Soros Made Nearly $1B From U.S. Debt Downgrade?

[Jake Martinez]

What’s wrong with this picture?

-Posted on The Blaze-By Christopher Santarelli-On August 8, 2011:

“In the first trading day following S&P’s announcement that the U.S. government credit rating would go from Triple-A down to AA+, U.S. stocks have sharply declined and investors are scrambling to rid themselves of risky assets. With Wall Street in disarray, one investor is smiling after having walked away from the crisis possibly 10 billion dollars richer. ETF Daily News reports that the investor bet on the downgrade, and is now heavily benefiting from it:

“Someone dropped a bomb on the bond market Thursday – a $1 billion Armageddon trade betting the United States will lose its AAA credit rating. In one moment, an invisible trader placed a single trade that moved the most liquid debt market in the world. The massive trade wasn’t placed in bonds themselves; it was placed in the futures market. The trade was for block trades of 5,370 10-year Treasury futures executed at 124-03 and 3,100 Treasury bond futures executed at 125-01.”

Jack Barnes of Money Morning suggests hedge fund manager John Paulson, Bill Gross’s PIMCO, or U.S. and Chinese central banks could be the betters, as they are some of only a few shops or central banks that could even take on such a level of market risk. Barnes notes that Paulson made about $6 billion on a similar trade not too long ago when he bet against subprime mortgages, the investments that helped bring down Lehman Brothers in 2008.

That seems plausible. But there is one more possibility. At least one outlet is suggesting that liberal financier and billionaire investor George Soros could be the one. Daily Mail reports:

“There are mounting rumours that investor George Soros, 80, famously known as ‘the man who broke the Bank of England’, could be involved.

He made more than $1billion on currency speculation when the British pound left the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992.

The latest bet was made on July 21 on trades of 5,370 ten-year Treasury futures and 3,100 Treasury bond futures, reported ETF Daily News.

Now the investor’s gamble seems to have paid off after Standard and Poor’s issued a credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA+ last Friday.

Whoever it is stands to earn a 1,000 per cent return on their money, with the expectation that interest rates will be going up after the downgrade.”

The deal was made around the same time Soros dissolved the non-family aspect of his hedge fund, returning money to outside investors while freeing his fund from adhering to SEC reporting mandates. Barnes asserted in July that whoever made the deal must have been a major proprietary trader who had an ear to someone first aware of when a debt-cieling deal was made between major leaders in Washington. Kenneth Schortgen connects the dots to Soros’s possible involvement:

“While the identity of the ‘mystery investor’ remains unknown, many indicators do point to George Soros as the principal benefactor.  First, Soros has been tied to the Obama administration since the 2008 elections.  In February of this year in fact, a Soros investment fund profited well on President Obama’s new green energy policies. Secondly, right about the exact same time as the $1 Billion bet took place on the US credit rating downgrade, Soros made public the move to divest his management fund of outside investors, and quietly go private.  This move allows him to make trades and investments without being required to notify the SEC under the new Dodd-Frank act passed in Congress last year.

Of course, this mystery bet could have been made by any Hedge Fund that followed Soro’s course of action, and went private on their own.  However, very few people have the inside contacts with the Treasury Department and Obama administration that Soros does, and the historical evidence does point strongly to this bet being one that he has done in the past.”

In 1992 Soros nearly destroyed the British Pound, and made a profit of $1 Billion, by betting against the currency and borrowing sterling heavily, converting that into a mixture of Deutschmarks and French francs. On “Black Wednesday,” Soros’s bet paid off, and he has since been called the man “who broke the Bank of England.” Many see “eerie similarities” between the breaking of the Bank of England, and the investor who made big when betting on the first S & P downgrade to U.S. credit in the agency’s history.

Time will tell if the mystery investor, and his or her high-level Washington insider, will be revealed.”

Source:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/so-who-made-nearly-a-billion-dollar...

Note: The following articles and/or blog posts and videos relate to this disturbing issue-You Decide:

I. Agents of George Soros Sabotaging the U.S. Economy!

What’s wrong with this picture?

