I have recently run across accusations that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator. Many comments to The Hill article Protesters shut down Bernie Sanders rally made the accusation.

These accusations, which I had not heard before, led me to do a little research. I found the Media Matters article Beck falsely accuses Soros of Nazi collaboration on Kristallnacht anniversary.

In Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire – a book cited by Beck during today’s program — Michael T. Kaufman detailed Soros’s reaction during the interview, as well as Soros’ actions in Nazi-occupied Hungary:

While he was living with Baumbach as Sandor Kiss, an event occurred that more than a half a century later would become the basis of charges that George Soros, the international financier and billionaire, had somehow collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of his homeland and had exploited his fellow Jews. The issue was raised in a bizarre television profile and interview of Soros aired on the CBS television program 60 Minutes in December of 1998. In the segment, Steve Kroft, the interviewer, noted with prosecutorial gusto that George’s father had “bribed a government official to swear that you were his godson,” and added that this survival strategy “carried a heavy price tag.” For, he continued, “as hundreds of thousands of Jews were being shipped off to the Nazi death camps, a thirteen-year-old George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.” Visibly dumbfounded by the line of questioning, Soros could only manage to say that he had no role in the seizure of property and was merely a spectator. To underscore Kroft’s point, film footage showed masses of Hungarian Jews being led away at gunpoint.

This is what actually happened. Shortly after George went to live with Baumbach, the man was assigned to take inventory on the vast estate of Mor Kornfeld, an extremely wealthy aristocrat of Jewish origin. The Kornfeld family had the wealth, wisdom, and connections to be able to leave some of its belongings behind in exchange for permission to make their way to Lisbon. Baumbach was ordered to go to the Kornfeld estate and inventory the artworks, furnishings, and other property. Rather than leave his “godson” behind in Budapest for three days, he took the boy with him. As Baumbach itemized the material, George walked around the grounds and spent time with Kornfeld’s staff. It was his first visit to such a mansion, and the first time he rode a horse. He collaborated with no one and he paid attention to what he understood to be his primary responsibility: making sure that no one doubted that he was Sandor Kiss. Among his practical concerns was to make sure that no one saw him pee. [Page 37]

I also found the Snopes commentary on snopes.com > Urban Legends > Politics > George Soros, Nazi collaborator to be interesting reading for some back and forth on the topic.

You might also want to read the WikiPedia article on George Soros.

Soros was 13 years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.[20] When Jewish children were barred from attending school by the Nazis, Soros and the other schoolchildren were made to report to the Jewish Council, which had been established during the occupation. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:

The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper…. It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 a.m…. And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, “You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported.”[21]

Soros did not return to that job, but instead went into hiding the next day. Later that year, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. The official was at one point ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country; rather than leave the young Soros alone in the city, the official brought him along.[22] The next year, 1945, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house to house through the city.

KIRO TV has the article Activists disrupt rally featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders.

I don’t know if these protesters are sincere or have been paid by the oligarchs to shut Bernie Sanders down. If they are sincere, then they have demonstrated the technique that the oligarchs can adopt if they haven’t figured it out already.

Bernie Sanders can fight the protesters and lose, or he can give in to the protesters and lose.

That shows you the extent of my imagination. I hope that Bernie Sanders and his other grass-roots supporters have more imagination than I have.

How about the readers of this blog? Do you have a solution that will let Bernie Sanders show that he truly does care about people’s legitimate concerns? Can Bernie Sanders come up with democratic ways of handling this, and not resort to the heavy handed, anti-democratic expedients that most other candidates might be tempted to use, particularly Republicans.

I sure would like to know how this event turned out.

For references of what might be going on, see WikiPedia’s article Brooks Brothers riot.

Hundreds of “paid GOP crusaders” descended upon South Florida to protest the state’s recounts, with at least half a dozen of the demonstrators at Miami-Dade paid by George W. Bush’s recount committee. Several of these protesters were identified as Republican staffers and a number later went on to jobs in the Bush administration.

