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In the nineteen nineties, South Korea experienced rapid economic growth. But behind the scenes, problems were piling up, excessive corporate expansion, rising debt, and weak financial regulations. Then came the global financial shift. As foreign investors pulled out of East Asian markets, South Korea found itself in deep trouble. By November 1997, the government had no choice but to seek a $58,000,000,000 bailout from the International Monetary Fund, IMF. In return, Korea had to undergo painful economic reforms, corporate restructuring, financial sector reforms, and fiscal tightening. The impact was severe. Many businesses collapsed, unemployment soared, and families struggled.

Glenn: Welcome back with professor Richard Wolff to discuss economic fury, the economic weaponization of the US campaign against Iran. How do you assess this effort, given the mix of oil sanctions, open markets for oil, and port blockades? Wolff: I’ll be blunt: I don’t know how to answer cleanly because the statements keep flipping on/off and have become “herky jerky.” The steps are inconsistent, sometimes increasing supply of oil and pushing down prices, other times constraining it. It’s not clear which way any given move will go, and the sequence is hard to parse. He notes that Gulf states are pressing for dollar swaps—foreign central banks can access dollars via swaps rather than buying them on markets. These swaps have shifted from weekly to daily, signaling worry about dollar access. The Gulf states—UAE and others—allege they depend on dollar-denominated oil revenues to service debts incurred through investments abroad. If dollars tighten due to strait closures and sanctions, they may be forced to sell assets in the US, including Treasury securities, which would lower bond prices and raise interest rates, potentially triggering a US recession. They could also sell holdings in the American stock market, affecting prices. Wolff emphasizes this as a surface manifestation of a broader global liquidity and debt dilemma tied to the Persian Gulf and the dollar’s role in the world economy. Glenn: So essentially the petrodollar is being unraveled because if Gulf states price and sell oil in dollars, but if they’re not exporting and not receiving dollars, they can’t pay debts or roll them over. They might sell treasuries or assets to cover shortfalls. How far can the US hold this position? Wolff: I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think the likely scenario is a political and economic squeeze. Trump has lost parts of his base—issues like the Epstein file and the economy’s inflation and job market. He relies on a narrative of victory; his base may be shrinking, while the wealthier 10% who own stock might be more supportive as the stock market stays buoyant. If the Gulf states must exchange dollars for debt relief or to cover losses, the government may have to grant more dollar swaps to prevent a spike in interest rates and a stock sell-off. Steven Bannon has warned that war could cost Trump the election, so the administration may shore up swaps to protect markets. Wolff suggests this is a desperate regime trying to exit a bad position with minimal damage. Glenn: You describe a broader pattern: the petrodollar’s decline, and the US dollar’s dwindling centrality in global reserves. How does this fit into the larger arc of American empire and capitalism? Wolff: It fits as part of the decline of the American empire and the corresponding decline of American capitalism. BRICS, China’s rise, and the shift away from dollar-dominated trade illuminate a trend toward reduced dollar dominance. Sanctions in Ukraine exposed the limits of that model, and there’s growing acceptance of payments outside the dollar for oil. The United States remains influential, but the dollar’s dominance is waning, and there’s no clear strategy to reverse that trend. Manufacturing has moved to other countries, notably China, which maintains low inflation and large-scale production. The world is moving toward multipolar arrangements, and the dollar’s preeminence is no longer assured. Glenn: Given this trajectory, is there any viable way to salvage the petrodollar, or is it beyond rescue? Wolff: I don’t predict the future with certainty, but I view the larger context as a decline in American hegemony and an erosion of dollar dominance. The war in Iran, like the war in Ukraine, demonstrates the limits of sanctions and the unintended consequences of aggressive confrontation. The dollar’s global reserve role is shrinking, and other powers are willing to transact outside it. He emphasizes this as a systemic shift, not a temporary setback. Glenn: Any final thoughts on how history and memory shape current policy? Wolff: History often gets reframed to fit current aims. There’s a tendency to present “victories” regardless of outcome, especially in wartime rhetoric. The dialogue in Europe and the US reflects a mix of nostalgia for past dominance and struggle to adapt to a changing global order. The conversation ends with questions about how Europe and the US should reorient foreign policy toward a multipolar world, where old assumptions no longer hold.