Posted on USA Survival News-By Cliff Kincaid-On August 25, 2010:

“In shocking news, the New York Times cites figures that investors withdrew $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year when billions of dollars should have been expected to be flowing in.

The New York Times blames this unusual development on “economic uncertainty.” One explanation is that the financial reform bill pushed by President Obama and passed by Congressional liberals was a complete fraud. The bill failed to protect invested capital, did nothing to stop the devaluation of our homes, anddidn’t reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government sponsored mortgage entities involved in the financial crisis.

As we have consistently reported, the basic problem is that the regulations that protected investors and their capital were removed, beginning in 2007 under the George W. Bush Administration, and have not been restored.

Zubi Diamond, author of Wizards of Wall Street, has released a new YouTube video highlighting what needs to be done and how the nation got into this predicament. He has focused attention on the notorious hedge fund short sellers who brought on the 2008 economic and financial crisis that paved the way for Barack Obama’s election as president.

These short sellers, such as George Soros, made billions of dollars betting on the collapse of the subprime mortgage industry as ordinary Americans lost their savings.

“They subverted our capitalist system economy in order to achieve a regime change in America. They looted the country and visited financial violence on the American people. American families bear the brunt of the destruction of capitalism and the installation of socialism in their country with job losses, home foreclosures, and retirement portfolio wipe-outs,” Diamond charges. 

The major media, he said, have concealed the truth about what has happened from the American people.

He explained, “Most Americans cannot even imagine the fact that this calamitous crisis was deliberately engineered by enemies and traitors within our borders.”

Diamond urged the media to start educating the public about what is happening: “Most people do not know how capitalism works, in terms of the safeguard regulations which protected our capitalist economy. Once you unhinge and unscrew the nuts and bolts, and tear down the underpinnings and remove the safeguard regulations, you have succeeded in dismantling capitalism and killing the economic engine of growth. They are killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”



In response to the Times article about investors fleeing the market, Diamond said, “Who wouldn’t flee the market when you are being robbed every day by the hedge fund short sellers? They are targeting and preying on the small investors. The reality is beginning to sink in as more people and more people realize that the economy is in terrible shape, and it is not going to recover.”

A recovery is possible, Diamond said. But the Congress and the President have to restore the regulationsthat “protect the invested capital that is needed to create jobs, and to protect the value of our homes and assets. You must restrict short sale transactions, end mark to market accounting completely, restore the old circuit breakers, and restore the old uptick rule to their original condition without any modification.”
His recommendations include:

• Reinstate the uptick rule.
• Remove mark-to-market accounting and replace it with historic cost accounting.
• Dismantle and discontinue trading on all the short Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), also called leveraged inverse ETFs.
• Reinstate the circuit breakers and the trading curb to kick in whenever the Dow Jones drops 150 points.
• Regulate the hedge funds just like mutual funds and pension funds are regulated.

A powerful film, Stock Shock: The Short Selling of the American Dream, analyzes this phenomenon as it relates to the rise and fall of Sirius XM radio stock. The film asserts that the removal of the uptick rule in 2007 by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) led to the rise of short selling and stock market manipulation.

Diamond explained how the looting and destruction of the economy have occurred. “To short sell a stock is to sell a stock you do not own. Such a transaction should be governed by a regulation, designed to protect the owners of the stock, their assets and invested capital. That regulation which governed short sale transactions is called the uptick rule or short sale restriction rule.”

He added, “The Managed Funds Association (MFA), the association of hedge fund short sellers, successfully lobbied regulators and policy makers to remove that short sale restriction requirement, meaning they now have the government’s approval to sell what they do not own unrestricted, when they know very well that selling what they do not own is stealing. The only difference is that they are stealing with the approval of the government.”

“Our stock market is a broken market,” Diamond added. “There is no investor confidence because the invested capital is not protected. There is no uptick rule, no circuit breakers and no trading curb. There are no legal protections for the capital. There is no capitalism.”

