogadishu mid-month.

But does this spate of terrorism cases indicate a worrying new trend? Or is the real worry that the high-profile incidents will incite political opportunism and a repeat of what followed the 9/11 attacks — a dramatic reshaping of Western foreign policy and laws?

“First and foremost, keep calm, carry on being resilient; (those) are things we can do as a society,” says Ray Boisvert, a former assistant director at Canada’s Security Intelligence Service.

“If we do overreact, it will lead to empowering those who want to do stuff …I think there is value in that view to say, ‘Let’s not go ballistic and rewrite all the laws.’ We do have to be a little smarter.”

Evan Kohlmann, a U.S. terrorism analyst, agrees. He bemoans that our views of terrorism swing from one extreme to the other.

“When we are in the immediate wake of a terrorist attack or an uncovered terrorist plot, there is a surge of interest and concern in the problem of international terrorism,” he wrote in an email to the Star.

“Then, when nothing happens for a while, public interest gradually fades, and consequently any suggestion that there is a genuine threat from terrorism is pooh-poohed and dismissed out of hand as unjustified paranoia on the part of law enforcement.”

Says Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, director for the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization: “There have been spikes in domestic terrorism in the U.S., and it’s then receded. We’re not experiencing an epidemic, but definitely we should be looking for implications that we can draw from . . . incidents like these.”

So what can be learned?

Boisvert says the Canadian case may prove to be an example of what he calls “Jihad 3 free 3-in-1 credit report.0.” — not an attack planned on the scale of 9/11, nor directed by Al Qaeda’s core, but a local plot that drew inspiration or some sort of support from Al Qaeda.

Michael Zekulin, a political science instructor at the University of Calgary and specialist in terrorism and radicalization, said that although this case may be considered Canada’s first taste of organized terrorism, he notes the country has always been a target, along with other western democracies.

He wonders if the alleged train plot could reveal that Al Qaeda’s connection here is limited, considering the two accused: a Tunisian doctoral student with a history of erratic behaviour, and a permanent resident with a lengthy criminal history.

If a large terrorist organization were directing the effort, “You would think that they’d have more to choose from,” Zekulin said.

He agrees that attacks in future will be less organized and perpetrated more by “self-radicalized” individuals. “They’re simply doing things on their own,” he said. “There is no way of telling how many of those there are . . . That’s a curveball for us.”

Although each case is distinct and probably motivated by a different grievance, at their most basic, such attacks are part of Al Qaeda’s legacy — what Wesley Wark, a national security policy expert at the University of Ottawa, says has been dubbed the “Al-Qaeda Narrative.” Its distinct message of jihad and destruction of the West by whatever means continues to resonate with a fraction of Muslims around the world, Wark said, including some in Canada.

“It’s resonating and providing the problem of homegrown terrorism — individuals without any direct connection to organized terrorist groups,” he said. They not only believe the message, but “they’re prepared to act on it. That’s the common denominator between the London group, the Via Rail bombers and the Boston bombing.”

While it seems clear the past week’s events will provoke renewed discussion on who is allowed into Canada and how they’re tracked, Zekulin said it’s imperative that we examine the individual motivation and rationale of people who seek to commit terror at home.

“The bigger concern is the homegrown people who have been here, born and raised, if not for extended periods of time,” he said. “That’s something that requires us to more fundamentally look at ourselves as a society and start asking ourselves how we . . . (have) to make an effort to make sure that multiculturalism is not just a buzzword.”

The risk, he said, is ending up with people who feel like isolated outsiders in a country that provides refuge but not acceptance.

Zekulin said it’s important for societies and governments to deplore individual attacks, but help deter future dangers.

“You absolutely have to condemn these attacks,” he said. “But that’s only one part of the equation. And that removes the existing individuals. It does nothing to address those who might come to replace them.

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Optimism about the job market has consumers feeling more upbeat about the U.S. economy than they have been in four and a half years, according to one key measure of consumer confidence.

The Consumer Confidence Index calculated by the Conference Board rose to 73.7 in November, up slightly from 73.1 the month before. That’s the highest level since February 2008.

Solid hiring in the fall has fueled much of the recent improvement in sentiment. In November, 20.3% of people surveyed said they expect more jobs in the next six months.

