Summary: The world changes as new great powers arise. The rules of international law and commerce will evolve to meet their standards of what’s right and proper. That new world order might have no place for the financial privateers, like hedge fund manager George Soros, who loot the world under the protection of the USA and other western powers. I suspect that future generations will look back on these men as colorful outlaws, wondering why we were too weak to restrain them.
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“The Sting of Betrayal: George Soros & Cristina Kirchner“
Bianca Fernet, at The Balloon
23 September 2014
This article is worth reading in full, with a hat tip for it to Wolf Street., who provides this introduction to the author: a “stilettos-on-the-ground American economist in Buenos Aires, antidote to economists who act like economics is too complicated to understand and who spout off buzzwords that make you feel inadequate. Her website The Bubble covers pop and econ topics in Argentina. ”
Excerpt:
And if you ever choose to study the modern history of economic crises, you will learn that in this tale George Soros is not so much a guest appearance, he is practically Evita’s Che Guevara (in the musical, not real life). This ever-present, vocal and proud force, bolding acting, taking strokes that in the short term brutally crush developing economy currencies and systems with the guiding principal that he was expediting market corrections and bringing to the fore economic dislocations that, if left to fester, would produce far more detrimental effects than the crisis and forced rapid correction. George Soros didn’t invent shorting and speculatively attacking weak currencies, but he certainly made it an art.
To understand how rich indeed is Mr. Soro’s relationship with economic crises, lake a look at some of the greatest hits from the 90s:
- 1992: George Soros breaks the Bank of England by short selling US $10 billion worth of GBP (pounds)
- May 1997: Soros’s Quantum Fund takes short positions in Thai baht, betting the dollar peg was unsustainable
- July 1997: George Soros attempts to “double play” the Malaysian economy by simultaneously shorting the pressured ringitt and the Malaysian Stock Market.
- October 1997: Soros’s Quantum Fund borrows in Hong Kong dollars and shorts the Heng Seng index futures, positioning itself to gain if the HK dollar depreciated and putting pressure on the market to make this happen
In addition to these noteworthy showstoppers, Soros is also suspected of having a hand in the 1997 collapses of the Indonesian rupiah, the Filipino peso, the South Korean won, and the Singapore dollar.
This is well-known history, which we in the West consider unremarkable — perhaps not commendable, but routine commerce. Others see it differently. To them Soros and his fellow hedge fund managers are modern privateers, pillaging under the flags (hegemonic power) of the western nations. It’s war, as described in Unrestricted Warfare (超限战, literally “warfare beyond bounds”), one of the great texts of 4GW. It was written in 1999 by two Colonels in the China’s Air Force, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. They describe the 1997 attack by western hedge funds on the currencies of Southeast Asia as the first example of this form of warfare in our age.
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When people begin to lean toward and rejoice in the reduced use of military force to resolve conflicts, war will be reborn in another form and in another arena, becoming an instrument of enormous power in the hands of all those who harbor intentions of controlling other countries or regions. In this sense, there is reason for us to maintain that the financial attack by George Soros on East Asia, the terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy by Usama Bin Laden, the gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the disciples of the Aum Shinri Kyo, and the havoc wreaked by the likes of Morris Jr. on the Internet, in which the degree of destruction is by no means second to that of a war, represent semi-warfare, quasi-warfare, and sub-warfare, that is, the embryonic form of another kind of warfare. …
Financial War
Now that Asians have experienced the financial crisis in Southeast Asia, no one could be more affected by “financial war” than they have been. No, they have not just been affected; they have simply been cut to the very quick! A surprise financial war attack that was deliberately planned and initiated by the owners of international mobile capital ultimately served to pin one nation after another to the ground–nations that not long ago were hailed as “little tigers” and “little dragons.” Economic prosperity that once excited the constant admiration of the Western world changed to a depression, like the leaves of a tree that are blown away in a single night by the autumn wind. After just one round of fighting, the economies of a number of countries had fallen back ten years.
What is more, such a defeat on the economic front precipitates a near collapse of the social and political order. The casualties resulting from the constant chaos are no less than those resulting from a regional war, and the injury done to the living social organism even exceeds the injury inflicted by a regional war. Non-state organizations, in this their first war without the use of military force, are using non-military means to engage sovereign nations.
Thus, financial war is a form of non-military warfare which is just as terribly destructive as a bloody war, but in which no blood is actually shed. Financial warfare has now officially come to war’s center stage — a stage that for thousands of years has been occupied only by soldiers and weapons, with blood and death everywhere. We believe that before long, “financial warfare” will undoubtedly be an entry in the various types of dictionaries of official military jargon.
… Today, when nuclear weapons have already become frightening mantlepiece decorations that are losing their real operational value with each passing day, financial war has become a “hyperstrategic” weapon that is attracting the attention of the world. This is because financial war is easily manipulated and allows for concealed actions, and is also highly destructive.
Our privateers profit, even enjoy, their games. We shouldn’t expect the victims to like it. Now new great powers arise, and clearing away privateers and pirates is a common first move for such nations (today they sail the financial system, now the seas). That means revising the international rules that allow privateers to operate, and building global banking systems not under control of the western nations.
It’s already happening. Nothing can stop a new system from arising, either through evolution of the current system, development of a new system running in parallel, or a new system that replaces ours.
Our pirates are stars of our society, philanthropists, king makers of our politics, and gurus to whom we listen respectfully on whatever subjects they deign to lecture. Bigger than life, colorful lords of finance, even masters of the universe. Soon they’ll be extinct, unmourned by their victims.
That will not end financial warfare, any more than eliminating privateers eliminated naval combat. Nukes are (slowly) ending the forms of traditional war by States — forcing them to (like non-State actors) wage 4GW — as the US and Iran have against Iran (see below). But that’s a subject for another day.
For More Information
About financial warfare:
- Two essential texts in the theory and practice of financial warfare,11 September 2008
- Global Trends 2025: the National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project, 24 November 2008
Financial war waged against Iran:
- The hidden objective of our alliance against Iran, 11 June 2012
- Threats to attack Iran are smoke. Sanctions on Iran are our tool. Weakening Iran is our goal., 14 June 2012
- Hegemon at work on Iran, doing what hegemonic powers do. No war needed – or likely., 17 July 2012
- Our crusade slowly crushes Iran, and reveals much about us, 8 October 2012
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