The stock market, he said, has become “a money manufacturing factory. The commodities being processed are the small investors, retirement portfolios, and mutual fund investors.” 

As a result, the small investors are experiencing diminishing returns and losing their appetite for risk.

The Times should explain to its readers the real reason why investors are fleeing the stock market, he said.

“Our publicly traded companies can now be held hostage by the hedge fund short sellers as they continue preying on investors,” he said. “They can evaporate any of the publicly traded companies in short order. They demonstrated that capability in the flash crash’ of May 6, 2010, when they drove down the stock price of Accenture (ticker symbol CAN) from $44 per share to one cent per share in a 15-minute time period.”

The SEC is supposed to be an independent regulatory body to protect the integrity of the market but it is under the control of the Managed Funds Association. “They have rigged and primed the market for manipulation,” Diamond said.

In the past, ordinary Americans could analyze the market and individuals companies and invest accordingly. Today, the situation is different. 
 


”Without the short sale restriction regulation, the fundamental attributes of the companies are rendered useless,” he said. “The effective use of technical analysis has been nullified. When it does seem to work, it can be used by the hedge fund short sellers to manipulate the market as they set traps for investors at each fulcrum, resistance or support levels.”
 


He explained, “You have a market that is very difficult to trade or invest in. This is a market that can do anything, reverse, go up or down, or reverse again with increased volatility as the manipulators are on a search mission, preying on small investors, searching for investment capital to steal.”
 

Diamond compared the stock market to a Las Vegas casino, where the house always wins. The MFA is the house in today’s market. “They own the stock market and the stock market police - the SEC. Everything is stacked against the small investors. They operate with impunity.”
 


Diamond said the hedge fund short sellers use various techniques to accomplish their insidious goals. These include “dark pools,” in which their transactions are concealed from the public; flash orders; front running; insider trading; and collusion. 



He explained, “They raid companies at will, shorting stocks fearlessly without an uptick, colluding to determine the direction of the market. They trade fearlessly without risk, and they transferred all the fear, and risk of investment losses and capital losses to the small investors, regular investors, retirement portfolios and mutual fund 
 


As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, the so-called financial reform bill which Diamond warned against but passed the Congress exempts the SEC from the Freedom of Information Act.

“The documents that I was available to see to help me write the book Wizards of Wall Street will no longer be made available to the public or journalists. The SEC will now only will release documents to the Congress and the courts. The MFA made sure that its lap dogs at the SEC are shielded from scrutiny and criticism as they cooperate with the agents of George Soros in destroying America and capitalism.”

Source:

http://www.usasurvival.org/ck08.25.10.html

II. Soros Loses Bid to Overturn 2002 Insider Trading Conviction By European Court of Human Rights!

Smoking Gun or Not?

Posted on FoxNews.com-On October 7, 2011:

“George Soros, the billionaire financier and liberal activist, was dealt a legal blow this week when the European Court of Human Rights refused to overturn his nine-year-old criminal conviction for insider trading.

A French court convicted Soros in 2002 for insider trading in the late 1980s, but the Hungary-born investor appealed, arguing that the French law on insider trading at the time was too ambiguous to find him guilty.

But the European court ruled Thursday in a 4-3 decision that the French rules were clear enough to convict him.

Soros’s lawyer, Ron Soffer, told the Wall Street Journal that his client would appeal the decision.

“There are some serious questions that still need to be answered,” Soffer told the newspaper.

The conviction is based on a 1988 investment Soros made in French bank Societe Generale. A French court found that Soros sold his shares for $2.9 million in profits after receiving insider knowledge about a plan hatched by a group of wealthy French businessman known as the “golden granddads” to force a takeover of the bank.

The takeover failed but resulted in a higher share price for Societe Generale. French prosecutors launched an investigation in 1990 that ultimately led to Soros’s conviction 12 years later and a $2.9 million fine that was reduced on appeal.

Soros’s legal team has argued that even France’s former market regulator found the country’s insider trading laws too vague.

