Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Conclusion

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"Getting...the White House, Soros said in 2003, became the `central focus' of his life. In July 2003, he convened Democratic activists and two political strategists, Mark Steitz and Tom Novick, at his summer estate in...Southampton, Long Island...The plan was about how Soros...could throw money--and a lot of it--into the political arena...

"...The second key part of the plan highlighted that...donors...could give money to...groups...Pushed by Jane Mayer in her New Yorker interview about the perceived hypocrisy of his spending large amounts of money on politics, Soros said, `...The ends justify every legal means possible.'

"Soros donated $5 million to MoveOn.org...He pledged money to America Coming Together, a group intended to mobilize voters in 17 swing states...He gave to the Center for American Progress...Altogether, Soros spent $27 million to...elect...John Kerry...The aforementioned 2004 New Yorker article on his spending was titled `The Money Man.' Jane Mayer conducted an interview with Soros over lunch at his Southampton estate...

"...Soros...supported NATO's military intervention, which did not have U.N. approval, in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s...Open Society had also been involved in Ukraine...Soros had been funding various civil society groups in Ukraine for a decade...George Soros...made money all over the world; he made...financial decisions that caused...average people to lose large amounts of money and private-equity funds he controlled used an offshore law firm Appleby...A 2017 article published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists...quoted Brooke Harrington, a Copenhagen Business School professor, as saying that the offshore industry makes `the poor pporer' and excerbates wealth inequality...

"...Soros...wants to be one of the people dictating the future of politics...Soros, through Open Society, does support NGOs...Soros was never elected...The NGOs he supports...are not accountable to the general public. Soros does have far more power than the average person, and his...work isn't bound by borders, and he did make his money as a speculator. All of that is true..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 10

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"A billionaire with so much money, accountable to no one, unelected by any people to any government...It is Soros, with all his money and all his power, who is picking people--like Licht, like Finci, like Trbic'--who are then...empowered...They were given power to advance their personal agendas...

"...It seemed wrong to me that one man from abroad could have such a large role in determining who in a society was able to have a voice and a platform and tremendous sums of money with which to execute an agenda...George Soros was not from Bosnia, or the former Yugoslavia, and yet had had power and influence in the society...And who is George Soros to decide that this is the issue on which...aid and attention should be spent? Why was George Soros essentially an actor in a civil war across the world? Who appointed him...?

"...The Charter 77 Foundation, which funded...Czeck and Slovak dissidents...was launched in Stockholm in the late 1970s. Soros, working with Czechs and Slovaks in exile, was, by his own admission, their main source of support..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 9

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"Soros has justified speculation...The value of the baht plunged 32 percent against the dollar, and millions of Thai people lost their livelihoods. The Soros fund made $750 million...The Thai financial crisis sspread, becoming the Asia financial crisis, and Soros was blamed...At the 1997 World Bank and International Monetary Fund [IMF] meetings, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahather Mohamad called Soros a `criminal'...and claimed that he...caused the crash of the Malaysian ringgit...Soros...shorted the British pound...He and his employees helped trigger the Asian financial crisis..

.

"`The industry in which he made his money is an industry whose norms and rules have generally served to disenfranchise regular people over the last thirty, forty years,' said Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, a look at the way in which the very wealthy use philanthropy to protect the status quo and paper over problems they themselves have created, in a September 2019 phone interview...

"Soros...was still participating in a system that actively disenfranchises people...Soros...worked in finance in such a way that it broke countries' currencies..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 8

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"By the 1990s, there were enough foundations established that Soros's work evolved into a network. The staff in New York was growing...and Soros ended up opening an office space on Seventh Avenue...By 1994, when [Journalist Michael] Lewis traveled with Soros through Eastern Europe, Soros was dining with multiple presidents in one day and told his interlocutor, `Just write that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.'...

"Soros said...`As a hedge fund manager I...tried to maximize my profits'...In October [1991],..The Daily Mail ran a photo of Soros with the headline, `I Made A Billion Crashing the Pound.'...Soros said that [Soros's] Quantum and its offshoots had bet...ten billion dollars against sterling, and that...speculation had gotten roughly two billion dollars in profits.

