Thanks to Reuters, George Soros can quote Mark Twain now.
Jim Treacher had the best tweet, though,
George Soros, enigmatic financier, liberal philanthropist dies at XX reut.rs/102H3sD (Some editor at @reuters just XXXX his pants.)
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 18, 2013
Jon doesn’t remember where the money went, but
Corzine’s Loss May Be Soros’s Gain
Investor Places Big Bet on Euro Debt, Buying MF Global Former Holdings
Investor George Soros’s family fund bought about $2 billion of European bonds formerly owned by MF Global Holdings Ltd., the very debt that helped force the securities firm to file for bankruptcy protection Oct. 31, according to people close to the matter.
…
The 81-year old investor, together with his investment team at Soros Fund Management, purchased the bonds for below the market price at the time, in a transaction involving JP Morgan Chase & Co., according to these people. Other large investors also bought some of these European bonds once held by MF Global, according to people close to the matter. A spokeswoman for J.P. Morgan declined to comment.Mr. Soros’s firm still holds the majority of the positions it acquired, the people said.
Sounds like a bailout in the making…
A roundup of trivial news in the periphery of serious issues,
George Soros sued by ex-girlfriend for reneging on real estate promise to buy her a $2 million NYC apartment. George told her he’d given the apartment to another woman. Probably a younger woman, that is. No word on whether he had anything to do with the downgrade.
UPDATE:
Don Surber:
Dr. Evil had the same problem with Frau Farbissina.
Amy Winehouse’s home robbed, not by looters, but by someone looking for her unreleased songs, lyric books and letters.
One Place That Didn’t Get Looted In The UK. Situational Awareness: How Everyday Citizens Can Help Make a Nation Safe. Defend yourself and be a vigilante (h.t Instapundit).
Hugo Chavez’s hair fell off. Argentina Preps for World Tango Championships
Pivot to jobs, jobs, jobs getting to you? Vacay, vacay, vacay! But first, let us pray.
Felonious Monk is not happy at all (*LANGUAGE WARNING: DEFINITELY NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK*)
Here’s Thelonious Monk, not Felonious,
Soros betting on Euro collapse
Let me count the ways George Soros, hedge fund billionaire, has become enriched through his trading "strategies".Years ago, he broke the Bank of England by wagering against the British pound, pressuring it in such a way that England had to devalue their currency – his first billion-dollar payday. Various ploys over the years enriched him further. Then he made billions by wagering that the housing and mortgage markets would collapse in America – a multi-billion dollar payoff again.
Now he is up to his old tricks again: working with other hedge funds to force the European currency to crack
The other day I was saying that maybe I could recycle headlines from prior decades; add this one to the list.
UPDATE
More at the Daily Mail, via Larwyn,
Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, ‘at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro’
Mr Soros, who made more than $1billion by currency speculation when the pound was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992, believes the structure of the euro is ‘patently flawed’.He said: ‘Makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece, but that leaves Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland.
‘Together they constitute too large a portion of euroland to be helped in this way.’
He believes that unless the European Commission is given sweeping powers over taxation and spending, the single currency will always be vulnerable to financial turbulence in individual states.
Click on the photo for another interesting story (from last year) on Soros.
Franken trails Coleman by 216 votes, so the Dems are doing what they always do: send Soros to the rescue.
And Al Gore, too.
Left-wing billionaire financier George Soros is using his financial muscle at a Manhattan fund-raiser tonight to help Al Franken win a recount in Minnesota’s Senate election.Soros – the hedge-fund honcho and sugar daddy of the Democratic Party – will host a soirée for Franken at his Carnegie Hill digs to help cover the candidate’s costs to monitor the statewide recount.
The special guest: Al Gore, who knows a thing or two about recounts.
At last count, Franken trails GOP incumbent Norm Coleman by just 216 votes out of 2.9 million cast. Minnesota yesterday initiated a hand recount that is not expected to be completed until mid-December.
Ed says
Gonna be a long few weeks. Don’t expect much real news until the recount is finished.
Well, I do expect a lot of Soros’s money coming to the rescue.
More from Power Line.
Makings of a Chem Weapon in a hotel near DNC: MSM yawns, and the dead guy had commented that he was a Jihad supporter.
Apparently I’m not the only one ignoring the Olympics: Beijing Is All Dressed Up, But No One Is Going. Gina Cobb asks, why?
Premature McCain Derangement Syndrome: Team Obama blames Georgia on McCain?
Really guys, if you’re going to start blaming everything on McCain, you should at least wait until he takes office.
Condi Rice Presser: Bush Expects Russia to Honor Cease-Fire; US Troops Will Lead Humanitarian Mission
VERY UNDIPLOMATIC: “This is not 1968.”. And so we wait.
The disturbing discoveries of Obama’s connections don’t make Obama less palatable among whites because of skin color, but for cultural reasons. Obama, the metrosexual? And it looks like Soros is funding some of Obama’s Republicans.