But on Thursday, the European court said in a statement that while the French law wasn’t precise, Soros was a sophisticated investor and “could not have been unaware that his decision to invest in shares in [Societe Generale] entailed the risk that he might be committing the offense of insider trading,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Soros’s last chance to clear his name rests on an appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights.”

Source:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/07/soros-loses-bid-to-overt...

III. Meet the Obama link to Wall Street terror: ‘Radical's plan involves strategy to collapse stock market!’-Posted on WND.com-By Aaron Klein-On October 6, 2011:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=352685

IV. Soros fingerprints all over protests here, too: ‘Sordid ties of architect who specializes in crisis’!-Posted on WND.com-By Aaron Klein-On September 8, 2011:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=342905

V. Europe Stunned After Being Told “Obama Is Not In Charge”!-Posted by EU Times-On September 18, 2011:

http://www.eutimes.net/2011/09/europe-stunned-after-being-told-obam...

VI. Why Did The Fed Use American Taxpayers Money To Bail Out Eurozone?-Posted on InvestmentWatch-On September 15, 2011:

http://investmentwatchblog.com/desperate-fed-bails-out-faltering-eu...

VII. Video: Trader on the BBC says Eurozone Market will crash!-Posted on YouTube.com-By nsotd4 on Sep 26, 2011:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aC19fEq...

VIII. Is The Marxist Plan Obama’s Allies Put In Play Succeeding?-Posted on Declaration Alliance-By Alan Keyes-On June 2, 2011:

http://mail.conservativecontacts.com/hostedemail/email.htm?h=446a7c...

IX. Hedge Funds Spark World Revolution: Goal is the “United Socialist States of Europe!”-Posted on America’s Survival, Inc.-By Cliff Kincaid-On May 10, 2010:

http://www.usasurvival.org/ck05.11.10.html

X. Video: Stock market shenanigans, Greece and President Obama-Posted on VideoFoxNews.com-By Bill O’Reilly-On May 8, 2010:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4184389/talking-points-57

XI. George Soros Handicapping American Energy-Posted on American Thinker-By Ed Lasky-On March 02, 2011:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/george_soros_handicapping_am...

XII. An Examination Of Some Of Soros’ Socioeconomic Philosophies!-Posted on The Blaze-By Becket Adams-On October 6, 2011:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/in-his-own-words-an-examination-of-...

XIII. Dictatorship transformation almost complete!-Posted on The Roth Show-On May 26, 2011:

http://therothshow.com/2011/05/dictatorship-transformation-almost-c... 

Note:  My following blog posts contain numerous articles and/or blog posts and videos that relate to this disturbing issue-You Decide:

Who or What Was Behind the Financial Crisis?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/who’s-behind-the-financial...

Who or what caused the economic crisis that propelled President Obama into office?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/who-or-what-caused-the-eco...

ACORN-The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)-Automaker Labor Unions!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/acorn-the-community-reinve...

Manipulation Behind Market Plunge!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/manipulation-behind-market...

The Wall Street Bailout Bill Threatens Our Bottom Line!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/the-wall-street-bailout-bi...

Is George Soros deliberately handicapping American energy?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/is-george-soros-deliberate...

Is President Obama inciting riots across the US?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/is-president-obama-incitin...

Powerful men who meet secretly to pkan on how to run our country!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/powerful-men-who-meet-secr...

New World Order By Executive Order!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/new-world-order-by-executi...

Is the Fed’s concept of buying $600 billion of Treasuries just a smokescreen?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/is-the-fed’s-concept-of-bu...

Is it important to understand the Marxist assault on the foundations of our system?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/is-it-important-to-underst...

Note:  If you have a problem viewing any of the listed blog posts please copy web site and paste it on your browser. Be aware that some of the articles and/or blog posts or videos listed within the contents of the above blog post(s) may have been removed by this administration because they may have considered them to be too controversial.  Sure seems like any subject matter that may shed some negative light on this administration is being censored-What happened to free speech?-You Decide.

“Food For Thought”

God Bless the U.S.A.!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65KZIqay4E&feature=related

Semper Fi!

Jake