George Soros had begun to make a name for himself as a conscience-free economic hitman as early as World War II, collaborating with Nazis, which he described as “the best time of my life.” A subsequent exchange recalls that he went out with a protector who swore he was his adopted godson, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews. When asked if it was difficult, the respondent says, “Not at all. No problem,” and adds that even if he weren’t there, somebody else would be taking it away anyway, suggesting a market-driven rationale for the actions. The narrative then traces a mentorship under the Fabian Society’s Karl Popper at the Langdon School of Economics, where Soros acquired his idea of open societies as a cover for world government control. It also notes an Edmund de Rothschild–connected influence: George Karlweiss, chairman of the Rothschild Swiss-based bank Privy, endowed Soros with the financial resources to launch a new type of organization called a hedge fund. From that moment, the young speculator began to amass a fortune as a financial mercenary, released during the new age of deregulation and deployed to destroy the economies of any nation resisting a banker’s dictatorship through currency speculation. Using his ill-begotten resources, Soros was said to set up a network of private organizations to advance democracy-building around the world. In 1979, Soros’s Open Society Foundations came online and began to interface closely with the National Endowment for Democracy, which soon set up two offices in China in the 1980s. David Ignatius, the former head of the NED, admitted in 1991 that the organization was little more than a front for the CIA, noting that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly twenty five years ago by the CIA.” Throughout the 1980s, a new world order was staged, described by some as the end of history. In Hungary, Soros’ Open Society Foundations infused restructuring, privatization, and other market-driven reforms in 1988, leading to the emergence of a new oligarchical class beholden to Wall Street and contributing to election manipulation that ousted Ferdinand Marcos’s national leadership and installed Corazon Aquino in an early color revolution called the People Power Revolution. Russia warmly embraced Soros and the NED under Mikhail Gorbachev, who ensured the stage would be set for Russia’s submission to a new age of destruction called Perestroika. In the 1990s, the program was titled Operation Hammer by the Trilateral Commission’s George Bush Sr., a program of looting of former state enterprises under the watch of the IMF, taking the name “shock therapy.”

There's even more bad news as China's economy exposes a deeper problem in shadow banking. The shadow banking sector is estimated to be worth at least $3,000,000,000,000, and that's in China alone. And it all started with real estate. The country is facing a financial meltdown. Every week, there is a new headline about its impairments.

At the end of World War II Asia and Europe were devastated, and the United States emerged as the last man standing, profiting hugely from the war. They ended up, due to isolation, the strongest economy in the world with more than half the world’s gold and half the world’s GDP, with standing industries that could shift from making tanks to making cars and trucks. They did extraordinarily well for a few decades, but then, as described, they began to financialize, and it became more profitable to speculate in investments than to actually invest. In recent years, companies with money often pursue share buybacks rather than expanding research and development or industrial capacity. We are in a stage where the underlying basis for markets is questionable: what are markets for, are they accurate at price discovery, and do they predict productive investment and returns on capital? We are in a transition phase where we’re not sure anymore. There is a huge bubble, and corporations creating these bubbles, with banks that loan money relying on the state because they are too big to fail. Bailouts have totaled trillions since 2008, as the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan pumped trillions of dollars, with help from Gulf Cooperation Council countries to bail out banks in Britain, the United States, and Europe. It’s fascinating because China, since the financial crisis, has also created about 17 to 18 trillion dollars. China has actually been leading in creation of money, while investing that money in building 50,000 kilometers of high-speed rail, a space program, massive industries, and the Belt and Road initiative—real investment and so on. The enormous difference between the two is notable, but how far can states—the United States, Britain, the EU, and Japan—borrow and pump money into the market to keep this bubble going? We don’t know. Bubbles are hard to gauge in terms of expansion and when they break, which is why they can be sustained so long; the bursting of a bubble is painful, and no policymaker wants responsibility. China is interesting and is the only case in history of a property bubble being deflated without collapsing the real economy, deflating its property bubble over five or six years while the economy continued to grow—not at 8% but at 5%—and continued to expand. That is worth studying because other countries let property bubbles run until they burst, causing wider harm and deflation. Japan, for example, has had thirty years of zero growth since it began quantitative easing three decades ago, a growth killer because it protected existing companies, banks, and properties and never really recovered. Europe has had zero growth for about fifteen years since 2007. The United States sustains growth largely by buying it from the rest of the world—acquiring profitable companies or getting them to list on NASDAQ and then earning rents from profitable companies wherever they are—while the US economy has been largely hollowed out. It’s an interesting time to watch monetary dynamics, because this doesn’t go on forever.

