George Soros (pronounced [ʃoroʃ]) (born August 12, 1930 in Budapest, Hungary as Schwartz György) is a financial speculator, stock investor, philanthropist, liberal political activist and philosopher. Currently, he is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. His support for the Solidarity labor movement in Poland, as well as the Czechoslovakian human rights organization Charter 77, contributed to end of Soviet Union's rule on those nations. His funding and organization of Georgia's Rose Revolution was considered crucial to its success by Russian and Western observers although Soros said his role has been "greatly exaggerated." In the United States he is known for donating large sums of money to efforts to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in 2003 in the foreword of Soros' book The Alchemy of Finance:
- "George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,' open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but - more important - tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior."
Family
Soros has been married to Annaliese Witschak and to Susan Weber Soros. He is now divorced. He has five children: Robert, Andrea, Jonathan (with his first wife, Annaliese), Alexander and Gregory (with his second wife, Susan). His older brother Paul is an engineer, and is also a well-known philanthropist, investor, and New York socialite.
Early life
George Soros is the son of the Esperanto writer Tivadar Soros.
He was thirteen years old when Nazi Germany took military control over its ally Hungary (March 19, 1944), and started exterminating over 500,000 Hungarian Jews (about two-thirds of the prewar population) [1]. In the following year, Soros survived the battle of Budapest, as Soviet and Nazi forces fought house-to-house through the city. George's father, Tivadar writes of his ordeal to survive fascist Hungary, and help many people escape it, in his book Maskerado. George first traded currencies during the Hungarian hyperinflation of 1945-46.
In 1946 George escaped the Soviet occupation by participating in an Esperanto youth congress in the West. Soros was taught to speak the language from birth and thus is one of the rare native Esperanto speakers.
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. His net worth reached an estimated $11 billion.
Business
Soros is the founder of Soros Fund Management. In 1970 he co-founded the Quantum Fund with Jim Rogers. It returned 3,365% during the next ten years, and created the bulk of the Soros fortune.
Currency speculation
On Black Wednesday (September 16, 1992), Soros became instantly famous when he sold short more than $10bn worth of pounds, profiting from the Bank of England's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency. Finally, the Bank of England was forced to withdraw the currency out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and to devalue the pound sterling, and Soros earned an estimated US$ 1.1 billion in the process. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England."
The Times October 26, 1992, Monday: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."
In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of bringing down the Malaysian currency, the ringgit.
Insider trading conviction
In 1988, he was asked to join a takeover attempt of a French bank. He declined to participate in the bid, but did later buy a relatively small number of shares in the company. Fourteen years later, in 2002, a French court ruled that it was insider trading as defined under French securities laws and fined him $2 million. Soros denied any wrongdoing and said news of the takeover was public knowledge. PBS
Philanthropy
Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970's, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa, and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain. Soros' philanthropic funding in Eastern Europe mostly occurs through the Open Society Institute (OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names, e.g. the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland. As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion. The OSI says it has spent about $400 million annually in recent years. Notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, worldwide efforts to repeal drug prohibition laws, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of 420 million euros to the Central European University (CEU).
He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Budapest University of Economics, and Yale University in 1991. Soros also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in 2000 as well as the Laurea Honoris Causa, the highest honor of the University of Bologna in 1995.
Philosophy
Soros has a keen interest in philosophy, and his philosophical outlook is largely influenced by Karl Popper, whom he studied under at the London School of Economics. His Open Society Institute is named after Popper's two volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. What some consider Soros's certainty in his political beliefs ironically conflicts with the critical rationalism espoused by Popper.
He has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions. His writings also focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity.
Despite working as an investor and currency speculator (his fortune in 2004 was estimated at US$ 7 billion), he argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. Soros blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism. His opposition to many aspects of globalization has made him a controversial figure.
From Victor Niederhoffer (under "external links"): "Most of all, George believed even then in a mixed economy, one with a strong central international government to correct for the excesses of self-interest."
