November 18, 2008

Obama, Soros & UBS April 16th, 2007

I was googling "Iraqi Veterans Against The War" + "George Soros" and wasn't surprised to see this article via American Thinker

New York Magazine - "Money Chooses Sides".
The investment banker Robert Wolf first met Barack Obama one afternoon in December in a midtown conference room. Obama was in town to deliver a speech at a charity dinner for children in poverty at the Mandarin Oriental—but also to pursue another, less high-minded, but more momentous, objective: to begin the process of attempting to pick Hillary Clinton’s pocket.

The conference room belonged to George Soros, the billionaire bête noire of the right. After talking to Soros for an hour about his prospective bid for the White House, Obama walked down the hall and found assembled a dozen of the city’s heaviest-hitting Democratic fund-raisers: investment banker Hassan Nemazee, Wall Street power Blair Effron, private-equity hotshot Mark Gallogly, hedge-fund manager Orin Kramer. Most had been big-time John Kerry backers in 2004. Most had a connection to the Clintons. All were officially uncommitted for 2008.[...]

Wolf was wowed by Obama that afternoon: his straightforwardness, his “bold and impressive” early stance against the Iraq war. He handed Obama his card and said, “I’d like to get to know you more.” Obama phoned the next day. “When we hung up, he said, ‘I’ll call you after the holidays,’ and I’m thinking, Yeah, right, he’s gonna call me,” Wolf says. But call Obama did. The next week, they had dinner in Washington, just the two of them, on the night that George W. Bush gave his speech announcing the surge of additional troops into Iraq. “I felt so honored to be sitting down with him for two hours on an occasion like that,” Wolf recalls, “knowing that he was going off to be interviewed on television later.”

Within ten days, Obama had announced his intention to run and Clinton was officially in. A story in the Times reported that Obama had nailed two A-list New York donors: Soros and Wolf. But though Soros’s backing was a symbolic coup, it’s Wolf who has emerged as Obama’s most copious cash collector in the city so far—hosting two high-dollar cocktail parties, making countless calls, harvesting more than $500,000. As Wolf tells me about the soirées he’s hosted, he reaches into a meticulously organized scrapbook, takes out a photograph of him and Obama grinning madly, and tells me that I can keep it. “The way Barack has taken this nation with his rock-star status,” he says, “it’s very exciting!”

Robert Wolf is the President & Chief Operating Officer for UBS Investment Bank. He also serves as Chairman & CEO for UBS Group for the Americas.

Hopey, changey has a lot of IOU's.

Possibly related - Swiss protest UBS bailout.
Statement on indictment of UBS executive Raoul Weil.
Soros called to account by US politicians over global financial crisis.

Video - 11/13 George Soros was testifying about congress perception that hedge fund industry as the main factor of collapsing the current financial market.

On September 16, 1992 George Soros was responsible for devaluing the Euro which came to be known as "Black Wednesday".

Interesting link in comments from Mongol - Soros-Funded Democratic Idea Factory Becomes Obama Policy Font

By Stable Hand at November 18, 2008 12:49 PM | | l digg this