George Soros is a Hungarian born billionaire who seems to be funding a lot of malicious mischief around the world. Why ?
Soros was born in Hungary in 1930.
That Wiki article is very favorable to Soros and does not mention a few things.
There is considerable discussion of Soros’ role under the Nazis.
It has been alleged that he was a collaborator. Apparently, he did admit doing some things that could be criticized although the role of a 14 year old is pretty weak.
It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a — a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this [Christian] protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’s — that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not — not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t — you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no — no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c — I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was — well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets — that if I weren’t there — of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would — would — would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the — whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the — I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Anyway, his role in the early years of the fall of the Soviet Union seemed benign. The NY Times reported on him as a hero.
For the past decade, George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier and philanthropist, has spent more than a billion dollars promoting a free press and political pluralism abroad — everything the world’s authoritarian rulers despise.
Now some of those political leaders are fighting back.
In Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia and Croatia, Mr. Soros’s foundations have been accused of shielding spies and breaking currency laws. His employees have been assaulted and threatened with imprisonment or financial sanction for alleged crimes.
Here in Belarus, Mr. Soros recently suspended operations after the Government, headed by Aleksandr Lukashenko, the popular but autocratic 42-year-old President, fined a Soros foundation $3 million for alleged tax violations and seized its bank account.
His role in the British financial crisis of 1992 was not so benign.
In 1992, George Soros brought the Bank of England to its knees. In the process, he pocketed over a billion dollars. Making a billion dollars is by all accounts pretty cool. But demolishing the monetary system of Great Britain in a single day with an elegantly constructed bet against its currency? That’s the stuff of legends.
Though it occurred just two decades ago, Soros made his nation-shaking bet in a very different time. Back then, hedge funds hadn’t yet entered the public consciousness, restrictions on capital flowing from one country to another were just lifted, and the era of the 24-hour news cycle had just begun.
The details of the trade are explained in that article. Maybe that was a moment when his motives changed.
The Jerusalem Post thinks it did but not when and why.
The DCLeaks document dump is a major story because it exposes the forest of Soros’s funding networks.
The first thing that we see is the megalomaniacal nature of Soros’s philanthropic project. No corner of the globe is unaffected by his efforts. No policy area is left untouched.
On the surface, the vast number of groups and people he supports seem unrelated. After all, what does climate change have to do with illegal African immigration to Israel? What does Occupy Wall Street have to do with Greek immigration policies? But the fact is that Soros-backed projects share basic common attributes.
They all work to weaken the ability of national and local authorities in Western democracies to uphold the laws and values of their nations and communities.
It still doesn’t explain why. Martin Peretz, former publisher of The New Republic, has some theories.
Soros said Turkey and Japan were still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history and contrasted that reluctance to Germany’s rejection of its Nazi-era past. “America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany. We have to go through a certain deNazification process.”
Soros seems to consider the US as equivalent to Nazi Germany.
I fear too many liberals now believe. There seems to be a renaissance among liberals of the view that there are no enemies to the left. I hear no Democrats expressing embarrassment, or revulsion, at Soros’s comment. Whether this silence is owed to their agreement or to their greed, it is outrageous.
Peretz was definitely out of step with the 21st century Democrat Party.
I still recall Karl Jaspers’s devastating point, in The Question of German Guilt in 1947, that every German shares in the guilt of Hitlerism. Such guilt was not, in Jaspers’s mind, an abstraction or a purely political matter. But Soros does not appear to accept any responsibility for the Nazi-like crimes he ascribes to the United States. Perhaps he thinks that, having contributed $18 million to elect John Kerry in 2004, he was an American hero, a dissident, a resistance fighter, the Grill Room’s representative of the White Rose. And if, in 2008, Soros’s gang comes to power, how will de-Nazification work? Whom shall we send to prison? Perhaps we should prevent everybody who voted or argued for the war from running for office. At the very least, the neocons must be brought to justice. (Maybe Ramsey Clark can represent them.)
He recalls the “60 Minutes” interview with Soros about his experience with real Nazis.
He certainly isn’t a Zionist. He told Connie Bruck in The New Yorker—testily, she recounted—that “I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence—but I don’t want to be part of it.” But he has involved himself in the founding of an anti-AIPAC, more dovish Israel lobby. Suddenly, he wants to influence the character of a Jewish state about which he loudly cares nothing. Once again, he bears no responsibility. Perhaps his sense of his own purity also underwrites his heartlessness in business. As a big currency player in the world markets, Soros was at least partially responsible for the decline in the British pound.