Their figurehead is George Soros. The speculation process goes like this: an investor deposits a security of 1,000,000,000 US dollars with a bank somewhere in the world. Then he goes to a bank in Thailand and takes out a loan for 25,000,000,000 baht. This is the official equivalent of $1,000,000,000. He sells the baht on the open market. Immediately, other money traders follow suit because they now fear that the price of the baht will fall. When the exchange rate of the bot to the dollar has fallen, for example, by 30%, the investor then buys back the 25,000,000,000 baht with only 700,000,000 US dollars, thereby redeeming his loan. He has made a $300,000,000 profit and then hightails it out of the country.

There is a pool of $50,000,000 in subprime loans. The market for insuring mortgage bonds is 20 times bigger than actual mortgages. If the mortgage bonds were the match, CDOs were kerosene soaked rags, then synthetic CDOs were the atomic bomb. Mark Baum realized the world economy might collapse at that moment in a restaurant.

Soros makes huge bets on whole countries and economies. Last year, when he saw cracks in the Asia boom, he began selling the currency in Thailand. Traders in Hong Kong followed suit, triggering a financial crisis that plunged much of Asia into a depression. In the last two years, you've been blamed for financial collapse of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia. All of the all of the above. All of the above. The prime minister of of Malaysia Yes. Said that the region spent forty years trying to build up its economy, and along comes a moron like Soros, k, with a lot of money, and it's all over. He called you a criminal. The French finance minister talked about hanging speculators from lamppost. Soros says the Asian currencies would have collapsed even if he hadn't been in the market. They were over valued. He says people tend to follow his lead because he's been so successful. I have been blamed blamed for everything. I am basically there to to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of of what I do.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, George Soros stepped in to fill the power vacuum in Hungary, Poland, and China in the late 1980s. This marked the rise of what some call the Soros Empire, taking over where the Soviet Empire left off. How successful do you think Soros has been in his imperial ambitions?

The conversation centers on a newly discussed MOU involving Iran, Israel, the GCC, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and the downstream effects on markets, alliances, and investment. Regarding the MOU, Jeffrey Krigsmann says it is the same MOU that was meant to be signed Sunday but is now on Friday, and that not all parties have agreed publicly to its terms. He says Israelis and GCC members have been kept in the dark, raising questions about sustainability: if Israel launches attacks on Hezbollah immediately after signing, he argues, Iran’s actions regarding the straits could affect shipping operations. He notes that Maersk has already said it will not change plans because of it, and that how long the arrangement lasts matters for ship movement and whether ships can be brought back out. Krigsmann also says other parties were not consulted on the “logistics service fee,” described as tolls. He highlights a key point: when J.D. Vance was asked about $300 billion in who pays it, Vance indicated Gulf friends are paying it. He frames this as a large cost for some party to shoulder. If Gulf states are not paying, he says the U.S. would have to, and he connects that to the need for congressional involvement. He adds that Iranian reporting has already circulated the $300 billion figure and that parties are claiming victories even though nothing is broadly agreed. The discussion then shifts to details of what the MOU actually states: the host notes that leaks suggest Iran would manage shipping and reopen the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian management, but the fee is not clearly stated in the MOU details they have seen. Krigsmann says he has not seen the details yet. The host asks whether Iran will control the Strait of Hormuz, how significant that is for Iran and the global economy, and whether there could be a long-term deal integrating Iran into the global economy that investors are considering. Krigsmann says investors are not currently talking about it but argues it should be brought back into focus as the leverage Iran wanted from its nuclear program, describing that leverage as the most it has had since the revolution. On how the Gulf is hurt and how long recovery takes, Krigsmann says the region is a big victim, especially countries like Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and also Iraq. He says Saudi and the Emiratis are richer and can roll with impacts more easily, but countries such as Qatar derive a large share of GDP from oil and gas, and he says Qatar’s major LNG facilities have been permanently damaged. He argues that if Gulf states were paying war reparations, it would be an insult for countries severely hurt as bystanders. When asked whether security and stability perceptions in places like the UAE will return, the host suggests people forget quickly and references COVID. Krigsmann compares the dynamic to the Global Financial Crisis and says a key lesson is diversification—specifically diversification of energy supply. He says the Middle East will likely remain a dominant energy supplier but with alternative routes that cost more. He argues that a similar “new set of players” dynamic followed the 2008 crisis, and he expects a parallel shift on the energy side. He adds that the pain could become more asymmetric as shortages approach and restart takes time. The host broadens diversification beyond energy and mentions security and alliance structures. Krigsmann says countries will try to be self-sufficient and diversify friends, with Middle East alliances shifting and becoming transactional. He frames diversification across supply lines, defense, and finance as a response to the risk of being dependent on one entity. The conversation then turns to asset flows and market behavior. Krigsmann describes a rotation out of “new economy” tech into “old economy” commodities that he says ran through the ceasefire on April 8, with commodity names later giving back gains during a sell-off. He argues that capital has flowed into SpaceX/NASDAQ and tech, and because it is a “zero-sum game,” less capital going into energy and commodities means they fall. He also says retail investors destock physical commodities and sell equity exposure expecting cheaper prices tomorrow. He expresses concerns about how uncertainty and volatility affect markets, arguing that the “information content” of markets is reduced when rules shift. He cites regulatory changes in the U.S. and Europe as reasons markets may not function with the stable regulatory framework they previously relied on. He says oil companies are down and oil price down because uncertainty is too high to hold positions, making it too painful to hold long or short. He references volatility swinging sharply within months and states this pushes people out because holding positions has become too dangerous. On Asia, he says conditions calmed somewhat because it is before peak summer driving season and before heating/cooling ramps, but he says places like Japan and Korea face problems ahead. He estimates that oil shut-ins fell from about 12 million barrels per day to about 10 million due to leaks from the Gulf, and he says trapped ships decreased after ships were freed through the strait, though he says it is not a long-term solution. Strategically and economically, Krigsmann says the U.S. has not “actually had to feel it yet,” but that impacts will be evident in years. He contrasts the situation with 1991: he argues this is a different strategic world where globalization “blew” apart opposite to the Gulf War I context and describes a game-changing shift with polarization. He also argues that the “grand bargain” broken—sea-lane security by the U.S. Navy in exchange for dollar-based trade—means questions about strategic alliances and the link between oil, dollar, and navy. When asked about integrating Iran into the global economy, he says capital wants certainty and confidence that investments will not lose everything. He calls Iran “uninvestable right now,” comparing it to Venezuela where guarantees were offered and where investment viability depended on them. He says guarantees are what institutions like the World Bank and IMF were designed to support after World War II, and he asks who would provide guarantees for Iran. The host adds that Iran has looked for guarantees from multiple countries, but no one could guarantee U.S. promises, leaving the guarantor as the party that cannot guarantee. The discussion concludes with agreement that uncertainty is unprecedented and that hard assets may benefit, followed by closing remarks about the show and upcoming guests.

