Ok this may be the wrong place to start this thread, so moderators feel free to move it.
I’ve been hearing all these conspiracies about George Soros on talk radio and tv for years now, mostly from conservative sources: things about currency markets and New World Order type stuff. I know the guy is Jewish, which probably also makes him a target to fit in such conspiracies.
I’ve also heard him bad-mouthed by liberal thinkers as well. Years ago when I took a macroeconomics class in college, the economist Professor had nothing but bad stuff to say about the guy and brought him up a lot. This Professor loved I believe it was the country of Thailand and taught economics classes there. This guy seemed to swing liberal but he basically said the guy was a dirt bag who destroyed the country’s economy when he artificially inflated the currency value in Thailand and then I guess cashed out and sunk the economy for years, he went off on many diatribes about the topic.
So do any conspiracy theories about the guy hold water, and that aside is he really a bad guy who fucks up entire countries for his own benefit or is this a mischaracterization?
Soros is an interesting character, because he’s a big-money capitalist but he supports liberal political causes. So he gets hate from the right because of his political orientation, but I can imagine a lot of people on the left would also be hostile to him because he’s a capitalist “fat cat”.
What Soros does is make bets about the direction of currency markets. Currency markets, like all markets are susceptible to herd behavior and sudden rushes. If a country’s currency fluctuates wildly, that can really hurt the economy because it could suddenly make imports really expensive or make exports really expensive. Since Soros is one of the biggest and most successful currency speculators he can influence the markets more than just about anyone else. However, currency speculation is a necessary part of international trade and speculators don’t really control the prices they just respond quickly to the underlying reality of the situation. They can cause things to happen faster than they otherwise would and sometimes price overshoot reality but they cannot wreck an otherwise healthy economy.
Likewise politically, Soros has given billions to liberal causes around the world. Here is a listof the hundred or so liberal groups in the US he has given money to. He is a huge backer of much of the liberal infrastructure in the US. However, his influence is overstated in that votes are what make the difference in politics in the US not money. For instance he gave 74 million dollars to influence the 2014 elections but those elections resulted in a landslide win for the Republicans.
In both fields, economics and politics he is a big player but his actual influence is way overstated.
For fans of irony and schadenfreude, hereis a video of people decrying the influence of billionaires at an event organized by one of the organizations Soros funds.
Soros also donated millions (probably billions) to overthrowing the USSR and strengthening civil society in Eastern Europe before and after the wall fell. He was a student and follower of Karl Popper. Putin despises the man.
Soros, speaking to an Eastern European activist in a Soviet satellite country during the late 1970s: “What can I do for you?”
“Well… we could really use a Xerox machine.”
Soros: “… You are going to have to learn to think a little bigger.”
Soros was famous for taking on the bank of England and breaking the pound. I was at Swiss Bank and the time and knew the Swiss Bank currency traders. Swiss Bank alone probably did 10x the bet that Soros did. Soros just grabbed the headlines, which is something the banks want to avoid, and was awarded credit for breaking the Bank of England. The truth is, when ALL the big players in the market line up against you, central banks will get crushed.
So, it was the international banking cabal that did the BOE and Soros was a small player in that cabal.