Maybe Soros just thinks the US is evil and needs to be destroyed as Nazi Germany was destroyed. The “Open Society Foundation” seems to think so.
Its central contention is that in the US, police are not a force for good, enabling society to function by maintaining law and order. Rather, police are a tool of white repression of blacks.
Law enforcement in predominantly African American communities is under assault as inherently racist.
BLM agitation, which has been accused of inspiring the murders of police in several US cities, has brought about two responses from rank and file police. First, they have been demoralized, as they find themselves criminalized for trying to keep their cities safe from criminals.
His efforts also affect immigration, a more traditional position for businessmen.
Then there are Soros’s actions on behalf of illegal immigration. From the US to Europe to Israel, Soros has implemented a worldwide push to use immigration to undermine the national identity and demographic composition of Western democracies. The leaked emails show that his groups have interfered in European elections to get politicians elected who support open border policies for immigrants from the Arab world and to financially and otherwise support journalists who report sympathetically on immigrants.
Soros’s groups are on the ground enabling illegal immigrants to enter the US and Europe. They have sought to influence US Supreme Court rulings on illegal immigration from Mexico. They have worked with Muslim and other groups to demonize Americans and Europeans who oppose open borders.
His goal seems to be destabilization of the West but why ? Does he think his class of multinational “citizens of the world” will thrive in a Hobbesian world of chaos ? Or is it something else ?
The thrust of Soros’s efforts from Ferguson to Berlin to Jerusalem is to induce mayhem and chaos as local authorities, paralyzed by his supported groups, are unable to secure their societies or even argue coherently that they deserve security.
In many ways, Donald Trump’s campaign is a direct response not to Clinton, but to Soros himself.
By calling for the erection of a border wall, supporting Britain’s exit from the EU, supporting Israel, supporting a temporary ban on Muslim immigration and supporting the police against BLM, Trump acts as a direct foil to Soros’s multi-billion dollar efforts.
An interesting observation on Trump from The Jerusalem Post.
MSNBC is mystified at Medgar Evers’ brother endorsing Trump.
He wants job in Mississippi. They grow catfish but have to send them to China for processing.
The left is all concerned about “tone.”
And, a good video.
He is a strange fellow. His support for far-Left causes, and his hostility to Israel and at best indifference to the Jews as a group, are bizarre. However, it’s unfair to blame him for “breaking” the British Pound. The Pound would have fallen in value anyway; he merely rode the wave. Speculators like Soros are never popular, but they perform a function in finance that’s akin to fire in wild forests, by helping to limit government-induced market distortions.
It sounds like Soros didn’t break the pound as much as German Finance Minister Helmut Schlesinger.
“The President of the Bundesbank, Professor Helmut Schlesinger, does not rule out the possibility that, even after the realignment and the cut in German interest rates, one or two currencies could come under pressure before the referendum in France. He conceded in an interview that the problems are of course not solved completely by the measures taken.”
The French referendum held a few days later was for the Maastrict Treaty, which eventually established the Euro. Denmark voted it down earlier in the summer. It narrowly passed in France by a whisker. The UK ending their fixed rate and suspending involvement in the common currency may have pushed the vote over the goal line.
The Germans pulled similar stunts back in the 80s that led up to the Black Monday crash when they thought the dollar was too strong. When Internationalists talk about a borderless world ruled in harmony by a benevolent supranational body what they really mean is a world governed by German dominated Western Europe.
John Majors was really at fault for the problems of the pound and the EU. Soros is just an interesting Dr Moriarity type.
I believe he does think that he will do well in a new world order if it is based on the amoral value system he demonstrated concerning his Nazi activities. To make that work, the concepts of moral standards of conduct must be replaced with the rule of power, especially unaccountable power. That means all this equal protection of the law has to go. Perhaps he’ll run for president to finish what Barry (and the Hildabeast?) began.
Death6
How about one of the leaders of the left wing, of the deep state? ;)
The Germans pulled similar stunts back in the 80s that led up to the Black Monday crash when they thought the dollar was too strong.
