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. 7

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

"...Geza Jeszenskzky, who was minister of foreign affairs for Jozsef Antall...prime minister of Hungary, told me over email that Soros offered to settle Hungary's national debt in echange for stake in Hungary's state-owned companies. Jeszenskzky remembers the meeting as being in the fall of 1989 `at what was then called Hotel Novotel near the Southern Railway Terminal'...

"In addition to giving out scholarships, one of the Hungarian Soros Foundation's first projects was to offer photocopiers to institutions...Soros provided...many photocopiers...It was subversive--Soros was, in effect, funding underground...information...It was their first real, successful foray into philanthropy as subversion...Gabor Horn...in the late 1980s and early 1990s, received support from Soros as a representative of an independent labor union...

"The Soros Foundation was not the only institution to support...opposition movements, as Timothy Garton Ash...a professor of European studies at Oxford, told...over the phone from the United Kingdom...He got to know Soros `fairly quickly' because he was traveling around...Eastern Europe in the 1980s writing for the New York Review of Books. He described Soros as a `very important supporter of...opposition movements'...There were others involved, like the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was not just Soros.

"But Soros was indeed there supporting these opposition groups, including that group...Fidesz...Fidesz transformed from a youth organization to a political party..."

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.'..."