Hanne Nabintu Herland ranted in an Aug. 30 WorldNetDaily column:
Financial mogul, atheist and one of the world’s famous investors, George Soros has amassed much of his fortune via the controversial practice of ruthless, global currency speculation. With major impact on global economies, his aggressive financial strategies have targeted politics and pushed the demonization of traditional, Christian Western values for decades. His funding of Marxist, left-wing political movements have produced disruption, civil unrest and threatened national unity, while he has profited immensely. This has tainted Soros’ legacy and his NGO, Open Society Foundations.
So, what are the moral standards of a billionaire like Soros who wields such power over politicians, judges, government officials and the financial market? He once explained his view on morality in a “60 Minutes” interview, which gave a unique glimpse into his mind: “I don’t feel guilty, because I am engaged in an amoral activity which is not meant to have anything to do with guilt.” So, acting solely on monetary gain, not looking at the social consequences of his actions or any Environmental, Social and Governance standards (ESG) consideration, rendered him not personally accountable, since financial market choices are amoral activity in his view?
In fact, Soros’ view of markets has been justified by no other than Forbes magazine:
There’s no proof whatsoever that Soros is motivated by amorality in his speculations if you must call his well considered and carefully researched positions in a number of gold mining companies, off shore drilling operations, the Monsanto Corp. and many others that are disclosed regularly in his SEC filings.
Anyone who has read Soros analysis of the “The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means,” in which he spells out his concept, his mantra, his insights into “The New Paradigm For Financial Markets,” (Public Affairs, 2008) No, Hertzberg. There is nothing “amoral” about being a student of financial markets and understanding when the prices of securities or coommodities or currencies have either risen too far or in other cases fallen too far. And then taking advantage of their having gone too far in one direction.
Is it “amoral” to have recognized in the summer of 2008 that the price of crude oil was in a massive bubble and set for a violent fall when it hit $148 a barrel. I call that brilliant and gutsy– and it provided Soros with a giant profit of God knows how much.
Herland then uncritically repeated the libel that the Jewish Soros was a Nazi:
Soros explains how during World War II, as a Jewish teenager, he was involved with NAZI activities, specifically selling off possessions confiscated from Jews sent to death camps. Soros has never publicly shown regret for these actions. On the other hand, he pointed out that it was the happiest time in his life. It was easy for him as a 14-year-old to help the NAZIs expropriate Jewish property, shamelessly recalling his collaboration with the them: “No, not at all. It created no problem at all. I was 14 years old, and I would say that that was when my character was made.”
Glenn Beck recently spoke about Soros in a Blaze TV podcast: “You took and sold the goods of homes that were taken by the NAZIs from the Jews. They took the Jews to the death camps, and you cleaned out the houses and sold the valuables. It is weird that you have no regrets on that. I was shocked to hear you say that when you were on ’60 Minutes.’ My follow-up question would have been, ‘Have you ever been diagnosed as a psychopath?’ It became very clear that you indeed were a psychopath when you spoke about how these experiments with countries and currencies that you collapse, that people are hurt but you find it to be ‘fun.'”
In fact, Soros was a teenager doing what he needed to do to survive the Nazi regime — in this case, posing as a Christian and helping a relative inventory Jewish property that had already been seized by the Nazis. Herland offers no evidence that Soros was personally involved in selling those belongings.
Herland continued to rant:
Since Soros, the term “philanthropy” has transformed into a highly negative term, used by billionaires to avoid taxation by funneling private capital into NGOs, using personal wealth to gain access to politicians and taxpayer money.
The Soros hedge fund success has been partly based on the strategy to actively produce the very results in countries that he had betted on would happen. By using his own NGOs, which have been heavily funded by government grants, he has been able to spectacularly destabilize nations, topple currencies, sway elections, and produce civil unrest and bloody revolutions that alter the course of a nation. By instigating revolt against conservative governments, radical gender ideologies have been promoted. And all this is considered, again, amoral activity.
Then again, Soros’ activities in this area tend to disrupt the right-wing authoritarians Herland loves, including Vladimir Putin.