ALG Editor’s Note: Earlier, ALG News reported, in error that Mr. George Soros was a “significant shareholder” in Moody’s. This was a mistake, and this piece has been edited to redact the error.
“To prevent the US economy from sliding into a depression, Mr. Obama must implement a radical and comprehensive set of policies. Alongside the well-advanced fiscal stimulus package, these should include a system-wide and compulsory recapitalisation of the banking system and a thorough overhaul of the mortgage system – reducing the cost of mortgages and foreclosures.”—George Soros, “The game changer,” Financial Times, January 29th, 2009.
The great theater of the absurd now being played out on the national stage has at last reached the part where the villain unmasks himself, revealing his own identity and evil intentions to all the world. Alas, he can still be stopped. But it will require heroism on the part of millions of Americans who, acting in concert, must stand in the way of those seeking to bring an ignominious end to freedom, justice, and yes, in fact, the American way.
The villain, in this case, is all too well-known. He is George Soros, billionaire investor, and MoveOn.org underwriter.
Overleveraging in the financial system, much of it government-induced, is problematic enough. Mr. Soros would double down on that failure in his support of so-called “stimulus” plan currently in Congress.
There were, of course, failures throughout the system. But it was too much government, not a lack of government intervention—as Mr. Soros argues in the pages of the Financial Times—that created the current financial miasma.
The mass proliferation of mortgages in general by Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—coupled with easy money by the Fed—made the asset bubble something on the order of gargantuan. And it was that bubble inevitably popping that triggered the slide now threatening the entire global economy.
So, now, the villain of the piece conveniently shows up to “solve” a crisis which, if the truth were told, he is helping to worsen through his support of gargantuan government spending. And all the while, his solution moves America further down the road to lock-step socialism.
His plan is for the U.S. to nationalize the banking system with a “system-wide and compulsory recapitalization and a thorough overhaul of the mortgage system.” This is command-and-control at its worst. Simply put, it would mean that the executive branch of government—the President, Treasury, and the Fed—will literally run the financial system any way they see fit.
Mr. Soros’ sweeping, radical rhetoric is as bold as it is terrifying. On deficit spending? He believes the U.S. should borrow its way out of the current mess. On energy policy? He wants to put “a floor under the price of fossil fuels by imposing a price on carbon emissions and import duties on oil to keep the domestic price above, say, $70 per barrel.” This would, he believes, encourage investment into alternative energy sources, none of which has yet proven viable and profitable without government subsidy.
And on international monetary policy? “The international financial system must be reformed. Far from providing a level playing field, the current system favours the countries in control of the international financial institutions, notably the US, to the detriment of nations at the periphery. The periphery countries have been subject to the market discipline dictated by the Washington consensus but the US was exempt from it.” (In short: wave goodbye to U.S. sovereignty.)
In the first half of his Financial Times piece Mr. Soros advocates in favor of President Obama’s $819 billion spending bill—as Senator Jeff Sessions said yesterday, the “largest spending bill in the history of the Republic.” He supports a TARP II, which will probably cost another $1 trillion. And then he concludes by advocating a “level playing field” wherein the U.S. should be subject to the forces of “market discipline” (as mandated, of course, by international gatekeepers.)
So, in other words, after implementing policies that defy more than 200 years of fiscal discipline, Mr. Soros would then apply those same forces from without to an artificial house of cards (that he helped to construct). And then he would stand proudly by and applaud the collapse.
Not surprisingly, this is the same man who was once quoted as saying that the “main obstacle to a just and stable world is the United States.”
And now the villain is fully unmasked.
Robert Romano is the Editor of ALG News Bureau.