The “Brooks Brothers” name reinforces the allegation that the protesters, in corporate attire, sporting “Hermès ties” were astroturfing, as opposed to local citizens concerned about counting practices.

There is a TV movie called Recount.

Here is the trailer to the movie.

We can’t let them take away this candidate from us, too. Bernie Sanders is a much bigger threat to the oligarchs than Al Gore ever was. Some serious investigative work needs to be done on who these protesters really are.

The ones at the Netroots Convention (see my previous post O’Malley and Sanders Heckled At Netroots Nation Convention) were nationally known and no mystery. I don’t doubt their sincerety.

Well here is another one of those miserable letters from the Democratic National Committee that makes you wonder whose side they are on.

Here is my response to the email.

Each of the major Democrats running for president will be there to talk about their plan to keep moving America forward.

Does the party have a plan to move America forward, or is it going to insist on hamstringing the candidates by preventing them from debating until October?

The Republicans will have a great time with the two months you are giving them to implant their ideas in the publics’ minds.

Then you are going to let the Democratic candidates try to change people’s minds back. It always works better to keep the voters you have than it is to win them back after you have lost them.

If there is anyone in the Democratic party leadership that does not know this deep in their bones, they ought not be leading the Party.

It would serve you right, and I would go along with Bernie, if he forms a third party after being elected President.

Here is how you sign the petition to complain We Need More Democratic Debates. This is a perfect test of Bernie Sanders’ grass roots.

I received another one of those maddening emails from Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

So who decided the brilliant strategy of not holding a Democratic Presidential Debate for two more months? To add insult to injury, you will exclude from your debates any candidate that participates in a debate not sanctioned by you.

One would think that some democratic “Leaders”, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, are not really interested in winning the White House.

Certainly, we aren’t going to send money to support the sabotage of our own party.

Save the money you would give to the party, and spend it on the candidates you actually want to be elected. Bernie Sanders is a very deserving recipient.

Bloomberg News has the article Bernie Sanders Takes on Clinton Welfare Legacy as He Woos Iowa Unions.

In an(sic) phone interview Thursday with Bloomberg, the Democratic presidential candidate said that history will not look kindly on the 1996 overhaul of the New Deal anti-poverty program, which then-President Bill Clinton enacted over the objections of many liberal Democrats, including Sanders, who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives at the time. Sanders’ chief rival for the Democratic nomination, front-runner Hillary Clinton, wrote in her 2003 book, Living History, that she supported the bill, despite some concerns, because she “felt, on balance, that this was a historic opportunity to change a system oriented toward dependence to one that encouraged independence.”
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In his own book in 1997, Sanders called the bill “the grand slam of scapegoating legislation…” Now a U.S. senator from Vermont, he doubled down on that assessment in his interview with Bloomberg. “I think that history will suggest that that legislation has not worked terribly well,” he said, arguing that too many politicians would rather target the poor than poverty.

How could the Clintons be so shortsighted to put life-time limits on welfare while the economy was booming, and give not a hint of thought as to what people would do in an economic downturn, let alone a crash?

There were many of us Democrats at the time, including Bernie Sanders, who were shouting this message at the Clintons as best we could, yet they would not listen.

Many of the same advisers that advised Bill Clinton on this issue are still advising Hillary Clinton. This is one of those issues that she still refuses to accept the responsibility for the damage it has done.

Naked Capitalism has the article Days of Revolt: The Black Prophetic Tradition. Since Naked Capitalism has opened the door to disseminating the video below, I feel comfortable in doing the same, myself.

Black Prophetic Fire is the name of Cornell West’s new book that is part of the subject of this interview

Bernie Sanders has only slight mention in this video, but I think the context that this video provides is extremely important. I don’t mean to diminish what Cornell West does have to say about Bernie Sanders. That is also very important. Also important is what he had to say about Barack Obama.

A while ago The Real News Network added the following disclaimer to their YouTube versions of their videos:

This video is unlisted. Be considerate and think twice before sharing.

