George Soros, for those of you who are unaware, has a conviction for inside trading.

A French court found him guilty of that in 2005, based on a purchase of Societe Generale shares in 1988. The leftist billionaire, who finances moveon.org and Human Rights Watch, has spared no expense in trying to overturn that verdict. After all, he fancies himself something of an oracle who can move markets or dispense socialist wisdom onto all those less rich than himself. This conviction is bad for that, and unless he wants to write a tell—all as an inside trader, probably for sales of the kinds of pompous books he writes, too.

But money can only go so far in the face of evidence. The highest appeals court in France dismissed Soros' bid to clear his name in the case Wednesday, and the billionaire now vows to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Of course, Soros may be right that an EU court may clear him and maybe even throw in some censure to those supposedly notorious human rights violators, the French judges. But to say the French court's ruling merits the same kind of outrage and disregard for human rights that the imprisonment of someone who had been tossed into one of Milosevic's dungeons without trial might is asking for a lot of moral muddlement.

Yet he's in luck. Only an EU court is capable of it.

A.M. Mora y Leon 06 14 06