Soros draws a distinction between being a participant in the market and working to change the rules that market participants must follow. He appears to have no problem working to further his own self interest economically, while at the same time lobbying for a drastic overhaul of the global financial system. Responding to accusations of being personally responsible for many financial collapses, including those in England, Eastern Europe, and Thailand, he stated, "As a market participant, I don't need to be concerned with the consequences of my [financial] actions."
Opposition to the Soviet Union
According to Neil Clark (writing in the New Statesman): "(t)he conventional view, shared by many on the left, is that socialism collapsed in eastern Europe because of its systemic weaknesses and the political elite's failure to build popular support. That may be partly true, but Soros's role was crucial. From 1979, he distributed $3m a year to dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union. In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media."
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros' funding of progressive, anti-imperialist causes has continued to play an important role in the former Soviet sphere. His funding and organization of Georgia's Rose Revolution was considered crucial to its success by Russian and Western observers, although Soros has modestly said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated."
Soros vs. Bush
Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the U.S. presidential election, 2004. In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death" for which he would willingly 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 were groups that worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election.) On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003-2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 Groups dedicated to defeating President George Bush. Despite Soros' efforts, Bush was reelected to a second term as president on November 2, 2004.
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.
Ironically, Harken Energy, a firm partly owned by Soros, did business with George W. Bush in 1986 by buying his oil company, Spectrum 7.
His most recent book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, was published in January 2004 ([2]).
Critics
Criticism of financial activities
Critics claim that Soros has an undue influence on currency markets through Quantum Fund, his privately-owned investment fund. Like many large hedge funds, it is registered in an offshore tax haven, specifically Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles.
In an August 2004 appearance on Chris Wallace's FOX News Sunday, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, stated, "We don't know where George Soros's money comes from. We don't know where it comes from, from the left, and you don't know where it comes in the right. You know, Soros's money, some of that is coming from overseas. It could be drug money. We don't know where it comes from." Soros responded to Hastert by saying, "by smearing me with false charges and mischaracterizations you are attempting to stifle critical debate and intimidate those who believe this administration is leading the country in a ruinous direction. Now that I have called you on your false accusation, you are using additional smear tactics." [3] Soros filed an official complaint with the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Soros claimed that Hastert's comments "strongly suggests a deliberate effort to use smear tactics, intimidation and falsehoods to silence criticism."
Criticism of political activities
George Soros has many critics amongst American conservatives and supporters of Israel.
Supporters of the Bush administration dislike his contributions to campaigns against Bush. At a Jewish forum in New York City, Soros partially 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. 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. 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... As an unintended consequence of my actions ... I also contribute to that image." [4]
Arguably, this could be a result of Soros's Popperian philosophy and the resulting tendency toward self-criticism.
Quotations
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
- "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[5] (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.'"
Books
Authored or co-authored
- The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (PublicAffairs, 2003) ISBN 1586482173 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1586482920)
- George Soros on Globalization (PublicAffairs, 2002) ISBN 1586481258 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1586482785)
- Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2000) ISBN 1586480197
- Science and the Open Society: The Future of Karl Popper's Philosophy by Mark Amadeus Notturno, George Soros (Central European University Press, 2000) ISBN 9639116696 (paperback: Central European University Press, 2000; ISBN 963911670X)
- The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (PublicAffairs, 1998) ISBN 1891620274
- Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 0471120146 (paperback; Wiley, 1995; ISBN 0471119776)
- Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise and Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe (Free Press, 1991) ISBN 0029302854 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1586482270)
- Opening the Soviet System (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1990) ISBN 0297820559 (paperback: Perseus Books, 1996; ISBN 0813312051)
- The Alchemy of Finance (Simon & Schuster, 1988) ISBN 0671662384 (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ISBN 0471445495)
Biographies
- Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire by Michael T. Kaufman (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) ISBN 0375405852
- Soros: The Unauthorized Biography, the Life, Times and Trading Secrets of the World's Greatest Investor by Robert Slater (McGraw-Hill, 1997) ISBN 0786312475
Contributed
- MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find Your Political Voice and Become a Catalyst for Change by MoveOn.org (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004) ISBN 193072229X
External links and references
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Speech
Writings
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