“Over the past few months, consumers have grown increasingly more upbeat about the current and expected state of the job market, and this turnaround in sentiment is helping to boost confidence,” said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at The Conference Board, in a statement.

Meanwhile, a housing recovery has also boosted sentiment. About 6.9% of consumers surveyed say they plan to buy a home in the next six months.

A separate report released Thursday showed home prices rose 3.6% in the third quarter compared to the same quarter a year earlier. It marked the biggest year-over-year jump in two years, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index.

That said, economic growth still remains sluggish and that also affects how consumers are feeling.

About 60% of consumers said they believe the economy will have the same number of jobs six months from now and 69.1% said they expect their income to remain the same over that time period.

Economists point to fears about higher taxes in 2013 as a potential threat to consumer confidence and also spending habits in December, as fiscal cliff negotiations continue on Capitol Hill.

“As yet, households are largely unaware of exactly what the ‘fiscal cliff’ means to their bottom line, or simply believe Congress will figure it out and do something before it takes effect,” said Ellen Zentner, senior U.S. economist with Nomura. “As widespread media coverage concentrates more on the fiscal cliff, so will U.S. households.”

Other measures of consumer confidence by the University of Michigan and Rasmussen Reports, already show fiscal cliff fears weighing on sentiment. In a report released Monday, the White House said uncertainty about taxes could hurt holiday sales and consumer spending going into 2013.

Consumer spending accounts for more than two thirds of U.S. economic activity.

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Oil prices rose further Monday as violence between Israelis and Palestinians ignited fears that that the conflict could spread throughout the region.

In New York, oil prices rose roughly $2 to $89 a barrel a day after an Israeli airstrike killed 10 people in one home in the Gaza Strip. Crude prices are up roughly 4% since the fighting erupted early last week.

Analysts, who see the oil market as oversupplied, said the general tension in the region was the only thing pushing prices higher.

“It’s largely the Middle East violence upholding prices,” said Reagan Blackmon, an oil analyst at the investment bank Canaccord Genuity in Houston.

Neither Israel nor the Gaza Strip is a big producer of oil. But traders fear the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could spread to the broader Middle East, which accounts for nearly a third of the world’s total oil production and 40% of its oil exports.

The violence has reversed the overall direction of crude prices in the last month, which had been falling on the back of lackluster economic news online payday loan lenders.

In October, the International Monetary Fund lowered its projected world growth rate for 2013. More recently, Europe slipped back into a recession, while Japan’s economy contracted at an alarmingly swift pace.

This all comes as worldwide oil production, especially in the United States, has been rising.

Oil prices had fallen from about $92 a barrel to $84 a barrel from the beginning of October until the recent conflict.

Going forward, analysts expect that overall trend to return — when and if a relative peace returns to the Middle East.

“Given the likelihood that this will not result in a wider conflict, I think we struggle to move higher from here,” said Addison Armstrong, director of market research at Tradition Energy, an energy brokerage based in Stamford, Conn. “Were it not for this, we’d be back in the low $80s.”

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, Fortune 500) reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue Tuesday and raised its guidance for the current quarter, citing signs of a housing recovery.

The news lifted shares of the Dow component 1.9% in premarket trading.

The quarter only ran through Oct. 28, the day before Hurricane Sandy came ashore in New York and New Jersey.

While some of the buying in preparation for the storm may have been included in the just completed quarter, other storm-related sales increases will be reported in the current period.

The company did not quantify the impact the storm on sales. Instead it pointed to what it said is an important turnaround in housing, which lifted sales 4.6% to $18 billion, and operating earnings up 23% to $1.1 billion. Earnings per share topped forecasts by 4 cents.

The strong results reflect “the start of the path toward the healing of the housing market,” said CEO Frank Blake in a statement.

The rebound in home building is something that has already been noted in other reports, including new home sales, which hit a two-year high in September and home construction, which surged to a four-year high.

Mortgage rates are near record lows, helped by the Federal Reserve buying mortgages in order to push rates lower.

That, along with an improvement in the labor market, a steady rise in home prices and a decline in foreclosures is helping lead a general recovery in housing.

Signs of an improvement in housing had already led analysts to forecast better results ahead for Home Depot.