the real risk is if the foreign currency were to appreciate dramatically relative to your own. but if you're a Thai bank in the early nineties, you're like, there's this huge demand of other people wanting to convert their currency into the Thai baht. In fact, so much so that in order to maintain this peg, the Thai Central Bank is is is is printing money and buying those and buying those dollars. It's trying to soak it up. So the Thai Central Bank is building this huge reserve of dollars. So for whatever reason, if those investors were ever to try to pull out, the Thai central bank could still attempt to keep the currency pegged. And so when you go to 1997, that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 0: The United States just lost a war it didn't even know it was fighting. While Washington celebrates military victories and economic growth numbers, the real battlefield has shifted to the global payment system. This week, something unprecedented happened in the shadows of international finance. Brazil quietly activated the Brixbridge system. For the first time in eighty years, major economies completed cross-border transactions without touching a single US bank. The American media is not reporting this story, but I can tell you, as someone who spent decades inside the system, this is not just another trade deal. This is the financial equivalent of splitting the atom, and the explosion is coming. The United States has enjoyed what we call monetary imperialism for nearly a century. Every time you buy oil, coffee, or electronics anywhere in the world, those transactions flow through New York banks. Washington collects a tax on every trade, every investment, every breath of the global economy, but that monopoly just ended, and most people don't even realize it happened. My name is Paulo Nogueira Batista junior. I served as executive director at the International Monetary Fund. I sat across the table from finance ministers of collapsing nations. I know how empires fall. They don't collapse from outside invasions. They collapse when their money stops working. And the American money is about to stop working. And the explanation of what happened this week in Brazil: President Lula signed an executive order that sounds boring to most people, but this order just declared independence from The US financial system. Brazil can now trade directly with Russia, China, India, and South Africa using our own central bank digital currencies. No dollars. No swift system. No permission from Washington. Think about what our country has achieved. Every international bank transfer in the world flows through this Belgian company controlled by the US Treasury until now. Till the BRICS Bridge is not just an alternative to SWIFT. It is a declaration of war against monetary colonialism, and it's working. In November 2024, Russia and China settled $20,000,000,000 in bilateral trade using this new system. In December, India and Brazil completed energy transactions worth $15,000,000,000. By January 2025, South Africa joined the network. The numbers are still small compared to the global economy, but remember, every revolution starts with small numbers. The Internet started with a few university computers.

