Soros has donated or committed more than $25 million to boost Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates and causes, according to Federal Election Commission records and interviews with his associates and Democratic fundraising operatives. And some of his associates say they expect Soros, who amassed a fortune estimated at $24.9 billion through risky currency trades, to give even more as Election Day nears.

The 85-year-old Hungarian-born New Yorker had planned to attend his first-ever Democratic convention here to watch Clinton, with whom he has a 25-year relationship, accept the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday. But an associate said he decided to cancel the trip this week because Soros, who recently returned to active trading, felt he needed to closely monitor the economic situation in Europe.

Nonetheless, people close to Soros say he seems more politically engaged than he’s been in years, motivated, they say, by a combination of faith in Clinton and fear of her GOP rival Donald Trump, who Soros has accused of “doing the work of ISIS” by stoking fears.

Soros’ political adviser Michael Vachon said his boss “has been a consistent donor to Democratic causes, but this year the political stakes are exceptionally high.” Vachon added: “They were high even before Trump became the nominee because of the hostility on the other side toward many of the issues George cares most about and has worked to support for many years, including immigration reform, criminal justice reform and religious tolerance.”

read more

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/george-soros-democratic-convention...

George cares about cash. NOTHING ELSE (the rest is a way to  MAKE CASH). HE CANNOT TRADE IN THE USA BECAUSE His businesses are NOT REGISTERED WITH THE US SECURITIES and exchange COMMISSION.

the power of the twit...

Shortly after the Brexit referendum I wrote this article, positing that the UK might undergo its own version of a “Color Revolution” in the wake of an unpredicatable and (from an establishment POV) unwelcome election result. The undermining and circumvention of the UK’s exit from the European Union is an ongoing process. Trump’s election may well add fuel to that fire.

However, no matter the seismic shake-up that Brexit delivered this side of the pond, the election of Donald Trump last month is bigger. A lot bigger. Brexit was one issue, Trump is – theoretically – a reversal of years of policy designed to shape the world a certain way. As such, the backlash is bigger and possibly a lot more dangerous to the concept of democracy.

It’s a little-known fact, outside the United States, that the Presidential Election is not, in fact, decided by the popular vote. Rather the popular vote is there to demonstrate the will of the people to the Electors who make up the Electoral College – the Electoral College Vote (on the 19th of December) will decide who will be President. In the previous 44 Presidential elections the EC vote has followed the result of the popular vote, but there are no rules saying that they MUST do so. This will discussed frequently and at increasingly high volume over the coming week. It has already been the subject of various articles, and several hashtags with aspirations of viral success.

First there was Jill Stein’s petition for recounts in key states – this has been shut down by courts, and never received much press attention in the first place. One suspects that the last thing Clinton’s campaign would want is a detailed look at the polling records (there was a lot of gossip about undead voters, and democrats bussing in unregistered voters).

A recount was never really an option.

Enter Russia. The alleged hacking and manipulation of the election by “Russian state actors” – for which there is currently ZERO available evidence – is being used to discredit the vote and bring pressure on the EC prior to their vote next week. The usual Russophobic war-hawks are, of course, up in arms. As are Clinton’s campaign team. The EC have already declared they want a full intelligence briefing before they vote.

The media hysteria on this issue is out of control. Not a single paper, from The Guardian, to the Washington Post, to the New York Times, has seen any evidence of hacking at all. Russia always denied it. Wikileaks always denied it. And yet we are subject to a series of “reveals” and “scoops” which simply stenographically report what the CIA is saying…as if some guy saying there is evidence is the same as evidence. Given the ridiculous, puerile nonsense about “fake news” recently…this could not be more ironic.

The question becomes: what will happen if the Electoral College decide to install Clinton in the White House? Or declare there needs to be a new election?

There has been a lot of theorising that Obama and his backers will take a third term rather than let either Trump or Clinton take office. Or that he may have to use his emergency powers to declare martial law. If the EC throws out this election result, he may be forced to do just that.

read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2016/12/13/how-far-will-they-go-to-avoid-a-pres...