The retailer’s new guidance for sales and earnings for its fiscal year that runs through late January is better than the company’s previous guidance, but both were a bit short of analysts’ current estimates. And that could temper investor enthusiasm.

Monday, home builders ) and ) both saw their stocks fall after they reported results that were decent but clearly not better than some forecasts.

Home Depot rival , Fortune 500) is due to report its results this coming Monday. Analysts expect its earnings to be flat compared with a year ago.

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After largely escaping the wrath of Irene last year, coastal towns got walloped by Sandy this week.

Cleanup costs are expected to run into multiple millions of dollars, as municipalities try to deal with flooding, downed trees and damage to their waterfronts. The destruction that Sandy wrought this week was far harsher than last year’s storm, officials say.

“This was a thousand times worse,” said Matthew Doherty, mayor of Belmar, N.J., which lost half of its 1.2-mile boardwalk on the Atlantic Ocean. “This one sent our boardwalk two blocks inward.”

It will be days, if not weeks, before local officials throughout the states hit by Sandy tally up the costs, which include overtime, fuel, equipment and repairs to public property. Most will receive help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and from their states, but they still expect to incur significant expenses.

The Town of Babylon on hard-hit Long Island, N.Y., had 60 trees blocking major roads on Tuesday afternoon, and sections of the 53-square-mile municipality remained inaccessible due to flood waters of up to six feet, said Tim Ruggeri, communications director. Public workers will be out 24-7 until the streets are cleared.

“We’re expecting a lot of costs for the town, even with FEMA,” he said.

Even though Freeport, N.Y., had an all-volunteer fire department battling the nearly two dozen fires that were still burning on Tuesday, the Long Island community still expects to spend millions. Its parks were damaged, as was its beach in the 10-foot tide during the storm, said Emergency Management Director Richard Holdener. The village will have to pay plenty of overtime to its police and public works employees, some of whom are dealing with boats that were lifted five blocks away from the canal.

In New London, Conn., officials are dealing with the destruction of Osprey Beach, that was washed away in the storm along with the clubhouse there. The waterfront city suffered more downed power lines and debris in the road during Sandy than it did during Irene since the flooding and tidal surges were higher, said Zak Leavy, public information office.

About 80 miles west, Mayor Richard Moccia of Norwalk, Conn., couldn’t even get to his beach on the Long Island Sound because the road was underwater. His finance director was already in the office setting up spreadsheets to track overtime costs and other expenses to submit to FEMA.

The city remained in a state of emergency on Tuesday and is operating a shelter for flooded or powerless families. Some 240 people stayed there on Monday night.

One of the mayor’s top priorities is to get the schools back on track so children can return to class and voting can take place next Tuesday. But the majority of schools remained remained shuttered and officials announced they’d be closed the rest of the week.

“I can’t even calculate all the overtime,” Moccia said. As for the overall cost to the town, “I don’t know if it’s $10,000 or $1 million.”

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Iran’s currency is in a free fall, and the sanctions over its nuclear program are mostly to blame.

Officially, the Iranian government offers to sell one U.S. dollar for about 12,500 Iranian rials. But it only offers that rate on a limited basis.

So Iranians, who need dollars to both buy imported goods and guard their savings against rampant inflation, have developed an extensive black market in dollars. It’s on this market that the value of the rial has tumbled.

At the beginning of the year, rials on the black market were worth close to the official rate. But by late September, the rial had lost half its value, trading around 24,000 to the dollar.

In the last few days the currency has plummeted even further. Reports Wednesday said money changers in Tehran were charging 39,000 rial for a dollar — a staggering 60% slide in a matter of days.

“This is one of the most intense episodes for the county in the last 100 years,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Most experts think the fall is a direct result of sanctions designed to get Iran to curtail its nuclear program, which Iranian leaders say is intended to generate nuclear power but many suspect could be used to produce a weapon.

The most recent rial plunge was sparked when the government said it would only offer the official exchange rate to importers of a few select items — namely meat, grains and medicine. Importers who wanted to bring other consumer and industrial goods into the country — most of which come from abroad — would now be offered a rate from the government that is closer to the black market rate.

The move was an attempt to liberalize the currency market, squeeze the underworld traders and hopefully stabilize the frenzied rial.

