Soros visits KL
Dec 15th, 2006 by Tian
I heard about George Soros’ visit a few weeks back. As far back last year, Mahathir has written to Soros requesting a meeting. Nobody really knew what his motive was then. It is interesting that Mahathir is meeting up with Soros in Kuala Lumpur.
Soros had been demonized by Mahathir for causing Southeast Asian financial crisis in 1998. The accusation was stuck in the mind of Malaysian people for years. Not only in Malaysia, some politicians in other Southeast Asian nations also frequently lashed out against Soros.
For years, Soros became a convenient scapegoat for Southeast Asian economic downfall. That’s probably why he has been reluctant to come to Malaysia. However things have changed since the stepping down of Mahathir and the release of Anwar.
The visit of Soros is significant as it allows us to examine the regional financial crisis with objectivity. Mahathir is no longer at helm; we should not treat George Soros as a demon or a taboo.
In fact, not many Malaysians knew who was Soros until Mahathir made his anti-semitic remarks. We remember carefully, Mahathir connected Soros’ ethnicity to his motive of attacking Malaysian currency. His argument was intrinsically flawed: if Soros as a Jew had ill intension to deliberately destroy Muslim economy, he should not have launched his attack on Thai economy. No matter, the whole purpose of Mahathir’s accusation was to find a scapegoat for his economic mismanagement.
The issue is simple. It was the clash of two schools of thought. Mahathir blamed Asian financial crisis to foreign speculators: Jews and evil imperialist empire. And he refused to accept the faults of his own economic policy and practices.
On the contrary, Anwar placed the primary responsibility of Asian financial crisis to the internal factors: corruption, cronyism, nepotism, lack of transparency and accountability within the system.
The authoritarian rulers in Southeast Asia sided with Mahathir. Most of them fell after the crisis. This worried Mahathir, and he saw Anwar’s argument a direct threat to his legacy. We knew the rest of the story.
Hi Tian,
I never believed Mahathir’s rant about Soros. The primary root cause of Malaysia’s 1997 currency crisis was government mismanagement and lack of accountability. We created the vulnerability in the first place, the currency speculators simply moved in to exploit it.
I wouldn’t try to idealise Soros though. He first caught my attention after his successful 1992 bet against the Bank of England on the European currency exchange system. In his business dealings, he’s essentially an amoral capitalist. He’s not a criminal in the sense of an armed robber, but the outcome of his activities have caused a lot of misery.
He’s used his immense fortune to do some social good. But his philantrophy cannot cleanse the blood associated with the money in the first place.
I would contrast his ill-gotten gains with two other extremely wealthy individuals. Warren Buffett built his fortune through very astute long term investments. Bill Gates build Microsoft into an immensely competitive organisation. I have no basic quarrel with capitalism, but how the profits are generated does matter.