I have been considerate, and have stopped watching and publicizing The Real News Network. It’s about time for The Real News Network to open themselves up again. Videos like this are too important to hide.

This fell out of the Q & A, I mentioned in my previous post, The Question I Wanted to Ask.

Greenspan: “There is nothing to prevent the government from creating as much money as it wants.” – COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 2, 2005

What is so shocking about this is that even Alan Greenspan acknowledges the truth of Modern Money Theory (MMT). It’s a good thing nobody is listening or we would be hearing the sounds of heads exploding all across the country.

Or as was mentioned the subject of my previous post:

Watching Stephanie Kelton guide the conversation, sitting next to Bernie Sanders as she was, it was clear the delicate challenge she faces in poking at the edges of the precepts of the status quo without pushing things into the scary and marginalized territory of counter-intuitive reality.

That counter-intuitive reality was accidentally revealed by Alan Greenspan. The problem is that if Bernie Sanders ever mentions it, he will be dismissed as more of a kook than some people already suspect he is. To set the record straight, Bernie Sanders is not a kook.

Perhaps the safest route for Bernie Sanders to take is to keep saying that we need to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for his programs. After all, it is true that we have to raise the taxes on the wealthy to solve the problem of the maldistribution of wealth and power in this country. What harm could it do to also pretend these taxes are needed to pay for Sanders’ program?

One of the life lessons I have learned is that it always comes back to bite you when you use a little fiction to explain something that is actually true.

Luckily, there are few of the people who can’t handle the truth that will be reading this blog post. So they won’t be up-in-arms over what I have revealed here.

New Economic Perspectives has the post The Question I Wanted to Ask by “J.D. Alt”.

I recently attended a panel discussion called by Bernie Sanders—and moderated by Stephanie Kelton—to discuss the crisis in Greece.
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“Does it strike anyone as odd that the discussion today has been only about money? Is it important at all what the real resources are that Greeks have within their own borders? Is it rational for Greece to borrow money in order to buy things the Greek people already own by right—their own labor, their own agriculture, for example? Or is it the case that Greece is so lacking in her own resources that she has to buy most everything her citizens consume from other countries? And, if that’s true, isn’t at least part of the solution for Greece to intentionally and systematically become more self-sufficient? Isn’t it possible, in fact, that if every nation strived intentionally to become more self-sufficient in food and energy—go “off-grid” so-to-speak—that a great chunk of the anthropogenic CO2 (which is threatening our very survival) would be eliminated? Or is the globalization of capital a more important goal than the well-being of seven billion people?”

I am sure that all followers of Modern Money Theory (MMT) have this very question on their minds.

This “J.D. Alt” post and the ensuing Q & A raise so many interesting issues, that I want to write several blog posts of my own about those issues.

As long as we are on the headline title of the post, this is a good place to interject the question I would like to ask.

How does MMT account for the Mark-to-Market method of valuing just about everything? An example of what I am talking about is that when there is one trade of a stock on the stock market, everybody who owns any shares of that company assumes that their individual shares are suddenly worth that price.

Their behavior on how they spend or save their money is quite tightly correlated to how much they think they have. Mark-to-market is as fictitious as they come (although there aren’t necessarily any better measures), so here is a perfect example of “money” being created exogenously from all the sectors that MMT enumerates.

I have asked this before, but I have yet to receive an answer. In case you don’t recognize the relevance of the question, this is tightly tied to the idea of sector balances mentioned in several comments. The mark-to-market issue is the one fly in the ointment that seems to be ignored by MMT in its discussion of sector balances.

Massachusetts for Bernie Sanders has refocused attention on the Occasional Planet article of December 2014, Elizabeth Warren: Citibank owns Obama administration.

Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke on the floor of the Senate on Dec. 12, 2014 about the provision that Citigroup added to the omnibus budget package.

I don’t know what it will take for this message to finally get through. Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (and their supporters) are trying as hard as we can to reach the voters with the truth about what their representatives are doing to them.

When will enough truly be enough?