Instead, it had the opposite effect.

By offering fewer dollars per rial, the Iranian government signaled to the people that it is trying to preserve the dollars it holds as foreign reserves — in effect, preparing for a long bout with sanctions.

“It led to a loss of confidence among Iranians on the ability and willingness of the government to resolve the crisis,” Behzad Yaghmaian, a professor of political economy at Ramapo College, told CNN.

The sanctions, imposed largely by the U.S. and European Union, have cut Iran’s oil exports in half. Oil exports are where Iran gets the majority of its dollars. Fewer dollars mean people are paying more rial to buy each one — devaluing the rial. When the rial falls, the price of everything else goes up.

A popular bread called barbari — which is made from imported wheat — has gone from about 1,000 rials to about 5,000 rials. A local baker told CNN the cost will likely skyrocket further.

Feta cheese cost 50,000 rials per kilogram in March. The price has since tripled. Meat that cost up to 190,000 rials per kilogram then has doubled in price.

There are a few other explanations being floated for the sinking currency. Some Iranian officials have claimed black market traders were spreading rumors so they could profit off the rial’s decline. Others say the Iranian government is restricting the flow of dollars into the economy so it can balance the budget on the back of a depressed rial.

But even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blames the sanctions. He said the currency drop is part of what he calls an economic war being waged against the country.

Whether the sanctions and resulting price spikes will be enough for the Iranian government to alter course on its nuclear program — or to topple the government itself — is another matter. So far Tehran has shown little interest in halting work on uranium enrichment capabilities that, if perfected, could quickly yield a bomb.

Analysts say the possibility of government reform remains remote.

Despite protests in Tehran Wednesday over the rial’s fall, organized opposition to the government is weak, while the government’s security apparatus is strong.

Plus, the country maintains populist programs designed to keep dissent at bay, including subsidized medicine, education and fuel.

“There has been no significant unrest during the rial’s steep slide,” Cliff Kupchan, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group, wrote in a recent research note. “While this does not at all preclude future unrest, it suggests public tolerance for depreciation.”

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Shares of BYD, the Chinese battery and electric car maker in which Warren Buffett is a major investor, tumbled in Hong Kong trading Wednesday after an analyst in China slashed his firm’s target price for the stock to virtually nothing.

) shares fell nearly 10% in Hong Kong, although shares listed in the U.S. were unchanged in early trading. But both shares have lost more than half their value since hitting a 52-week high in February.

CLSA, a Hong Kong investment firm that already had a sell recommendation on BYD stock, issued a critical report on Wednesday cutting its 12-month price target to 41 cents in Hong Kong dollars, which is 97% below current levels.

“We now think that the company will likely deteriorate further due to declining business in mobile phone components, rechargeable batteries and new energy,” said CLSA, citing the various business segments of the company. “BYD has talked about its EV [electronic vehicle] and plug-in hybrid automobiles for years, but they only sell the [electric models] in small volumes in Shenzhen no teletrack payday loans. This is a clear signal that even the company does not think its EV technology is ready for wide-range use.” BYD also sells traditional gasoline-powered cars in addition to the high-profile electric models.

, Fortune 500), which Buffett runs, bought a 9.9% stake in the company for $230 million in September 2008. By the end of 2010 Berkshire’s stake was worth $1.2 billion, according to company filings. But after the steady decline in its U.S. share price, the stake is now worth about $416 million.

Buffett’s investment drew global attention for BYD and its electric vehicle business. But that business has remained a difficult one in which to make money. ) announced earlier this week that it is pulling back on its plans for an all-electric subcompact car model, saying that plug-in hybrid vehicles that run on either gasoline or battery power are abetter way to serve that segment of the market.

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Is it possible to love both President Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan?

Marc Benioff says yes. And the outspoken tech CEO is backing his words with campaign cash.

Benioff has helped raise more than $500,000 for Obama’s re-election effort, and even hosted a $35,800-a-plate fundraiser featuring Stevie Wonder and hip-hop artist Will.i.am.

The founder and CEO of ) is also an Obama national campaign co-chair, a distinction awarded to select Democratic heavyweights like Rahm Emanuel, Dick Durbin and Russ Feingold.

