Things are worse than we thought

One would not think that possible either about the situation in this country or across the Pond but things can always get worse.

Glenn Reynolds is temporarily not one of my favourite bloggers (though I still check his site several times a day) because he has linked to two very positive accounts of that fringe meeting in Brighton and keeps talking of Daniel Hannan MEP as the leader of a potential tea party movement. Oscar Wilde said that the England and America were two nations divided by the same language and that is certainly true for political language: just because we call something by the same name it does not mean that it is the same.

For all of that I shall be relying on Instapundit for news, links and information. So I was somewhat amused to find this on the site, which linked to the story: Soros criticizes Obama's bail-outs. Oh yes? Well, one can't exactly say that if President Obama has lost George Soros he has lost middle America but he has certainly lost much of the left.

Mind you, his suggestion that the American government should have taken over the American banks instead of bailing them out does not sound like a rational solution. Nor would it have been all that popular with the American people. There is no evidence, for instance that the government's attempt to take over healthcare is particularly popular.

So what are we to make of this story, which I found via Instapundit (thank goodness for American blogs and correspondents - otherwise I'd never know what was in the Daily Mail): Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, 'at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro'.

First of all, he did not break the Bank of England or the Bank in Monte Carlo or any bank at all. Secondly, the story does not amount to very much.

A secretive group of Wall Street hedge fund bosses are said to be behind a plot to cash in on the decline of the euro.

Representatives of George Soros's investment business were among an all-star line up of Wall Street investors at an 'ideas dinner' at a private townhouse in Manhattan, according to reports.

A spokesman for Soros Fund Management said the legendary investor did not attend the dinner on February 8, but did not deny that his firm was represented.

At the dinner, the speculators are said to have argued that the euro is likely to plunge in value to parity with the dollar.

Hmm. First of all it could not have beeen a terribly secretive group if the Daily Mail found out about it and knows that it was an "all-star line up of Wall Street investors". Secondly, the notion that hedge funds watching fiscal developments in order to cash in is a plot is rather odd. Isn't that what hedge funds are supposed to do?

Glenn Reynolds, I am pleased to say, is not impressed with the story and provides a slightly different and much more amusing explanation.