New Soros investment fund, profiting off Obama’s ‘green energy’ push, hires top Obama energy aide
Timothy P. Carney
Washington Examiner
2/24/2011
George Soros — whom we’re always told is not serving his own economic interests at all by promoting liberal politicians and big-government policies — is launching a new investment fund that plans to profit off of the “green energy” boom, which is entirely dependent on government subsidies supported by the groups Soros funds.
As the press release puts it, this fund will “leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications.” As Soros puts it in the same release: “Developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency is both a significant global investment opportunity and an environmental imperative.” Cadie Thompson at CNBC’s NetNet flagged this.
So, yeah. The big-government policies advanced by the liberal outfits he funds — like Center for American Progress — will enrich the companies in which Soros is investing.
But this story gets better.
The press release casually mentions whom Soros is hiring to run this new fund: Cathy Zoi. As Cadie Thompson at CNBC’s NetNet (edited by my brother John Carney), puts it,
Zoi was Barack Obama’s “Acting Under Secretary for Energy and Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.” An Al Gore acolyte, Zoi was Obama’s point-woman on subsidizing green tech. Now she’s going to work for George Soros to profit off of subsidized green tech.
If you remember Zoi’s name, it’s because of another green-tech conflict of interest: Zoi’s husband is an executive at a window company, Serious Windows, which the White House regularly held up as a “poster child of green industry.”…
The article continues at the Washington Examiner.
H/T Weasel Zippers
CAJ note: Well, after all, financing regime collapses and the New World Order is pretty expensive…
Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection writes in his post, Why Play by the Rules? :
George Soros, the only acceptable billionaire by liberal standards, is opening up a hedge fund in this measly economy. How? Why?
From the press release:
About Silver Lake
Silver Lake is the global leader in private investments in technology and technology-enabled industries. Silver Lake invests with the strategic and operational insights of an experienced industry participant. The firm has over 90 investment professionals located in New York, Menlo Park, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo and manages over $14 billion across large cap and middle market private investment strategies as well as a credit investment strategy. Its portfolio includes or has included technology industry leaders such as Allyes, Ameritrade, Avago, Avaya, Business Objects, Flextronics, Gartner, i2, Instinet, Intelsat, Interactive Data Corporation, IPC Systems, Locaweb, MCI, Mercury Payment Systems, Multiplan, the NASDAQ OMX Group, NetScout, Nobao Group, NXP, Power-One, Sabre, Seagate Technology, Serena Software, Skype, Spansion, Spreadtrum, SunGard Data Systems, UGS and Vantage Data Centers. For more information, please visit www.silverlake.com.
Related: Environmentalism Isn’t About the Environment
So, here’s a NYTimes story [h/t Environmental Economics] about three separate groups filing environmental lawsuits blocking a solar thermal project in California. The three groups filing the lawsuits are: The Sierra Club, the First-American Quechan tribe and “a labor group.”
Each group gives a different rational for blocking the project and I think it reasonable to ask what each group’s real agenda is. (But let’s remember this is the NYTimes reporting here, who are not exactly known for their competence.)
Read the whole thing…
