PM Mahathir blames Soros for Asian currency crisis
PM Mahathir blames Soros for Asian currency crisis
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday openly accused U.S. financer George Soros of being behind speculative attacks which have brought down Southeast Asian currencies in recent weeks.
"I am confirming that it was George Soros I was talking about," he said after the billionaire, known for his capacity to move global markets, denied involvement in the assault on the Malaysian ringgit and other currencies.
Mahathir earlier said a foreign financier was intervening in currency markets to punish governments that backed Myanmar's admission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), currently meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
The local ringgit has lost about five percent of its value against the dollar in the past two weeks, closing at around 2.6500 to the greenback Friday after having sunk to 2.6545, the lowest level since May 1994.
The Thai baht, the Philippine peso, the Indonesian rupiah and even the mighty Singapore dollar have all been dragged down by speculative attacks.
In a statement Thursday, Soros admitted he had indeed urged both Malaysia and Thailand to oppose army-ruled Myanmar's admission into ASEAN this week, but flatly disavowed any links to the currency attacks.
But Mahathir rejected Soros' denial.
"It's very difficult to separate the left hand from the right hand," he told journalists at a conference on Malaysia's computer industry.
"I think it is very difficult to have a split personality unless he is schizophrenic or something like that," added Mahathir. "It's quite obvious that there is a connection.
"We have worked years to develop our countries to this level. Along comes a man with a few billion dollars and in a period of two weeks, he has undone most of the work we have done," he said.
A philanthropic organization started by Soros, the Open Society Institute, promotes democracy overseas and denounces Rangoon's widespread human rights abuses against political opponents and minorities.
Soros called in January for an international tourist boycott of Myanmar and an end to investment there by oil companies. Mahathir likened Soros' alleged actions to those of a drug dealer, saying, "as much as people who produced and distributed drugs are criminals because they destroy nations, so do people who undermine economies of weak countries."
Soros' intentions have backfired and caused suffering to poor people in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand, whose currencies have fallen in value while the cost of living soared, he said.
"If you want to devalue the pound and the dollar, go ahead, but you do this against poor countries, you think you are doing a charitable job? You must be somewhat distorted in your idea about things," Mahathir said.
"People who, on their own, think they can put the world right, I think they must be a little bit off their head," he added.