You've been blamed for the financial collapse of several countries in the last two years. Are you really that powerful? There's a misunderstanding. My goal is to make money, and I don't consider the social consequences of my actions. As a competitor, I must focus on winning, but I do care about the society I live in. Which version of you are we discussing—the amoral or the moral George Soros? It's the same person. At times, I engage in amoral activities, but I also strive to be moral. You are a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Holocaust.

I recount a meeting I had with a board at Safeguard Scientifics, where a firm co-located with them had a board member present. I demonstrated what was possible if we reengineered the government money, arguing there was enormous opportunity to build vast financial equity gains and capital gains, and that pension funds could profit by reengineering how the federal budget worked to create a more productive economy. The president of the largest pension fund in the country attended and told me, “you don’t understand.” He explained that this is what they had tried to do when he was younger, working with a group of activists, and they were able to stop them. I naively said, “you didn’t have the Internet. You couldn’t get the learning speeds up locally high enough to jump the curve.” He froze, looked at me, and said, “you don’t understand. It’s too late.” I asked, “what do you mean it’s too late?” He replied, “it’s too late. They’ve given up on the country and they’re gonna move all the money out of the country starting in the fall.” He said, “you’ve got to get to Nick Brady.” Brady had been the chairman of the firm I was a partner at on Wall Street and later became secretary of the treasury in the first Bush administration, known as a leader in how the financial system runs. So the instruction was to get to Nick Brady. I thought the message meant we had been directed to reallocate equity in the pension funds to emerging market investments, which made sense because growth rates in Asia and emerging markets exceeded those in mature economies. But then, at the outset, he mentioned “they’re moving all the money out starting the fall.” That fall marked the beginning of fiscal 1998, when enormous amounts of money began disappearing from my old agencies, HUD and the Department of Defense. What I later came to believe, and we have a website dedicated to presenting documents and analysis on this, is missingmoney.salaire.com. I realized that what he was referring to was a financial coup—an attempt to end the system where bankers controlled monetary policy while the people’s representatives controlled fiscal policy, and instead move to a process in which bankers controlled both. Rather than pursuing new legislation, they would leverage debt, issue vast debt, and siphon money out the back door, effectively conducting a financial coup d’etat, which is what I think has happened.

In this video, Speaker 0 asks Speaker 1 if they are responsible for the financial collapses in several countries. Speaker 1 admits to being involved in all of them but clarifies that they are only focused on making money and don't consider the social consequences. Speaker 0 then questions which version of George Soros they are speaking to, the amoral or moral one. Speaker 1 explains that they are one person who sometimes engages in amoral activities but tries to be moral most of the time.

On the one hand, it increased the overcapacity of the export sector further reducing the profitability and even the viability of the investments made. And on the other hand, given the massive influx of capital, of cash that continue to arrive, the loss of export momentum meant that the current account balance, that is the difference between income and the payments to the rest of the world, would register considerably large deficit levels. The fact was that the accumulation of current account deficits was being financed by foreign debt. So to give you an idea, in 1996, the foreign debt of these countries exceeded 165% of their gross domestic product.