Our then-Secretary of the Treasury James Baker deserves much of the blame for making a reckless statement about how the dollar was too strong.
“James Baker deserves much of the blame for making a reckless statement about how the dollar was too strong.”
One of Oliphant’s best political cartoons a]was about that and Alan Greenspan. I can’t find it in his web site.
The late Barry Rubin addressed this topic in 2010, under the title “Fear and Survival: The Tragedy and Threat That is George Soros”.
Rubin’s lengthy analysis posits the question, “What did Soros say was the main lesson he had learned on those streets in 1944 Hungary? ‘That one should think ahead. One should understand and – – and anticipate events and when – – when one is threatened.’” Rubin suggests that, “The life of Soros … led him to a unique solution: convincing him that he must be highly visible ”¦ on the winning side. No longer could he have the anonymity of that fourteen-year-old camouflaged boy [in wartime Hungary], but he could still stand on the safer side of the confrontation.”
This parallels Anonymous’ astute observation: “I believe he does think that he will do well in a new world order if it is based on the amoral value system he demonstrated concerning his Nazi activities. To make that work, the concepts of moral standards of conduct must be replaced with the rule of power, especially unaccountable power. That means all this equal protection of the law has to go.”
Rubin’s essay concludes with a list of left-wing causes (compiled by Melanie Phillips) supported by [Schwartz] Soros, which then comprised:
ӢPromoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
ӢPromoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
ӢOpposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
ӢDepicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
”¢Promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws….
ӢDefending suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters
ӢFinancing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
”¢Advocating America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending….
”¢Promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is “not clean air and clean water, [but] rather … the demolition of technological/industrial civilization….”
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Alas…
Rubin’s full essay can be found at http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2010/09/fear-and-survival-tragedy-and-threat.html.
Michael, thanks for that. It seems to me to be the same problem I have with Libertarians.
In a Hobbesian world, why do the rich think they will do well ?
I suppose he thinks he can survive like a medieval noble in a castle but that was not that pleasant a life.
He lives on an estate in New York, near New York City.
Why does he think he will be safe there ? Of course, he is 83.
Baker was complicit in the events that led to the dollar dropping nearly 50% between 1985 and 1987, and by the time of the stock market crash the currency micromanagement he helped put in place was unraveling. Our interest rates were going up to untenable levels because the Germans refused to lower theirs, breaking agreements made earlier in the year. West Germany also closed their domestic markets to our agriculture exports, which was only exacerbating the virtual economic depression in our farm states. That was at the same time we increased and subsidized grain exports to the Soviets to make up for it.
The trade deficit with the Japanese deservedly got all the press back then, but it was worse with West Germany in the agriculture sector. Japan ended up opening their markets to our food. They also went along with the currency agreements, and that led to their massive bubble and crash which they never recovered from. The one absolute rule for manipulation of financial and trade markets is the unintended consequences will have much greater and lasting effect than what was hoped to be achieved by the interventions.
Dr Mike:
Why does he think he will be safe there ? Of course, he is 83.
Born in 1930 in Hungary… My mental midget mind went to work and would evaluate Soros’ age to be 86. Or darn close.
Either way, no matter his age, he demonstrates one thing, one thought, one idea(if not One Volk):
Destruction.
Were I part of the Dept Of Justice, I would be investigating to determine if he is promoting actions against the US government. If he was, appropriate action should/would be taken. I have yet to hear of any positive contribution to the world by Geo Soros, though I do plead ignorance.
“Soros’ age to be 86. Or darn close.”
Yes. I’m getting too close to that to be off. I had just read the story about him getting married again and it was a 2013 story,
Did he marry Rupert Murdoch’s ex?
No. On February 5, 2014, The Daily Telegraph published a report claiming Deng had a crush on Tony Blair, leading to her divorce from Murdoch. The report stated that Murdoch began to hear rumors about his wife in 2012 and is said to have interviewed staff members at his various homes to ask them what they had seen. According to the newspaper, Murdoch learned that Blair had visited Deng at Murdoch’s Carmel ranch on more than one occasion. Blair allegedly spent the weekend of April 27, 2013, with Deng at the property. Other sources are quoted as placing Blair and Deng at The Carlyle in New York, on a private yacht, and at Murdoch’s home in London.[28] Deng’s letter to herself, in which she described her torment in missing Blair – published by Vanity Fair in February 2014 – raised speculation that there was more to Deng’s relationship with Blair than friendship.[29] It is this letter that was said to be the last straw for Murdoch to separate from his wife of 14 years, reports said.[30] As a result of Murdoch’s suspicion that Blair had an affair with Deng, he ended his long-standing association with Blair in 2014.[31]
In March 2016, Us Weekly a US based celebrity tabloid reported that she was in a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However no credible sources or proof of this claim exists.
