Posted on 04/07/2012 11:42:25 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management (AFP Photo / Brendan SMIALOWSKI)
Billionaire investor George Soros has a new prediction for America. While it might be as dire as it gets for the financial wiz, this bet concerns more than just the value of the buck. According to Soros, there's about to be an all-out class war.
Soros, 81, previously bet against the British pound in the early 90s and made $1 billion off its collapse. In the years since, he’s remained active in investing, but also in advocacy. He’s helped keep Wikipedia afloat thanks to impressive contributions and through donations to the Tides Center, has indirectly funded Adbusters, the Canadian anti-capitalist magazine that put Occupy Wall Street on the map. Speaking to Newsweek recently, Soros neglected to acknowledge his past successes, but instead offered a word of warning: a period of “evil” is coming to the western world.
“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”
Soros goes on to compare the current state of the western world with what the Soviet Union was facing as communism crumbled. Although he would think that history would have taught the globe a thing or two about noticing trends, Soros says that, despite past events providing a perfect example of what is to come, the end of an empire seems imminent.
“The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening,” adds Soros.
Soros goes on to say that as the crisis in the Eurozone only worsens, the American financial system will continue to be hit hard. On the way to a full-blown collapse, he cautions, Americans should expect society to alter accordingly. Riots will hit the streets, says Soros, and as a result, “It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”
The recent adoption of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 and the proposed Enemy Expatriation Act, if approved, have already very well paved the way for such a society. Under the NDAA, the US government is allowed to indefinitely detain and torture American citizens suspected of terror crimes without ever bringing them to trial. Should lawmakers Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Charles Dent (R-PA) get their Enemy Expatriation Act through Congress, the US will also be able to simply revoke citizenship without trial, essentially removing constitutional rights from anyone deemed a threat.
Others have cautioned that, as inequality becomes more rampant in America, the country’s citizens are becoming increasingly agitated with those on the other side of the extreme. In a recent survey released by the Pew Research Center, 66 percent of the adults studied believe that either “very strong” or “strong” conflicts exist between America’s elite and the impoverished, a statistic that has skyrocketed in recent years. Between 2009 and 20011, the proportion of those that sense conflicts exist as such between the class groups grew by 19 percentage points. While less than half of Americans fearing a fight brewing at the dawn of the Obama administration, today two-out-of-three Americans feel that there is a strong conflict between both extremes of society.
Addressing the issue of inequality, Soros tells Newsweek that the main issue that will make or break a reelection for US President Barack Obama will be whether or not the rich end up being taxed more. Among the current frontrunners in the Republic Party’s race for the GOP nomination, wealth and taxes have been of the biggest concern of party rivals. The top candidates have made millions off of investments, and at a time of immense inequality, represent what 99 percent of Americans don’t. Taxing the rich to a bigger degree might finally bring a chance, and Soros says, “It shouldn’t be a difficult argument for Obama to make.”
Soros adds that if the US manages to make it through the troubled times to come, it come allow the nation to enter another golden era. “In the crisis period, the impossible becomes possible. The European Union could regain its luster. I’m hopeful that the United States, as a political entity, will pass a very severe test and actually strengthen the institution,” he tells Newsweek.
With almost seven percent of Americans living below half of the poverty line, four unemployed Americans for each job, a shrinking middle class and an increasingly overzealous police state, it could very well be a tough road to get there, though.
Just Waiting for the Worms! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bDY0DfEjmo&feature=fvwrel
That’s a darned good target list you published there!
“In the crisis period, the impossible becomes possible. The European Union could regain its luster. I’m hopeful that the United States, as a political entity, will pass a very severe test and actually strengthen the institution,” he tells Newsweek.
On this, as it is written, I agree with Soros.
The question is whether or not we learn more from pain or from pleasure. I tend to believe that pain is the better, more effective teacher.
We want to believe we can have it all and socialism promises we can and that someone else will pay for it.
If we aren't careful, we are going to test that theory and then we will experience real pain, the kind Soros is talking about, the kind of pain we've fought wars to avoid and/or to overcome.
If we learn from that pain and/or from the fear of it and manage to reboot the Constitutional Republic we began with, Soros will be right about that golden era that will certainly follow.
But first, the evil progressive/socialist/communist/marxist beast that has infected us for generations must die!
We're out of balance with the real laws that govern this place. Either we fix this or it will be fixed for us.
I threw up a little in my mouth..
Well, it looks like my retirement plans are becoming more and more salient to my survival.
A good 40-50’ sailboat and a savings account denominated in Australian dollars ought to let me pick up and leave if things get too bad.
Plus, I can make a bit of money ferrying out refugees as well as doing a little gun-running to any conservatives if there is fighting
Not only did he bet on it, his market manipulations likely hastened the collapse. He has caused more pain and deprivation than even his nazi brothers could have imagined.
Like Hitler in 1938 predicting millions of Jews will perish in camps.
Sorry George. didnt mean to strike close to home.
Take a dirt nap, Soros. Take your sons with you.
Of course he does. He wants it and is behind it. Wonder who will finally arrest this thug.
Hell will get much hotter when welcoming him.
I wonder how much Soros pays in taxes.
I bet he can also ‘predict’ when this will happen too.
I bet he can also ‘predict’ when this will happen too.
Maybe, in all the chaos, someone can work their way to soros undetected.
Sounds like Obama and his propaganda arm are already trying to gin up riots ala the Trayvon Martin case.
CAN THIS MAN DIE OF ASS CANCER PLEASE?
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.