"Invisible investors like Soros, owing no allegiance as citizens, could place bets big enough to change economic outcomes for entire nations,' Martin Vander Weyer, business editor of The Spectator, wrote for The Telegraph in 2012...A country was thrown into economic chaos...And this happened at least in part because Soros saw an opportunity to make a lot of money...Soros...wanted his empire to be grand and global..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 6 `

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"Philanthropy...is effectively a legal form of tax evasion, and Soros is one of many wealthy people who have set up charitable trusts or philanthropic organizations...toward these ends. Those with enough money can use it...to hold on to their money for themselves and their heirs...Soros...by his own admission...first set up a charitable...trust to keep money in the family and hand less of it over to the state for redistribution...

"...In 1980, he turned to...awarding scholarships to dissidents in Eastern Europe...He also began directly financially supporting dissident movement like Solidarity in Poland.., Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia (a group led by intellectuals), and Andrei Sakharov's...movement in Soviet Russia. The idea that Soros has...funded groups that worked against the ruling government or parties is not...untrue...

"...The Soros Foundation in Hungary, once established, continued to operate on a somewhat slective and secretive basis...From its earliest days, there was--by design--comething secretive about how George Soros gave the money away..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 5

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"...Soros...set up his own hedge fund in 1973. His fund was called the Soros Fund. He brought along Jim Rogers...They opened an office on Columbus Circle, not far from Soros's home at the time at 25 Central Park West. In 1978, the fund changed its name to Quantum Fund...(...around the time that Rogers left the fund.).

"By 1981, the fund had...assets worth $381 million. Soros had a personal fortune of $100 million...Soros said that his financial strategy was informed by his philosphy...When he believed there was opportunity ahead, he went in for the kill. In 1973, for example, the Arab-Israeli War had shifted tectonic plates in the defense industry...Soros...bought defense stocks and made money...

"...Soros met Susan Weber, twenty-five years his junior...in 1978, the same year he left Witschak, the two married in 1983...the same year of his first divorce...

"In 1979, Soros established The Open Society Fund as a charitable lead trust. His motives were not entirely altruistic. `A charitable lead trust is a very interesting tax gimmick.'.., he explained in the early 2000s...'...The principal that remains can be left [to one's heirs] without estate or gift tax. So this was the way I set up the trust for my children.'..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 4

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"After graduating from LSE, Soros...wrote to all the merchant banks in London...At Singer & Friedlander...one of the managing directors was Hungarian.

"He got a job there in 1953 and worked in arbitrage and the stock exchange...George followed his brother and moved to America to work at a small brokerage firm on Wall Street owned by the father of one of his co-workers at Singer & Friedlander...George Soros moved to New York City to work in international arbitage...He lived...in a two-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive...

"Soros stayed at the brokerage firm, F.M. Mayer, for three years, but then, in 1959, moved to Wertheim & Co., an investment firm...In 1960, he married...Annaliese Witschak...with whom he moved to an apartment on Sheridan Square and built a house in Southampton...Another firm, Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder came calling. Soros began there in 1963...

"...In 1966, at Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, he set-up a model account with $100,000 of the firm's money...In 1969, he used $4 million to set up a hedge fund...named Double Eagle Fund...The Double Eagle Fund was successful...Soros was recommending stocks to clients that he was also potentially buying for his own account and so could have been accused of recommending stocks to make his own stocks perform better..." 

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 3

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"It is...an understatement to say that George Soros is influential in politics. In 2004, he threw his financial weight behind then-Senator John Kerry in the hope of defeating the incumbent president...Soros is still, to this day, a political backer...In July 2019, he created a PAC for the 2020 election called Democracy PAC and promptly put $5.1 million into it..

"Gyorgy Schwartz...was born in 1930 in Budapest...It was not until 1936 that Gyorgy Schwartz became a Soros...George Soros's father, Tivadar Soros (born Tivadar Schwartz), was a lawyer...Tivadar would not have his family use an obviously Jewish name. In 1936, Schwartz became Soros...

"Tivadar Soros...was of a certain socioeconomic class and had the means to save himself...His...plan was to obtain documents from Christians...He did for..his younger son, who hid out as Sandor Kiss...

"George Soros as Sandor Kiss hid out with...a Ministry of  Agriculture employee. Tivadar Soros paid the man to take...George in and pretend he was his godson..

"...In 1998, Steve Kroft, interviewing George Soros on 60 Minutes, noted that Tivadar Soros had `bribed a government official to swear that you were his godson,' adding `as hundreds of thousands of Jews were being shipped off to the Nazi death camps...George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.'..For some people...Lajos Ozme...for example--Tivadar Soros charged quite a lot to obtain false documents...

