It's been two weeks since George Soros bought himself a major economic conference designed to remake the entire global economy. Just because the event received little major news attention, it still had an impact Americans might be reeling from for years.
When the anti-American Soros spent $50 million creating the New York City-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), he set in motion a major move against the dollar. The billionaire who once crushed the British pound through currency trading openly declared his plans to 'reform the currency system.' In the Machiavellian mind of Soros, the dollar needed to take a back seat and end its stint as the world reserve currency. 'The dollar no longer enjoys the trust and confidence that it once did, yet no other currency can take its place,' he wrote in late 2009.
In 2011, he was already pushing aside the dollar. 'The big question is whether the U.S. dollar should be the reserve currency; and, in fact, it no longer is,' Soros told Bloomberg. He's not the only one. Nobel Prize winning economist and Soros buddy Joseph Stiglitz said he is arguing for 'a global reserve currency.' Stiglitz, who also chairs the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, called for a new 'global system,' saying the current one is 'fundamentally unfair because it means that poor countries are lending to the U.S. at close to zero interest rates.'
In the short time following the Soros-funded Bretton Woods event, the move against the dollar has gained momentum rapidly. Soros wrote in 2009 that 'the rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system to ensure that they will be active supporters.' Here come those rising powers right now, singing the Soros tune.
The five BRICS nations - Brazil, Russia, India, China and new member South Africa - had their third summit meeting one week after Soros held his. Unsurprisingly, the themes were similar, with BRICS nations calling 'for a restructuring of the World War II-era global financial system and an eventual end to the long reign of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency.'
We've heard that all before - from Soros himself. In 2009, Soros called for the increased use of an obscure economic tool called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Before your eyes glaze over, SDRs are essentially a 'basket of currencies' - the euro, Japanese yen, pound sterling and U.S. dollar. If the world starts using them more and the dollar less, then U.S. economic status declines.
According to The Pioneer of India, those five nations 'have called for 'a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty.'' The group also wants more of a say in how international economic institutions are run and what currencies make up the SDR basket. That last concern reflects an existing move to include the Chinese remimbi in the SDR selection.
The Wall Street Journal agreed that's what's going on, quoting Chinese central bank-governor Zhou Xiaochuan saying the G-20 nations are considering adding China's currency to the four other in the SDR. ''If someone suggests that the RMB [the renminbi] should be in the SDR, I welcome this kind of opinion,' Mr. Zhou told a panel discussion.'
He's not alone. Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University and a senior associate at the Soros-funded Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, claimed that the dollar is even bad for the United States. In a Financial Times opinion piece, he argued 'America must give up on the dollar.' The Financial Times, you'll remember, had five news employees speak at Soros's Bretton Woods event, too.
But this isn't an organized effort or anything.
The push for a new world currency wasn't the only major news coming from the Soros conference, though most major news outlets ignored the entire gathering. The International Monetary Fund might be getting a new leader, one of the speakers at the event in fact. The IMF is part of the old world economic order that came from the first Bretton Woods. To promote your candidacy these days, all you have to do is hang with the right people.
According to the Daily Mail, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown 'has emerged as a favourite for the £270,000-a-year role after networking this week at a conference of policymakers at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, where the IMF was founded.' It's not what you know, it's who after all. So, the pro-Soros movers and shakers are making their push to control the IMF too.
Brown is a perfect fit for the Soros economic view. At the conference, one of his takeaway lines was: 'American and European dominance is no longer a fact.'
Clearly, that's the takeaway that Soros wants us to believe, at least.
Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center's Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on FaceBook and Twitter as dangainor.
