“Of course, Democrats give money too. Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in America. Soros has also made generous private contributions to various Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s. But Michael Vachon, his spokesman, argued that Soros’s giving is transparent, and that ‘none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.” Jane Mayer, ‘Covert Operations’, The New Yorker, August 30, 2010.
Under the rules of boxing, brawlers who punch their opponents below the belt routinely are disqualified. Repeated episodes of such unprofessional behavior may lead to permanent bans from entering the ring. In Jane Mayer’s lengthy column entitled Covert Operations, August 30, 2010, The New Yorker sets out on just an unprofessional course in its unrelenting attack on Charles and David Koch and their philanthropic and other non-profit programs.
Let me say at the outset that I am no fan of Charles and David Koch and I do not write this as an exercise in hagiography. But I am a great fan in unbiased reporting and I accuse (J’accuse) Jane Mayer and the progressive political rag on whose behalf she writes her columns, of gross prejudice and bias in singling out the Kochs for condemnation and George Soros for a whitewash. Talk about hanging their watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) out to dry!
So this column will attempt to redress the balance just a little, by looking more closely at George Soros and the Hungarian influence on U.S. politics. Let me see if I can floor Jane Mayer with a left jab to the chin, followed by a right cross to the jaw, both entirely professional responses as compared with her low blow in Round One.
George Soros may just be the biggest political fat cat of all time. An 80 year old Hungarian Jew, Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952. In 1956, he moved again to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader and analyst. In 1970, he co-founded the Quantum Fund, which created the bulk of the Soros fortune. In 2007, the Quantum Fund netted Soros $2.9 billion.
In 1988, Soros bought shares in the French bank, Societe Generale. French authorities began an investigation of these purchases in 1989 and in 2002 a French court ruled that Soros had engaged in insider trading, fining him $2.3 million. Punitive damages were not imposed because of the delay in bringing the case to trial.
On September 16, 1992 – known as Black Wednesday in Britain – Soros’s fund sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds sterling, profiting from the reluctance of the Bank of England either to raise interest rates or to float its currency. As a consequence, the Bank of England withdrew the currency from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound sterling and earning Soros $1.1 billion. Black Wednesday cost the British Treasury 3.4 billion pounds. Talk about biting the hand that saved him from the anti-Semitism of the Evil Empire. A man of honor, George Soros most surely is not.
In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, Soros punished ASEAN for welcoming Myanmur as a member, driving down the nominal US dollar GDP of ASEAN by $9.2 billion in 1997 and by $218.2 billion (31.7 percent) in 1998.
In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros stated that removing President George W. Bush from office was the ‘central focus of my life’ and ‘a matter of life and death’. Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $5 million to MoveOn.org, and $10 million to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. Overall, during the 2003-2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. 527 groups are tax-exempt organizations. Note that tax exempt organisations are not ‘allowed’ to engage in political activities.
Since 2004, Soros has thrown vast sums of campaign moneys behind Barack Obama. Although much of this support was provided through seemingly independent organizations, Soros is recognized as the major funder of the Obama campaign and of his administration. Like the Merchant of Venice, Soros extracts his pound of flesh for this support. He is heavily invested in green energy, most especially in wind and solar power, and eagerly awaits the passage of cap and trade legislation. He is the prime beneficiary of the Obama-imposed moratorium on oil-drilling, holding millions of common shares in Petrobas, the Brazilian company now likely to become the leading company in offshore oil production in the Americas.
George Soros is a progressive socialist who knows how to profit from state capitalism and who controls the central levers of U.S. economic policy under the Obama administration. Outsiders may well ask why this evil, convicted criminal, insider- trader and political manipulator was whitewashed by Jane Mayer in her one-sided column. Readers of this column will know full well the answer to that question.
