Funferal

Soros and currency speculation

There’s a piece in Alternet essentially decrying attacks on George Soros that suggested he got his money from drug cartel sources. Apart from the – glossed over – anti-semitic sentiments from some Republicans, there’s another issue I’d like to raise. The truth is that Soros made his money not from drug trafficing but in another dispicable fashion. Alternet describe how he did this in an unusually antiseptic fashion:

Soros, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, earned billions from investments and currency speculation. In 1992, he bet $10 billion that the British central bank would devalue the pound. The gamble paid off and Soros earned $650 million that year.

So he made bets, and was lucky? How nice for him. The reality of course is that Soros specialised in identifying pressured governments, destabilised their currencies, forcing them to spend large sums buying up the currency, and then made money when they realised they couldn’t afford to continue, and allowed sudden collapses in the value of their currency.
Obviously Soros is not my favourite person, even if he has become relatively immune from criticism on the (American) Left, due in part to the reliance of groups on his philantropy. As far as I’m concerned, the money he forced governments (including the Irish government in January 1993) to spend damaged their ability to spend money on health care, education, and other programmes they were democratically mandated to fund. That Soros now expresses contrition, and spends part of his money on charities of his choosing, does not make up for his past crimes.