George Soros
George Soros (born
August 12,
1930) is a
Hungarian-born
American businessman. He is famous as a
currency speculator and a
philanthropist. He is also the son of the
Esperanto writer
Tivadar Soros. He has been inspired by
Karl Popper.
Early Life
\nSoros was born in Hungary and lived there until 1946, when he escaped the Soviet occupation by participating in an Esperanto youth congress in the West. (Soros was taught to speak the language from birth.) As a young man, Soros traded currencies in the black market during the Nazi occupation of Hungary.
Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952. In 1956, he moved to the United States. He has stated that his intent was to earn enough money on Wall Street to support himself as an author and philosopher. He is currently the chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute.
Soros was fourteen when the Nazis invaded Hungary and he avoided the fate of many Jews by posing as the godson of a Hungarian official overseeing the confiscation of Jewish properties.
"The Man Who Broke the Bank of England"
\nOn September 22, 1992, Soros became instantly famous when, believing the Pound Sterling was overvalued, he speculated aggressively against it. The Bank of England was forced to withdraw the currency out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and Soros earned an estimated US$1.1 billion in the process. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England." In 1997, under similar circumstances during the Asian financial crisis, Malaysian former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of bringing down the Malaysian currency, the ringgit.
Despite his carefully groomed media image, Soros is a controversial figure. Although he has become extremely wealthy as an international investor and currency speculator (his fortune in 2004 was estimated at US$ seven billion), he freely acknowledges that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries.
Critics
\nCritics point out that Soros plays the currency markets through Quantum Fund, his privately-owned investment fund registered in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, a Caribbean tax haven which has repeatedly been cited by the International Task Force on Money Laundering of the OECD as one of the world's most important centers for laundering the illegal proceeds of the Latin American drug trade. By operating from Curaçao, Soros not only avoids paying taxes but also hides the nature of his investors and what he does with their money.
Soros has critics from all over the political spectrum: American conservatives dislike his dump-Bush campaign, and hawkish friends of Israel dislike his rhetoric with inflammatory comparisons to Nazi Germany and Yasser Arafat.
Former National Review contributor and ex-House Republican staffer Phil Brennan called Soros a "socialist billionaire".[1] Lowell Ponte of David Horowitz's Frontpage called Soros a "Billionaire for the Left".[1] Scott Shore of IntellectualConservative.com called him a "Soft Money Marxist."[1] He has also been called a self-hating Jewish anti-Semite.
At a Jewish forum in New York City, Soros reportedly attributed a recent resurgence of anti-Semitism to the policies of Israel and the United States, and to successful Jews such as himself:
- "There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that," Soros said. "It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti- Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies."
- "If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish," he said. "I can't see how one could confront it directly." ...
- "I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world," said Soros ... "As an unintended consequence of my actions," he said, "I also contribute to that image."[1]
It should be noted that this could be a result of Soros's
Popperian tendency toward self-criticism.
Quotes
\n*"How can we escape from the trap that the terrorists have set us," he asked. "Only by recognizing that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. We must, of course, protect our security; but we must also correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds....Crime requires police work, not military action."
- "An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others," Soros said. "The Bush administration merely has a narrower definition of self-interest. It does not include the interests of others."
- "The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side. The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President's annual laying out to Congress of the country's security objectives) reads, 'The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.'"
Philanthropy
\nSoros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the
University of Cape Town in apartheid
South Africa. Soros' philanthropic funding in
Eastern Europe mostly occurs through the
Open Society Institute and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names, e.g. the
Stefan Batory Foundation in
Poland. He also pledged an endowment of $250 million to the
Central European University (CEU).
He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the
University of Oxford in
1980, the Budapest University of Economics, and
Yale University in
1991. Soros was a student of
Karl Popper and says that his investment strategies are based on a Popperian skepticism about the reliability of any one human belief.
Philosophy
One could say that Soros is primarily a philosopher, and his successes in business and philathropy are merely an expression of his views on the world. Certainly Soros sees himself that way, having aspired to be a philosopher since childhood.
Soros periodically has studied under and corresponded with Karl Popper.
He has popularized the concepts of
Dynamic disequilibrium,
Static disequilibrium, and
Near-equilibrium conditions. His writings also focus heavily on the concept of Reflexivity.
Soros blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in
market fundamentalism.
Soros vs. Bush
\nFor many years, Soros did not involve himself greatly in US politics, but that changed under President George W. Bush. In an interview with
The Washington Post on
November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing Bush from office is the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death" for which he would be willing to sacrifice his entire fortune. Soros gave $3 million to the
Center for American Progress, committed $5 million to
MoveOn.org, while he and his friend Peter Lewis each gave
America Coming Together $10 million. (All are groups working to support Democrats in the
2004 election.)
Soros has been criticized for his large donations, as he also pushed for the
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 which was intended to ban "soft money" contributions to federal election campaigns. Soros has responded that his donations to unaffiliated organizations do not raise the same corruption issues as donations directly to the candidates or political parties.
Soros has contributed money to the Million Mom March.
Ironically, Soros's
Harken Energy bailed out Bush in 1986 by buying his ailing oil venture, Spectrum 7.
His most recent book,
The Bubble of American Supremacy, was published in January 2004.
[1]
Soros is married with three children.
Books
- The Alchemy of Finance (Simon & Schuster, 1988) ISBN 0671662384 (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ISBN 0471445495)\n*Opening the Soviet System (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1990) ISBN 0297820559\n*Underwriting Democracy (Free Press, 1991) ISBN 0029302854\n*Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995) ISBN 1891620274 \n*The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (PublicAffairs, 1998) ISBN 1891620274\n*Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2000) ISBN 1586480197\n*George Soros on Globalization (PublicAffairs, March 2002) ISBN 1586481258 \n*The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (PublicAffairs, December 2003) ISBN 1586482173\n*MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find Your Political Voice and Become a Catalyst for Change by MoveOn.org (Author) , Inner Ocean Publishing; (March 2004) ISBN 193072229X
External Links and references
\n*Project Syndicate\n*
The Soros Foundation\n*George Soros,
"The Bubble of American Supremacy", Editorial in The Korea Herald, March 12, 2003. \n*if the Korea Herald link above is unavailable to you, read
"The Bubble of American Supremacy" at The Atlantic\n*
Analysis of Soros' role in Eastern Europe\n*
Soros viewed as a post-modern philosopher (1) (2)\n*
Long article with many references (pro-
socialist point of view)\n*Laura Blumenfeld, "
Billionaire Soros Takes On Bush," MSNBC, November 11, 2003.\n* George Soros, expanded
"The bubble of American Supremacy", Column in the Atlantic Monthly, December 2003.\n*
Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a Socialist, Self-hating Jew From
Reason magazine\n*
Articles about George Soros\n*"The Man Who Would Be King" by James O. E. Norell, p 36, April 2004
America's 1st Freedom\n*"George Soros's anti-Gun Vision for America" by James O. E. Norell, p 16, April 2004
America Rifleman\n*"
CLN financier Soros attacked with glue in Ukraine," "UCCTruths.com", April 4, 2004.
Soros, George\nSoros, George\n\n\n\n
