“. . .’At times like these, survival is the most important thing,’ he [George Soros] says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of ‘evil.’ Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.”

MK comment: It is difficult to understand how an individual thinking like this would ignore owning physical gold in the form of coins and bullion — Soros’ ownership of which the author of the article linked below denies. Much ado was made of Soros past comments on gold as “the ultimate asset bubble,” and his subsequent disposal of ETF gold holdings — something which has since been quantified as having occurred in the early months of 2011. If so, the legendary Soros left a good bit still on the table, since gold traded at the time in the $1300 to $1400 range.

Since then, there has been speculation here and elsewhere that Soros may have sold his paper gold holdings to acquire something a bit more tangible. No one knows for sure and Soros, as might be expected, isn’t saying. His remarks, in this studied opinion, mask a tell-tale heart. (That from someone who has listened over the years to the reasoning of many high net worth investors who translated dollars to gold. Let me just say that Soros’ analysis has the ring of familiarity.) After all, he did at one time own gold in the form of the ETF. He did unload that position for no apparent or logical reason. And his thinking does sound like what is ordinarily expressed by individuals who have diversified their holdings into gold as the ultimate safeguard.

The article referenced above appeared at the Daily Beast website and is remarkable in its own right. Soros by this rendition is holding mainly cash, recently purchased $2 billion in Italian bonds, and likes “long-term stock picks with solid companies.” Cash? Italian bonds? George Soros? Really?? The name of his upcoming book is “Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States.” He states that Greece is likely to default in 2012; that China is unlikely to come to Europe’s assistance; and that the entire West could descend into chaos at any moment. What’s missing here?

At any rate here is the link to the Daily Beast article. By the way, as mentioned at the top, he is predicting riots in the streets of the United States: “It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order,” he asserts, “which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”

If Soros isn’t a gold owner, he certainly sounds like one. The rest of us do not have to walk on the West’s broken glass, as Soros might because of his position. We can take the most direct route to “survival” without worrying about public criticism for having done so.

George Soros, the survivalist — extraordinary. . . .

“The situation in Europe and the United States,” he says, “is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career.”

Sometimes the constant drip of the news becomes background noise, until somebody says something that serves as a wake-up call. Though the writer of this article attempts to transpose Soros’ remarks to something akin to a call for political action, I detect something else going on — something deeply personal for Soros, and something of which we should all take note. Like so many of us, he seems to have moved away from politics as a final recourse to the crisis and begun to think about the practical business of personally surviving it.

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