Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the forward to Soros’ book, “The Alchemy of Finance,” that Soros “made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game.”

Soros is famous for earning an estimated $1 billion by selling short $10 billion of British pounds, forcing the Bank of England to devalue the pound sterling on September 16, 1992 – now known as “Black Wednesday.”

In 1997, a financial crisis that started in Thailand spread to Russia and Latin America. Russia defaulted and devalued the ruble. The Federal Reserve had to rescue the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Markets. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused Soros of starting the crisis by attacking Malaysia’s currency and causing the country’s worst economic slump in decades.

Soros defended his role as a global financier and market mover. “Markets are amoral,” he told CNN. “I’m not a sinner.” But French authorities investigated Soros in 1989, and in 2002 fined him $2 million for violating French insider trading laws. France’s highest court upheld his conviction in 2006.

Those who hate American culture and values, some from oil-rich nations, have vast sums of money at their disposal (even more than George Soros). It would not have been difficult for them to study the current generation of derivative products so popular on Wall Street and then deploy their vast economic resources to purchase mortgage- or other asset-backed securities issued by special purpose vehicles (SPV) based in the Cayman Islands or elsewhere to maintain confidentiality.

As the market for these products mushroomed, everyone in the system would make huge profits even if they believed that the bubble would break in due course. They might even have read Soros’ books on financial bubbles and benefited from the British and Asian financial meltdowns, as he did.

If people with malicious intent began selling short public securities of players in this drama, such sales would not be noticed. They would have been perfectly legal and intermediaries like Lehman Brothers would have had impeccable credit ratings and good reputations with their trading partners.

As the bubble developed holes, sub-prime lenders would be the first to feel the effects. Market manipulators could then provide capital to investment banks through their own wealth funds; for example, in the form of senior convertible debt.

If the bubble popped, speculators could end up owning the assets in the SPVs, as subordinate interests would be wiped out. They could possibly end up controlling the investment banks if shareholder equity was vaporized in the meltdown. And if the U.S. government decided to protect financial markets by bailing out these institutions, speculators could reap a windfall from the American taxpayer.

When the dust settled, speculators who made fortunes would also control huge chunks of American capital and investment banks. If the government stepped in to prevent further manipulations, these same speculators, carefully hidden behind intermediaries, might never be named.

As the crisis deepened and the American public demanded answers, the Justice Department would assign a team of FBI agents to investigate the more dramatic failures. Even if they were able to find the malevolent speculators who caused the monetary crisis, would prosecutors be able to do anything? How would they be any different from speculators at Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, or Merrill Lynch whose greed also led to this crisis?

The greatest damage to America may well result from the greed of our own deregulated financial institutions who rode the feverish wave of derivative products, failing to notice that economic terrorists could play this game as well.

Gustafson and Lowell are lawyers based in Dallas.