How should we read a statement by George Soros? Carefully.

If I could outguess George Soros I would be very clever and perhaps very rich. But I can offer a few observations about his history which may help interpret his recent comments about a new financial crisis

When George Soros speaks, the financial world listens. He has been speaking in the UK this week [March 2014] of the next financial crisis that he says will come about in part a consequence of weak financial leadership in Europe, and in particular in Germany.

He is particularly remembered for an enormous financial coup as the pound Sterling crashed at the time of Black Wednesday [16th September, 1992]. His success then was through a daring short-selling operation which can be admired for its daring or condemned for its contribution to a global economic crisis. Since then, his espousing of various social causes has led him to be pronounced ‘a dangerous leftist’ by Human Events’ readers, who in an online poll, recently voted him “the single most destructive leftist demagogue in the country.”

Soros is a big player

George is a capitalist superstar or a dangerous leftist supervillain. He may be speaking as an old man and a noted philanthropist concerned only to warn us that Europe is heading for yet more financial trouble. He may be speaking to avert or reduce such a crisis. He may be speaking with no personal agenda.

Or he may have the motives of a inveterate speculator

Or he may have the motives of a inveterate speculator, the gamester whose actions always designed to “tell” what he wants to reveal.

Or he may be plugging his new book

Or he may be plugging his new book, The Tragedy of the European Union, which was published this week, and which itself aligns with his libertarian political philosophy and his altruistic efforts.

Putting lipstick on a Rottweiler

To rephrase a term expressed by the American politician and folk philosopher Sarah Palin, you kin put lipstick on a Rottweiler but underneath it’s still a goddam Rotweiler .

Note to my students

I am not a supporter of either/or logic in assessing complex socio-economic issues. George Soros needs to be studied as a successful thought leader who shows consistency only in his skills of revealing what he wishes to reveal.