I think a recent story concerned Deng and Trump
s daughter insinuating a relationship between Trump and Putin.
In 2014, Vanity Fair and The Economist published allegations that Blair had had an extramarital affair with Wendi Deng, who was then married to Rupert Murdoch.[145][229] Blair categorically denied the allegations.
No Blair divorce so I guess Putin is a better bet for Deng.
“Soros Raises His Bearish Bet Against The S&P 500,….”
http://blogs.barrons.com/focusonfunds/2016/08/16/soros-raises-his-bearish-bet-against-the-sp-500-cuts-gold/?mod=bol-ampush
Slightly off topic, former Soros Quantum fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller has struck me as a straight shooter. At least recently with his comments about current monetary and fiscal policy.
I think one has to differentiate between Soros the trader and Soros the political activist. His record as a trader is brilliant. A number of brilliant traders have worked with or for him, and there is no reason to think most of them share his politics. His record as a political activist is not so impressive.
Well, I’m not selling my gold. I’m also buying guns which are almost as solid an investment as gold and better for self defense.
A trader hates stability since he can make only small change. A trader needs volatility to make real money.
A BIG trader like Soros can afford to invest in volatility. Thinking and acting to affect the future gives him a huge opportunities to make bank.
Of course, there may be some deep psychological motivation but Occam’s Razor suggests it’s all about the money.
My conclusion might just be projection but at least it’s quantifiable.
Maybe he always wanted to be a real-life Blofeld.
I thought he was also working toward undercutting the validity of elections here?
Is this the rather strange attitude of after me, the deluge – at 86 he surely can’t expect to play an active role much longer. Does he believe that he will live long enough to gain from the chaos he seems to desire and to use the power Death 6 believes (I’m sure accurately) he wants?
Either he thinks he will live forever or he wants to blow the world up as he leaves it. He’s seen what these policies bring – does he just believe that other forms of government/life are mere pretenses and underneath them all are bad intentions and malice and misery?
“does he just believe that other forms of government/life are mere pretenses and underneath them all are bad intentions and malice and misery?”
He certainly provides enough material for a psychological study.
Maybe he wants a Libertarian world but that is chaos.
I think he is past wanting more money but power, of course, is the ultimate currency. Ask Hillary.
Ask Mylan shareholders.
I think this might be part of the plan.
All that online maps show of the area are street routes and names ”” what could perhaps be an outline plan for a future housing development. But anyone looking for a kerbside view of the property will find no evidence of it.
The community’s name gives a clue why: it is called Hidden Hills. What the area’s occupants ”” who reportedly include Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Jennifer Lopez ”” value above all is privacy. That includes banning Google’s photography vehicles from entering (and declining to talk to the FT; a spokeswoman for the area’s management company said it had a policy of not giving interviews to the press).
It might be a bit late for Soros, though.
“Ask Mylan shareholders.”
Political rent seeking is the new normal. Crony capitalism is profitable, I guess. Until the revolution and then, as Lavoisier found, it can be expensive.
Dr. K,
In college I paid the bills by mowing lawns and installing sprinkler systems in Hidden Hills. Just west of the San Fernando valley, it originally was horse country with horse trails in front of the houses instead of concrete sidewalks. Back then (early 90’s)new money was buying up the old houses and repurposing this enclave. BMW’s were replacing horses and tensions were rising as overbuilt mansions were replacing ranch style houses. Entertainers Lisa Marie Presley, Sinbad, and many specialist Doctors from UCLA as well as multiple attorneys lived there. Sports radio commentator Jim Rome also grew up there.
If I recall the guards were unarmed. But you’re not getting past them if you’re not on “the list”.
One thing about the doctors in Hidden Hills. They all had beautiful Mercedes, BMW’s or in the case of an Ear Nose and Throat UCLA doctor I worked for, a Corvette. But they all drove nondescript Hondas or Toyotas to work…..