Although the annual World Economic Forum at Davos is almost universally considered a snoozefest for the world's wealthy elite, it does have some public utility. For instance, it is useful to know what trends and which people are deemed to be dangerous by the global financial and political elite.
Surprisingly, the globalists who gather at Davos are often quite candid about their fears and their hate towards politicians, who refuse to implement their political and economic agenda. George Soros, whose name is synonymous with globalism, spoke at length about his likes, dislikes and fears. Let's have a look inside the mind of the influential American oligarch.
READ MORE: George Soros Brands Trump 'A Danger to the World' at Davos, Sets Twitter Afire
Unsurprisingly, Soros really dislikes Donald Trump and wants to see him gone from the Oval Office. The Hungarian-born oligarch is smart enough to hide his reasons behind a humanitarian mask. “I consider the Trump administration a danger to the world,” the billionaire said in a speech at Davos, quoted by Bloomberg. He also hinted at a possible Trump impeachment when he said: “But I regard it as a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020, or even sooner.”
There is an often-quoted adage, "When the facts change, I change my mind". This saying is attributed to John Maynard Keynes, the father of Keynesianism, arguably the most influential economic theory of the ХХ century, so, George Soros should be familiar with it.
However, it seems that no amount of facts can convince the billionaire investor and political activist that his dismissive attitude toward Trump is wrong. Someone who won the US presidential race, despite the best efforts of the American political establishment, can't be considered a "temporary phenomenon", because he clearly isn't. Trump is not a bigger threat to the world, if compared to any other US politician, who ran for presidency in 2016, but he clearly is a danger to the globalist elite, that voices its concerns and anger through Mr Soros.
All of them prioritize the interests of their states and nations, and none of them support the vision of a centrally-governed globalized world with nominal or non-existent borders. Russian and Hungarian authorities kicked the Soros-backed political organizations out of their respective countries, citing accusations of political meddling. In his recent interview for The Financial Times, the billionaire basically admitted that he supported at least one political coup, the one that brought Mr Saakashvili to power in Georgia.
Ironically, Soros also admits that his political puppet Saakashvili turned out to be a corrupt politician, an assessment supported by the fact that Georgian authorities have indicted Saakashvili on several counts of corruption after he lost power. Looking at Georgia, a country plagued by corruption and the consequences of a disastrous war, started by Saakashvili, it is easy to see what would have been the American future if Trump had lost to Soros' favorite candidate Hillary Clinton.
READ MORE: Soros Calls Cryptocurrencies 'Typical Bubble' Based on Misunderstanding
In his Davos speech, Soros criticized not only Trump but also Bitcoin, saying that Bitcoin is a financial tool used by dictators worldwide and that Bitcoin is in a bubble. “As long as you have dictatorships on the rise, you will have a different ending, because the rulers in those countries will turn to Bitcoin to build a nest egg abroad,” he said.
Bitcoin may be in a bubble and it may burst anytime, but there are numerous other financial bubbles like US stocks or US bonds, so why single out Bitcoin? A good guess would be that Bitcoin is "the Donald Trump of currencies", namely an iconoclastic, unforeseen, disruptive and uncontrollable phenomenon, that irks the likes of Soros precisely due to its decentralized and anti-establishment nature. The US billionaire, like all globalists, is a control freak and it is no wonder that from all the current financial bubbles he chose to attack Bitcoin.
The popular demand for political leaders, who are accountable to their base and unaccountable to the globalist elite is not going anywhere. The popular demand for a currency, that belongs to its users and not to some central authority is not going anywhere. Populism is often described as a political philosophy supporting the interests of the people in their struggle against a privileged elite. Cryptocurrencies, despite their glaring flaws, are the financial expression of this philosophy.
The age of populism has begun and it will shape the future of politics and the future of finance, even if some of the populist experiments in politics and finance fail miserably. As Nassim Taleb puts it in regard to Bitcoin: "It may fail; but then it will be easily reinvented as we now know how it works". The future for all forms of populism is bright. The globalist philosophy has no future, and there is nothing George Soros can do about it.
The views and opinions expressed by Ivan Danilov are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.