George Soros is shorting America.
The Wall Street Journal reported on its front page this morning that leftist billionaire and Democratic mega-donor George Soros, the convicted insider trader who “broke the Bank of England,” has stepped back into trading personally in recent months.
The Journal reports that Soros is betting against America, adopting “bearish derivative positions that serve as wagers against U.S. stocks.” It is not clear at what point in the first quarter the firm took those positions; the S&P 500 was up 3% on the quarter, so Soros may be in the red so far, according to the Journal report. But on May 16, Soros’ fund disclosed that it had doubled its bet against American stocks.
The reports come in the wake of an exposé of Soros-funded efforts to keep refugees flowing into the U.S., as well as disclosures last year that Soros has poured approximately $33 million into organizations that pitched in on the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the wake of the Ferguson riots, and as violence arguably driven by Soros-funded front groups escalates as the Trump campaign gains steam. Mr. Soros is also helping underwrite “jailbreak” efforts to release as many convicted felons from prison as possible in America, at the same time he pushes to open U.S. borders even wider to criminal illegal aliens and a poorly screened potential security threats.
So. Having now driven a rash of race-baiting riots, illegal immigration, anti-cop carping and Willie Horton-style prison policies and the inevitable crime wave that follows, and the potential for open-borders terrorism, Mr. Soros, a longtime supporter of gun control, just sold off stakes he had acquired in two ammunition makers – at the same time he poured $8 million into a super-PAC supporting Hillary Clinton, who is campaigning on a gun control agenda.
Oh – and he’s shorting America.
But Mr. Soros’ dabbling doesn’t stop at our borders.
Mr. Soros also sees a Great Recession-sized bubble in Communist-controlled China that is about to burst – and is doing everything he can to pop it, to the point that Chinese state media has accused him of “declaring war” on their currency, “trying to create panic for profit.”
He’s likewise betting big on his view that Europe is underestimating the cost of the current illegal immigration crisis from Muslim-majority countries. In particular, he says that the Brexit would spell the end of the EU.
At the same time, Mr. Soros is calling for increasing that cost and acknowledges groups he underwrites are pushing to worsen that crisis, the worst since World War II.
In October, 2015, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Soros’ native Hungary charged that the Muslim-majority “invasion is driven, on the one hand, by people smugglers, and on the other by [human rights] activists who support everything that weakens the nation-state…perhaps best represented by George Soros,” according to a report in Bloomberg, “Orban Accuses Soros of Stoking Refugee Wave to Weaken Europe.”
Orbán stressed, “His name is perhaps the strongest example of those who support anything that weakens nation states, they support everything that changes the traditional European lifestyle.”
In response, Mr. Soros issued an email statement to Bloomberg Business saying his groups viewed “protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”
Granting that Mr. Soros views “national borders as the obstacle,” is the protection of the overwhelmingly Muslim refugees the objective?
Mr. Soros admits that “Realistically, it will be difficult for Europe to absorb more than one million migrants,” and his view is further that:
[EU] officials have not recognized the full cost of dealing with the migration issue—the crisis. And they have a blind spot: We estimate that the cost exceeds 10 billion euros a year, and they are nowhere near this figure officially. And one of the reasons why they don’t recognize this is because they don’t know where they would find the money.
Mr. Soros states flatly that in part as a result, “The EU is on the verge of collapse,” and that “the very survival of the EU is at risk.”
Yet virtually simultaneously, Soros insists that Europe “has to accept at least a million” of the Muslim-majority illegal immigrants a year – and “cover the cost of housing health care and education for each refugee for the first two years.”
In another interview, Mr. Soros has further admitted that “It would be impossible for the EU to finance this expenditure out of its current budget,” and so advocates their taking on additional debt instead.
Worse, he actually calls for making it easier for the illegals to make it into Europe, arguing that “if asylum-seekers have a reasonable chance of ultimately reaching Europe, they are far more likely to stay where they are.”
In other words, Mr. Soros is calling for opening the door to Europe as wide as possible to Muslim-majority illegal immigrants, saying that will decrease the number who show up.
Convinced?
Directly in the middle of all this activity, on February 11, 2016, a journalist interviewing Mr. Soros began a question, “You have retired from running your hedge fund and devote all your energies to your foundation.” Mr. Soros failed to correct that misimpression, going on to note, “In danger lies opportunity. It’s always darkest before dawn.”
He may not have to wait long. Mr. Soros’ global bets, mostly on gold, are already paying off. According to the Journal, Soros Fund Management, LLC, has “bought over 19 million shares of Barrick Gold Corp.,” a position that “has gained more than $90 million since the end of the first quarter.” The firm also “bought a million shares of miner Silver Wheaton Corp. in the first quarter, a position that has increased 28% so far in the second quarter.”
But beyond buying gold, he’s not shorting China, or Europe.
He’s shorting America.
He’s betting that the American chaos he’s helping fund, the bursting of the Chinese bubble he’s helping pop, and the EU’s collapse under the weight of a wave of illegal immigration he’s helping crest, it’s the U.S. economy that will pay the price.
For context, the Journal notes that, “The last time Mr. Soros became closely involved in his firm’s trading: 2007, when he became worried about housing and placed bearish wagers over two years that netted more than $1 billion of gains.”
The moves followed his backing of groups like the Orwellian Center for Responsible Lending, which critics charged helped drive the housing crisis by directly running up $5 billion in subprime lending, first making its primary backers even more wealthy, then when the bust came making those who supported the group and bet against the housing market, including Soros, a fortune.
Finally, just for the record, Mr. Soros was convicted of insider trading in 2002 in France for front-running the Socialist-led government’s move to retake control of a major bank.
As the French would (actually, did) say: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Or, perhaps, après mois, le deluge…
Christopher C. Hull, Ph.D., the former chief of staff for Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), is the president and campaign manager of Issue Management, Inc., a D.C.-based public affairs firm. One of his clients is a national security think tank dedicated to Ronald Reagan’s vision of peace through strength.