 Meanwhile:

US President-elect Donald Trump has sent another stock reeling into the red.

Barely a week after taking shots at Boeing, Donald Trump took aim at Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jet programme, saying the cost was "out of control".

"The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th," Mr Trump said.

Following the tweet on Monday morning, shares of the aerospace company plunged by more than 4 per cent in early trade. 

Based on the number of shares outstanding, the tweet has shaved just over $3.5bn from Lockheed's market value.

Read more:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/donald-trump-lockheed-ma...

AFM, a Dutch financial market regulator, accidentally published some of George Soros' short positions to its website, Bloomberg reports.

A short position is a bet that a stock will fall. And the billionaire's positions between 0.2% and 0.5% were published to the agency's site on Tuesday afternoon, according to the report—positions AFM asks investors to report but doesn't usually share. Normally, the agency only releases positions that are larger than 0.5%.

Though the list has since been removed from AFM's website, there's still a possibility that the positions were downloaded and distributed among traders, AFM spokesman Michiel Gosens first told Reuters.

"The list should not have been published in the first place. We sincerely regret that it was," Gosens told Fortune in an email. "As soon as we found out that there was an error we immediately replaced the list with the correct one.

Though the spokesperson could not confirm names, Bloomberg was the first to report Soros was among them. And according to Reuters, which cited Dutch financial newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad's report, the list was mostly "Anglo-Saxon investors such as Marshall Wace and AQR— there are no surprising names."

read more:

http://fortune.com/2017/01/26/afm-george-soros-short-positions/

A loss of about one billion dollars? peanuts... 

Progressives might think they can find some common ground with a Trump administration over a infrastructure rebuilding plan, but don't be fooled, Paul Krugman writes in Monday's column. It's just another scam, kind of like Trump University. "Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s chief strategist, is a white supremacist and purveyor of fake news," Krugman opens. "But the other day, in an interview with, um, The Hollywood Reporter, he sounded for a minute like a progressive economist. 'I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan,' he declared. 'With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything.'

But Trump's infrastructure rebuilding plan is really just a scheme to enrich a few wealthy and well-connected people, with taxpayers once again footing the bill.

Of course, it could be done the right way, with the federal government able to borrow money quite cheaply and spending money where it is truly needed, on transportation, sewage treatment, building levees, etc... But that is not what is being proposed, Krugman writes:

Instead, (the Trump team) calling for huge tax credits: billions of dollars in checks written to private companies that invest in approved projects, which they would end up owning. For example, imagine a private consortium building a toll road for $1 billion. Under the Trump plan, the consortium might borrow $800 million while putting up $200 million in equity — but it would get a tax credit of 82 percent of that sum, so that its actual outlays would only be $36 million. And any future revenue from tolls would go to the people who put up that $36 million.

There is no reason to do it this way, Krugman writes. Infrastructure should be built the way it always has been, the way the Interstate Highway System was built, with public money. "While involving private investors may create less upfront government debt than a more straightforward scheme, the eventual burden on taxpayers will be every bit as high if not higher." Krugman points out. There is also the fact that private investors will have no interest in building infrastructure that can't be turned into a profit center. Privatizing these public projects is a gratuitous handout to select investors, who would be aquiring public assets for "just 18 cents on the dollar, with taxpayers picking up the rest of the tab."

The inevitable corruption in what Trump and Bannon are proposing is a feature not a bug. Krugman's suggestion: 

The Trump people could make all my suspicions look foolish by scrapping the private-investor, tax credits aspect of their proposal and offering a straightforward program of public investment. And if they were to do that, progressives should indeed work with them on that issue.

But it’s not going to happen. Cronyism and self-dealing are going to be the central theme of this administration — in fact, Mr. Trump is already meeting with foreigners to promote his business interests. And people who value their own reputations should take care to avoid any kind of association with the scams ahead.

read more:

http://www.alternet.org/economy/krugman-why-trumps-infrastructure-proposal-huge-scam?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=im

See toons from the top down.