“I’m squarely a supporter of the president, and he is absolutely the right man for the job,” Benioff said Monday.

But the tech executive is also a fan of Ryan — Mitt Romney’s running mate and a rising Republican star. In June, Benioff donated $10,000 to Ryan’s political action committee after meeting with the candidate, who at the time had not been named to the GOP ticket and was running for re-election in the House.

How is that possible?

“My approach to politics is that I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. I’m an American and I always support candidates I think are great for the country,” Benioff said.

What’s so attractive about Ryan, Benioff said, is his focus on deficit and budget issues. The nation’s fiscal difficulties must be addressed, the CEO said, and Ryan’s ideas offer “a lot of the right long-term thinking for the country.”

But Benioff cautioned that Ryan’s budget plan — which contains drastic spending cuts — shouldn’t be pursued anytime soon.

“I don’t think his budget is a good idea in today’s world. It would put us back into recession,” Benioff said. “But he is putting the right issues on the table and has a long-term vision that is admirable.”

During an interview on Monday, Benioff touched on other ideas that help explain his simultaneous support for the two candidates.

First, Benioff said the nation’s fiscal problems are too severe to go unaddressed. No matter who wins in November, the next administration will be forced to make progress.

“I don’t think it will matter who is elected,” Benioff said. “Those issues are so overwhelming and so important that they will be addressed. I’m confident that it will happen.”

And beyond that, Benioff favors politicians he thinks are capable of compromise and big ideas. ‘There are a lot of politicians who are just obstructionists,” Benioff said. “Ryan is not one of them.”

Federal Election Commission records show that Benioff has a habit of giving generously to candidates of both parties. In 2007, he gave to Romney’s campaign — and Obama’s. George W. Bush received donations in 1999 and 2003, while Al Gore got $1,000 in 1999.

The Obama campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Facebook’s life as a public company has been a nightmare from day one, and the pain continued on Thursday as some company insiders got their first chance to dump shares.

Facebook stock hit a new intra-day low of $19.69 Thursday morning, and ended the day 6.3% lower at $19.87.

About 22 million shares changed hands in the first 10 minutes of trading, and by the end of the session that volume soared to nearly 157 million shares. About 271 million shares are newly eligible for sale Thursday.

Like many initial public offerings, Facebook’s May 18 debut debut included a “lockup” agreement that requires some shareholders to hold on to their stock for a certain period — typically 90 to 180 days. Lockups are meant to prevent the market from being swamped with too many of a company’s shares immediately after an IPO. Keeping stocks scarce can help boost their value.

But when a company’s locked-up shares are set free, the stock typically tanks, since millions of new shares flood in at once. ) has already lost nearly half its value since its debut.

Facebook’s fellow newly public Internet companies felt the pain when their lockups ended. ) slumped as much as 7% on its lockup expiration day, and ) fell 10% to hit a new low.

Thursday is only the first in a series of lockup expirations for Facebook. Its unusual staggered system means several more expiration days are coming, and a total of 1.8 billion shares could hit the market in the next nine months.

The big Facebook stock dump could come in mid-November. That’s when Facebook will convert the special form of restricted stock units, or RSUs, held by most of its staff into actual shares of its stock.

Facebook’s employees will owe taxes this year on the value of that stock. Like most companies that issue RSUs, Facebook is handling the logistics on its employees’ behalf. The employees are still ultimately responsible for making sure their tax bills are fully covered.

Facebook plans to withhold a big chunk of its employees’ shares — roughly 120 million — and sell them on the open market to cover the tax bill. Selling off so many shares at once could hammer the company’s stock price. So Facebook has a Plan B: It can tap its credit lines and cash reserves to pay off the tax bill without issuing equity.

A Facebook representative declined to comment about which route the company plans to take, but the company has carefully lined up its options. It took out a $3 billion credit line specifically earmarked for the potential RSU-linked tax bill, and it’s currently sitting on $10 billion in cash.

At Facebook’s current share price, the tax bill would total around $2.6 billion. If its stock price keeps dropping, that bill will shrink further.

Facebook did get a vote of confidence from one investor last week. ) CEO Reed Hastings, who’s also a member of Facebook’s board, disclosed to regulators that he recently bought $1 million worth of shares in the social network.

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