Speaker 0: It's very hard to explain, especially to a western audience, that a country under sanctions for forty three, forty four years, they have developed an extremely sophisticated military industry with indigenous solutions by scientists and engineers, Iranian scientists and engineers. Everything from this ghost fella all the way to the mega hypersonics, which are almost on the same level of the Russian hypersonic missiles. Everything indigenously developed in Iran. Yes. Katamoran warship is a nice way of putting it. But but go Ghost Boat is much more fun, isn't it? Speaker 1: Yeah. Ghost Boat is a very, enticing, name. Last question. Will the Iranians close the Straits Of Hormuz if the Americans attack Tehran? Speaker 0: This is very, very important, judge. I opened one of my columns with that, and I and I posted on next about it because we finally got confirmation that the parliament, the Marshallese, the Iranian parliament authorized the, Strait Of Hormuz to be blocked. But the final is not the final decision. This is binding. This means that if the order comes from the supreme leader and from the IRGC, they can close the straight anytime they want and this is constitutionally correct. This is very, very important. This means that they are ready to close the straight if, let's say, even if they sense that they're going to be attacked because they know exactly what that means. And many of us who have been writing about that for years, I'm one of them, but Zoltan Posner when he was at the Credit Suisse, he wrote about that as well. Other analysts who were in touch with Goldman Sachs experts. Goldman Sachs, just to give an idea, by 02/1718, more or less, they had already a projection that if the Strait Of Hormuz is closed before, during, or after the the the beginning of a naval war, the barrel of oil could shoot up to $700 a barrel practically in a matter of days. And this is not only the $7, $700 a barrel issue, is the fact that the pyramid of derivatives of the global economy would instantly collapse completely, and this according to Goldman Sachs derivatives experts. And then there was an enormous discussion that's still rolling about how many what's what's the size of this pyramid? It's indeed quadrillions of dollars. It's not even Or Yeah. The original number by the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland was 700,000,000,000,000. This this figure is from, well, yeah, seven or eight years ago. And then afterwards, if you talk to Persian Gulf traders, and some of them love to talk off the record, they say, look, it's in the quadrillions now, and we know that if this happens, the the global economy can cook everything can collapse in a matter of a week or ten days. So the Iranians know about that as well. And I'm sure people in the Atlanticist sphere, they also know about that. So the question, in fact, is if this information arrives to Trump's desk.

1993: the Thai government decided to create an international financial center in Bangkok with the intention of competing with Singapore and Hong Kong, easing regulations on capital market, introducing tax incentives, and promoting a financial industry. Bang was specializing in foreign exchange lending operations, borrowing capital nominated in currencies and channeling it into local projects, making Bangkok one of the gateways to Southeast Asia. The experience as a financial center was limited, and regulations were ineffective. The influx of capital flooding Southeast Asia led to investments in projects that would not be profitable, funded by loans with little hope of repayment. IMF estimates loans in an erratic situation reached levels of between 1524%. Lax financial rules and lack of supervision meant loans were refinanced without being classified as dubious, interest never actually received was counted, and many troubled companies were lent more money to pay off interest on previous loans.

In this video, Speaker 0 asks Speaker 1 if they are responsible for the financial collapses in various countries. Speaker 1 admits to being blamed for those collapses but denies having that much power. Speaker 0 mentions that the prime minister of Malaysia accused Speaker 1 of hindering the region's economic progress. Speaker 1 acknowledges being blamed for everything but clarifies that their main goal is to make money, without considering the social consequences. Lastly, Speaker 0 asks Speaker 1 if they believe in God, to which Speaker 1 responds with a simple "No."

In 1992 the UK was trapped in the European exchange rate mechanism. Think of it like financial handcuffs, they had to keep the British pound within a tight range against the German mark. No flexibility, no escape between these two currencies. But George Soros, this Hungarian immigrant who survived Nazi occupation and built one of the most successful hedge funds in history, is looking at the situation and thinking, this is unsustainable. And he was right. The UK had high inflation, weak growth, and they were paying crazy interest rates just to maintain this artificial system. It was like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. So what did Soros and the team do? They built a massive short position. We're talking billions of pounds.

Companies and private investors in Thailand borrowed heavily from abroad to boost exports and profit from property value increases. However, when Japan's economic slump caused Thailand's export boom to falter, companies faced difficulties. The Thai government sought bilateral loans from Beijing and Tokyo to avert devaluation, but both countries refused. Speculation and hedge funds led by George Soros triggered an exchange rate crisis, causing the Thai Central Bank to release the exchange rate of the baht, leading to devaluation. The crisis spread to other Southeast Asian countries, causing recessions, bankruptcies, and social upheaval. The IMF's response was criticized, but Korea managed to recover faster due to restructuring and risk management. The crisis highlighted the need for global financial stability measures.

'One of the biggest financial crises in history.' 'A crisis that forced the Asian countries involved to carry out enormous restructuring and to receive bailouts of a $120,000,000,000.' 'Despite this, only South Korea managed to recover in a reasonably short amount of time.' 'We are talking about a crisis that had a lot of consequences throughout the financial world.' The speaker highlights the crisis's magnitude, the forced restructuring and massive bailouts for Asian economies, the uneven recovery with South Korea recovering relatively quickly, and the broad consequences for global finance. These observations illustrate how the crisis reshaped policy responses, capital flows, and risk assessment across international markets.