And people really want to elect this guy?
Two friends just emailed this: Colin Powell says he’s not going to the Democrat convention. What he didn’t say is whether he’s endorsing Obama or not.
Media Lizzy has a dontgo update.
When Mamacita ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy: Drive-through etiquette: If you have to ask, it’s probably you.
To get to the drive-through, you’ll need gas, and for free gas, there’s a contest:
George Soros has been buying hundreds of thousands of acres of pampas land in South America. Back in the 1990s he bought over a million acres in Argentina.
His company, ADECOAGRO, raised cattle for beef during the mad cow disease scare, when England, the US and Canadian beef could not be sold in Europe.
In 2006 Argentina’s Federal Planning minister announced that Soros is investing “between 250 and 300 million dollars” to produce bio-fuel from corn and sugar cane in Santa Fe province, Argentina:
The project would employ “1,300 people directly and among 8 and 10 thousand people indirectly”, the minister considered, and anticipated a production of 200 million liters of bio-fuel. The Soros group was already involved in real estate investments in the country and then got to manage over 170 thousand hectares of country land in several Argentinean provinces. It has now strong investments in cattle, soy, corn, wheat, sunflower, and milk production. Though their bio-fuel interest has a background with the buying of an ethanol plant in Minas Gerais -Brazil-, they surely saw an opportunity in Argentina after the recent fuzz about the bio-fuel law declared by the government -approved in 2004 and re-approved in April with a different text-.
There was some political finagling involved,
This law sets tax deduction incentives for the production of bio-fuel, and makes mandatory for all liquid fuels from petrol to contain 5% of ethanol or bio-fuel. Though it might seem a positive initiative, the duplicate approval left a sour feel to it.
Now Soros is expanding his pampas purchases into Uruguay (I linked to this in yesterday’s Carnival, h/t Siggy):
Uruguay Land Prices Double as Farm Policies Lure Soros, Marfrig
A third of Uruguay’s agricultural property may now be owned by foreigners, according to Uruguay’s Rural Association. They include farm companies PGG Wrightson Ltd. of New Zealand and Buenos Aires-based Adecoagro, which is backed by billionaire investor George Soros.International buyers, seeking to take advantage of rising global food prices, are attracted by the South American country’s relatively cheap land, policies that encourage foreign investment, and no tariffs on farm exports, said Roberto Vazquez Platero, a former agriculture minister. As a result, farm prices have more than doubled in three years.
It is rather ironic that Soros, who bankrolls much of the most liberal branches of the Democrat party, is profiting from free trade and no tariffs on his products while Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat congress block the Colombia Free Trade agreement.
I talked about Soros in this morning’s 15 Minutes on Latin America.
UPDATE
The folks from ECrisis have a most jaundiced view of Soros.
At LGF: The Soros-McClellan Connection
While Scott McClelland’s doing great business with his new book and getting payback for getting fired, his publisher, Public Affairs Books, is owned by Perseus Book Group, which in turn is owned by … you guessed it. Go read it.
UPDATE
More at Media Mythbusters.
Associated Press, this morning: Study: False statements preceded war
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
…
The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.
The Fund for Independence in Journalism mission, in their own words:
The Fund’s primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support for the largest nonprofit, investigative reporting institution in the world, the Center for Public Integrity
According to AP, that makes them two nonprofit journalism organizations, when in fact it’s one organization with a legal branch to shield it from lawsuits.
Ed Morrissey takes a look at who’s behind the Center for Public Integrity:
the Center for Public Integrity hardly qualifies as “independent”. It gets much of its funding from George Soros, who has thrown millions of dollars behind Democratic political candidates, and explicitly campaigned to defeat George Bush in 2004.
…
Nowhere in these articles do either news organization bother to inform their reader of the partisan nature of the CPI. Besides Soros, it gets financing from the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Los Angeles Times Foundation. The FIJ shares most of its board members with the CPI, which hardly makes it a separate entity in terms of its political direction.
Big Lizards explains How to Lie About Lying:
One notes that “Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members” — isn’t that a lovely grammatical construct? — do not deny that Iraq was “trying to… obtain” WMD, even though they appear to include such claims under the category of “false statements.”Nor do they deny the administration’s claim that Iraq had “links” with al-Qaeda. They merely dispute the meaningfulness of those links… and dub that another “false statement” by the president and his administration.
If you look at the Wikipedia entry on the Center for Public Integrity, you’ll find more on the sources of funds. By the way,
Mr Soros was the man reported to have made $1bn profit in September 1992, betting correctly that the British currency would have to be devalued and leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
Now,
“I’m looking for a significant shift of power and influence away from the US in particular and a shift in favour of the developing world, particularly China.”
So, before you descend into further APDD (Associated Press Deficit Disorder), it’s worthwhile asking, “Who’s paying for the study?”, and take it from there.
