>Further, the majority of capital flight � or the looting >of the central bank�s foreign reserves if you like stronger >language � is in most cases carried out by domestic wealth- >holders, not by people like Soros. Discouraging the >activities of the Soroses, even if you could do it, would >have little effect on this. > >Best, Colin This reminds me of a point I wanted to make. One of the things that keeps getting repeated over and over in the analysis of the Jim Meriweather Hedge Fund fiasco is how the big commercial and investment banks got suckered into trusting him. I assume the same thing is true of Soros. You would have had the impression when you first heard about these hedge funds that they were the vehicle of superrich individual investors. After reading Harry Shutt's book and reading about the hedge funds in the financial press, one is left with the conclusion that they were the instrument of old-line white-shoes Wall Street capitalism. The only reason they took risks is that this is the only way a decent return can be earned. In the late '50s you could get that kind of return from Polaroid, IBM, and Xerox. Today it can only be returned from junk bonds, derivatives and currency speculation. The system is fucked up. (Sorry, Don Roper). Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
