Posted on 02/27/2010 12:24:04 PM PST by Texas Peartree
What would be the reaction if the largest individual Republican contributor, and a hedge fund manager no less, attempted to destroy the currency of a group of our allies? Might the American media have some interest in such a story? Of course they would, and rightly so. That story would have everything they hate; Republicans, hedge funds, and money changers (literally!) who manipulate currencies to get rich without producing anything of value. Oh, and what if the cherry on top is that this person is a felon convicted for insider trading?
That is exactly what is happening, except that this manipulator is George Soros, the grey eminence behind the modern Democrat Party. Although he has given to educational and technological charities in the Third World, he has also funded pot legalization efforts here, given $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $5 million to MoveOn.org, and $10 million to America Coming Together.
Per the Daily Telegraph, Soros is currently placing bets on a plummeting Euro vis-à-vis the dollar. All fair, except that there is a cabal of Soros-led hedge fund managers who are making this prediction a reality by their very bets. In other words, they are partly responsible for the continued slip of the Euro, no different than betters in Las Vegas who all pick the Colts to win would be responsible for moving the line in the Super Bowl.
Soros has done some good and a lot of bad with his life. However, I cannot help but wonder what the elite opinion of America would be if a Conservative were to help crash the Euro. Might Obama in that instance say something about how currency speculators are spreading misery?
(Excerpt) Read more at corybirenbaum.blogspot.com ...
Someday, a government somewhere is going to get their hands on this greedy pig and put him in prison where he belongs.
It won’t be prison...but the ground.
Someday, a government somewhere is going to get their hands on this greedy pig and put him in prison where he belongs.
I rather doubt it. He has so much influence through his charities and political contributions.
Yeah, I think he has the backing of the militant wing of the Salvation Army.
Yeah, I think he has the backing of the militant wing of the Salvation Army.
I said all along that the summer of 2008 was a setup with his hedge fund buddies including John Paulson, JD Flowers, David Shaw and others. Rahm and Gorelnick made sure Fannie & Freddie were cooked, the Sandlers cooked World Savings then sold it to hapless Wachovia, Goldman planned to take out Bear and Lehman and the stage was set.
The GOP and Bush had no clue. Cox at SEC should have put the uptick rule in on shorting and no shorting on financial. The Dems set it up.
Greatly helped by JUAN MCCAIN’s and his McCain Feingold which handed Congress to the Dems in 2006 and the white hut to a Muslim in 2008.
Six months or so ago, the Euro was at about $1.60. Friday it was around $1.35 or so. The UK pound is down to around $1.56 or 7 or so. So much for the dollars “decline”.
California will be forced to do the same as Greece.
Doctor Evil—now that is an appropriate name for this freak!
From your lips to God's ears, PLEASE!
Soros is a very bad man. On that we all can agree. But this article is nonsense. The author displays a disgraceful ignorance of basic economics.
The Euro is being undermined by the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain). Their irresponsible governments have run up huge deficits — in violation of the pledges they made when they joined the Euro pact — and at least in the case of Greece they have deliberately falsified official government statistics in an attempt to hide the extent of their own recklessness.
Of course, sharp speculators like Soros want to go along for the ride. I would too if I had the guts. But speculators no more “cause” the problem than the Rooster’s crowing causes the Sun to rise.
Baloney. Speculators do manipulate currencies and “break” them. Soros did this to Malaysia, and almost to the UK Pound. They bet on something and start a panic about the currency so that other money leaves that currency. No different that shorting a stock.
You know this guy plays with national economies like they were toys. Wish someone would throw him under a jail somewhere.
>> They bet on something and start a panic about the currency so that other money leaves that currency. <<
Maybe for the currency of Nauru or Burma or even Malaysia. But the Euro is simply too large. The total daily volume of Euro trading on international currency exchanges would dwarf the resources Soros and his speculator buddies could bring to bear.
In today’s world of floating exchange rates, the Euro will go down if its fundamentals are bad. Speculators might make a decline proceed a little faster than otherwise might be the case — maybe by as much as a few weeks. But speculators cannot determine the Euro’s equilibrium value.
How would Soros try to crash gold? This is exactly what the US government has been doing through JP Morgan, Deutsch Bank, HSB USA, etc. If the fundamentals of the Euro were sound, then not even mighty George could crash them. However, with the PIIGS teetering they are particularly susceptible to this band of sociopaths. By bringing down a country they can bring down the currency because of its fundamentally flawed structure. It won’t be long until they are attacking weak states to crash out their debt and bring them down.
>> By bringing down a country they can bring down the currency because of its fundamentally flawed structure. <<
No, speculators don’t bring a country down. A country like Greece brings itself down. The speculators are only along for the ride. Moreover, as Friedman, Mises and other pro-freedom economists have long taught, speculators perform a positive role when they force market discipline upon an irresponsible government.
In a case like the current Euro crisis, the Greeks and the other PIGS have only themselves to blame. Of course demagogic politicians like Papandreou will try to blame the evil speculators. That’s always the politician’s “out” when he and his cronies have screwed up their own country’s economy.
This spurious “blame the speculators” mentality is something FReepers ought easily to recognize and then to reject — because it’s almost exactly a mirror image of what 0bama and his Dhimmi minions currently are doing when they demonize banks and Wall Street for our current financial crises, and when they demonize insurance and pharmaceutical companies for problems in our healthcare system — crises and problems that the government itself has creadted. People who respect free market capitalism should know better.
Agreed, Greece was in the crapper already. However, speculators can take an already bad situation and make it much worse, bring it to a crescendo. This would probably happen anyway and wouldn’t be possible if the country/state had handled its finances responsibly, but we shouldn’t be allowing Goldman/JP Morgan and others to use money borrowed for free from the Fed to indulge in this type of behavior. Where did the hedge funds get the money to take these positions, I’ll give you three guesses.
No the hedge funds and the others are merely a symptom of the underlying disease which is the geometric debt bomb.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.