"...George Soros found life in socialist Hungary constricting...By 1947, Soros...decided to go to England...He got on the train without his permit..." 

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 2

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"...Soros was never elected...The NGOs he supports...are not accountable to the general public. Soros does have far more power than the average person, and his...work isn't bound by borders, and he did make his money as a speculator. All of that is true...

"This is...the problem with billionaire philanthropists: at the end of the day, they're still the ones with the money, and the power to decide what to do with it..

.

"...`My defense is that I operate within the rules,' Soros said in 1995. `...I have absolutely no moral qualms in being branded a speculator...I am the classic limousine liberal...' He also noted that he...didn't start giving his money away...until he had made millions...

"One could argue...that it's easy to criticize a system that allows people to amass great sums of money through speculation after one has done exactly that...After one has used it to become rich, live in luxury, and exert great influence..." 

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's "The Influence Of Soros" 2020 Book: Pt. 1

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"...In 2015...Jacobin ran an article titled `Counting on Billionaires,' which argued that `Philanthrocapitalists like George Soros want us to believe they can remedy the economic misery that they themselves create.'...

"...George Soros has wielded and continues to have tremendous influence...It may be an understatement to say that George Soros is influential in finance...He became one of the fathers of the modern-day hedge fund, establishing his own fund, Quantum (advised through the firm retaining his name, Soros Fund Management). He is perhaps the most famous currency speculator in history, credited with...`breaking the Bank of England'...

"Soros...survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary...by pretending to be a Christian...

"It is...an understatement to say that Soros is influential in philanthropy. In the late 1970s...he began a foundation called `Open Society.'..."

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 10

(A shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of the Lower East Side underground/alternative newspaper, “The Shadow”)

During his term as New York City’s Public Advocate, de Blasio also apparently used his position to obtain the political and financial backing of Billionaire Speculator and Plutocrat George Soros (who also operates the tax-exempt Open Society Institute foundation that subsidizes various left-liberal middle-class NGOs around the globe and left-liberal, Democratic Party-oriented middle-class activists and NGOs in the United States).

As the New York Times also revealed in its Aug. 31, 2013 article:

“…Mr. de Blasio nurtured a relationship with George Soros, the billionaire financier, whose foundation became the single biggest benefactor of an obscure nonprofit organization that paid for Mr. de Blasio to promote his advocacy work around the country….His advocacy brought him into contact with a powerful ally: Mr. Soros, who had long deplored the influence of corporations in the political system, even as he poured millions of his own fortune into campaigns.

“The billionaire banker and the Brooklyn activist met on an autumn evening in 2010, when Mr. de Blasio spoke on a panel…held in Mr. Soros’s grand Fifth Avenue home. The two chatted afterward, and Mr. de Blasio promised to stay in touch.

“Four months later, Mr. Soros’s foundation pledged $400,000 to the Fund for Public Advocacy…to support the work of the public advocate’s office.

“The donation was the largest single contribution to the fund, a tax exempt 501(c)(3), during Mr. de Blasio’s tenure….”

Yet Soros’ foundation obtained the $400,000 it used to subsidize de Blasio’s Fund for Public Advocacy from the surplus capital that Soros gets from speculating and investing in transnational corporations that exploit workers and middle-class consumers around the globe; and the special private economic and class interests of Billionaire Soros and his Soros Fund Management firm conflict with the economic class interests of the public and most of the people in New York City who work and live in New York City.

For unlike most people who live, work or grew up in New York City, George Soros and his Soros Fund Management LLC investment firm controlled or owned or collected dividends from over $5.7 billion worth of Wall Street corporate stock in 2013. According to its SEC filing, on June 30, 2013 the Soros Fund Management investment firm’s portfolio included, for example, over $344 million worth of Google stock, over $112 million worth of AIG stock, over $76 million worth of Macys Inc. stock, over $32 million worth of Apple Inc. stock, over $30 million worth of Wal-Mart stock, over $14 million worth of Time Warner Cable stock, over $3.4 million worth of Comcast stock, over 8 million worth of Citigroup stock and over $46 million worth of Loral Space & Communications stock.

Coincidentally, a retired Loral Space & Communications executive named Bernard Schwartz also gave “the maximum $4,950” to de Blasio’s “mayoral bid, then poured $25,000 into the Fund for Public Advocacy,” according to the Aug. 31, 2013 article in the New York Times,

(end of part 10)