George Soros, enigmatic financier, liberal philanthropist dies at XX | Reuters

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George Soros, enigmatic financier, liberal

philanthropist dies at XX
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WASHINGTON, XXX | Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:41pm EDT

(Reuters) - George Soros, who died XXX at age

XXX, was a predatory and hugely successful

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financier and investor, who argued paradoxically for

years against the same sort of free-wheeling

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capitalism that made him billions.

Print

He was known as "the man who broke the Bank of England" for selling
short the British pound in 1992 and helping force the United Kingdom to

Analysis & Opinion

withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which devalued

China and the chaos

theory of finance

the pound and earned Soros more than $1 billion.

And his Soros Fund Management was widely blamed for helping trigger the

Trying to fix broken

economics

Asian financial crisis of 1997, by selling short the Thai baht and Malaysian
ringgit.

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"Subsequently, Prime Minister Mahatir of Malaysia accused me of causing

Currencies

the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation," Soros wrote in The Crisis of

Regulatory News

Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered," in 1998.

Markets

"We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the

Cyclical Consumer
Goods

crisis; on the contrary ... we were purchasing ringgits to realize profits on

our earlier speculation."

Financials

Still, economist Paul Krugman, was one of many observers who accused Soros of helping trigger
the crisis.
In 1999, Krugman wrote that "nobody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can
be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a
currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fund and profit."
Still, Soros has written extensively on the folly of what he has called free market "fundamentalism,"
the belief of many conservative economists that markets will correct themselves with no need for
government intervention.
In Soros' view, markets and investors are subject to "mood" swings, or a prevailing positive or
negative bias which can be exploited by savvy investors but which inevitably lead to damaging
market bubbles and boom/bust cycles.
An enigma, wrapped in intellect, contradiction and money.
A Jew born in Hungary as the Nazis were gaining power in Germany, Soros survived World War
Two and then emigrated to Great Britain, where he earned a degree from the London School of
Economics in 1952, and landed his first job in the financial industry largely through pure stubborn
chutzpah.
OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE
While at the London School, Soros studied under the economist and philosopher Karl Popper and a
main vehicle for his philanthropy, the Open Society Institute, is named for Popper's two-volume
work, "The Open Society and Its Enemies."
In that work, Popper develops the philosophy of reflexivity, a theory first articulated by William
Thomas in the 1920s that posits that individual biases enter into market transactions, coloring the
perception of economic fundamentals. Soros has attributed his own financial success in part to his
understanding of the reflexive effect.
Key to understanding that effect is recognizing when markets are in a condition of near-equilibrium,
or in disequilibrium. Soros has observed that when markets are rising or falling rapidly, they are

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/soros-george-b-aug-idUSL2N0CR1TF20130418

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George Soros, enigmatic financier, liberal philanthropist dies at XX | Reuters

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typically marked by rising disequilibrium, and the dispassionate investor can capitalize on that
recognition.
While Soros has benefited enormously from this understanding (Forbes put his wealth in 2013 at
$19 billion, making him the world's 30th richest person, not counting the roughly $8 billion he has
given away through various charitable entities he controls), he has argued nevertheless for strong
central government regulation to correct for and counterbalance the excesses of greed, fear and the
free market.
Popper's idea of fallibilism, which posits that anything one believes may in fact be wrong, is another
key principle that has guided Soros in his career, and his philanthropy.
Soros' philanthropy since the 1970s, when he began funding the studies of black students at the
University of Cape Town in South Africa, has been marked as much by his personal journey as by
the needs of the communities he has set out to serve.
His efforts through the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations have been skewed toward
the effort to promote democratic values in the post-Soviet economies of Central and Eastern
Europe, where he witnessed the rise of communism in Hungary after World War Two.
"The bulk of his enormous winnings (as an investor and speculator) is now devoted to encouraging
transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,'" former Federal Reserve Chairman
Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword to Soros' "The Alchemy of Finance" (2003).
"Open," Volcker wrote, "not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but - more important tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior."
PHILANTHROPY, POLITICS
Soros also pledged $50 million in 2006 to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs,
to provide educational, agricultural and medical aid to help poor villages in Africa. And the Open
Society Institute has expanded its giving to more than 60 countries around the world, giving away
roughly $600 million a year.
Soros was an early supporter of the peaceful transformation of the Solidarity movement in Poland
and Open Society Institute programs were considered by many Western observers to be a key
factor in the success of the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia.
While his philanthropy has earned him friends around the world, his political giving has earned him
both friends and enemies. Former President George W. Bush, who Soros blamed for turning the
United States into "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order," was perhaps the biggest
single target of his political wrath.
"By declaring a 'war on terror' after Sept. 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world," Soros told
Newsweek magazine in a 2006 interview. "When you wage war, you inevitably create innocent
victims."
In a bid to stop Bush's re-election, Soros donated $23.5 million to more than 500 liberal and
progressive groups during the 2003-2004 U.S. election cycle.
Other causes that have attracted Soros' generosity include drug policy reform. He donated $1.4
million to promote California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed initiative that would have expanded
drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for non-violent drug offenders, and $400,000
to the successful 2008 Massachusetts initiative to decriminalize possession of less than an ounce
(28 grams) of marijuana.
He has also been a vocal supporter of the right to die in dignity, revealing in 1994 that he had
offered to help his own mother, a member of the Hemlock Society, commit suicide.
While Soros' life has been marked by remarkable success in his far-flung endeavors, it has not been
without defeat. His investment in France's Societe Generale following Jacques Chirac's aggressive
program of privatization led to charges of insider trading, which he disputed, and eventual conviction
and the payment of a small penalty.
And he was a minority partner in a group that failed to acquire the Washington Nationals Major
League baseball team.
But these failings stand out in the life of this remarkably successful Hungarian-American financier,
philanthropist and thinker, in contrast to his stubborn refusal to fail in virtually every other venture.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/soros-george-b-aug-idUSL2N0CR1TF20130418

4/18/2013

George Soros, enigmatic financier, liberal philanthropist dies at XX | Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/soros-george-b-aug-idUSL2N0CR1TF20130418

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