Talking of the wave of governments being challenged in North Africa and the Middle East, Mr Soros said: “What has caused the revolutions is a revulsion against a corruption that is fed by the misuse of natural resources like for instance in Libya. “Transparency and even more importantly accountability in the use of natural resources is what you need for people living in those countries to get the benefit of those national resources. “Libya produced enormous wealth which Gaddafi took as his own and now the people rebelled against it.” Asked whether there should be more transparency with what happened to oil incomes, Mr Soros said: “Very much so.” And he said the US and Europe needed to more actively support the revolutions in Libya and elsewhere so that the new regimes will co-operate with the West. [BBC]
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- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
George Soros is the man. I wonder if he’ll let me in the back door?
So far your man Soros is having all of us in our back doors if you know what I mean.
George, meet Michael Moore. Michael meet George. George and Michael, meet George Michael. May you all share the natural resource known as George Michael’s jail cell.
I knew Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi. Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi was a friend of mine. Sir, you’re no Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi.
-G. Beck
I own the rights to the zombie movie; “George Soros Must Be Shared With Citizens”..
Where was he “before” the revolution? Everyone is an expert after the fact.
Just to make myself clear, it’s the OIL wealth, not the FINANCIAL wealth, that I think should be shared with the people. Just so there’s no question over that.
- George S.
George Michael’s jail cell? All he did was steal a few bananas.
he is one of the biggest philanthrophes in the financial world for a long time .. know your facts moron before trying to be funny here.
I don’t see him calling for nationalization of the financial industry any time soon, even as he seems to think that oil should be nationalized. And while he certainly has made large contributions to various organizations, it has frequently been pointed out that the line between his philanthropic efforts and his political efforts is a very thin one indeed. Interesting that so many Soros apologists should accuse corporations of buying the political results they want, when it’s difficult to see Soros’ more political contributions as doing anything different.
I don’t know much about U.S. oil leases, but the OIL itself ought to be (or remain) nationalized. Vendors – drillers, servicers, and refiners should be on fixed-cost or highly-audited cost-plus contracts with the US Govt. Margin fluctuations due to oil price movements should be mostly borne by the resource owner (US Govt), not the defined-service provider. For instance, Exxon has ROA 10%, ROE 23% (ttm). That is global, but if that were US only and due in any large part to oil price fluctuation instead of company operational improvements, I’d say they are privatizing profits that belong to citizens.
Resource extraction is not financial services, although if you want to talk about the proper role of government-backed financial intermediaries and why they should earn 5-10% margins max, that’d be a good topic also.
Share the oil wealth? Nutty idea. I think they’ve tried it in Alaska and clearly it doesn’t work.
This is why Sarah Palin is a model of capitalism and George Soros is a godless communist.