Category Archive: Celebrity

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A celebrity (often referred to as a celeb in popular culture) is a person who is famously recognized in a society or culture.

Lee Iacocca

  By admin | September 7, 2011 - 9:35 am | Celebrity Leave a comment

Lido Anthony “Lee” Iacocca (play /ˌaɪ.əˈkoʊkə/ eye-ə-koh-kə; born October 15, 1924) is an American businessman known for engineering the Mustang, the unsuccessful Ford Pinto, being fired from Ford Motor Company, and his revival of the Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s.[1] He served as President and CEO from 1978 and additionally as chairman from 1979, until his retirement at the end of 1992.

One of the most famous business people in the world, Iacocca was a passionate advocate of U.S. business exports during the 1980s. He is the author (or co-author) of several books, including Iacocca: An Autobiography (with William Novak), and Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

(born Oct. 15, 1924, Allentown, Pa., U.S.) U.S. automobile executive. He was hired as an engineer by Ford Motor Co. but soon moved to its sales department and was noted for his successful promotion of the sporty yet inexpensive Mustang. He rose rapidly, becoming president of Ford in 1970. His brash manner led to his dismissal by Henry Ford II in 1978. A year later he was hired by the nearly bankrupt Chrysler Corp. He persuaded Congress to lend Chrysler $1.5 billion in 1980 and carried out layoffs, wage cuts, and plant closings to make the company more efficient. He also shifted the company’s emphasis to more fuel-efficient cars and embarked on an aggressive advertising campaign. Within a few years Chrysler was showing record profits, and Iacocca was a national celebrity with a best-selling autobiography, Iacocca (1984). He retired in 1992.

Lee Iacocca was born October 12, 1924 in Allentown , Pennsylvania . He became an American industrialist and is one of the most well known businessman worldwide. Iacocca is the former chairman of Chrysler Corporation and he also became a passionate advocate of U.S. business exports during the 1980s.

After graduating from Leigh University with an industrial engineering degree he was hired by Ford Motor Company and began his career as an engineer. Unhappy as an engineer he changed over to the sales force at Ford and quickly moved up the ladder to product development.

While in product development Iacocca successfully developed many automobiles at Ford, including the Ford Mustang. Ultimately, he became the president of Ford Motor Company but his shaky relationship with Henry Ford II forced him out of the company.

Iacocca was not without a job long as the Chrysler Corporation was in desperate need and going out of business. However, Iacocca rebuilt Chrysler from the ground up, laid off many employees, and sold the plant in Europe . Despite these moves the company was still in dire straights, so Iacocca made an amazing move by asking Congress for a loan. To the surprise to all, he received it.

After receiving the loan, Chrysler released the Dodge Aires and Plymouth Reliant automobiles, which were inexpensive and great on fuel economy since the United States was just coming out of an oil shortage. Then Chrysler came out with the minivan, which till this day is still the leader in minivan sales. Iacocca was also responsible for the acquisition of AMC in 1987, which brought over the money making Jeep division. He eventually stepped down from Chrysler in 1992 and currently works with a company designing electric bikes.

Early life

Lido Anthony Iacocca was born October 15, 1924, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the son of Italian immigrants Nicola and Antoinette. Iacocca grew up in comfortable surroundings learning the nuts and bolts of business from his father who worked as a cobbler, hot dog restaurant owner and a theater owner. Nicola was a businessman who taught his son about the responsibilities of money and the need for a strong drive and a great vision in order to build a thriving business. Nicola also ran one of the first car rental agencies in the country and passed on his love of the automobile to his son.

Iaccoca’s enlistment in the military during World War II (19139–45) was denied because of his childhood battle with rheumatic fever, a terrible disease that can cause permanent damage to the heart. He earned an undergraduate degree in engineering from Lehigh University and later earned a master’s degree from Princeton University. Even as a teenager, Iacocca decided that he was going to be an automobile company executive and focused his studies in that direction. He secured a much sought-after engineering trainee job at Ford Motor Company in 1946, but put off his start until he completed his master’s degree at Princeton.

At Ford Motor Company

Joining Ford as an engineering trainee in 1946, Iacocca soon entered the fast pace of sales. In 1960, at age thirty-six, he sped into the vice presidency and general managership of the company’s most important unit, Ford Division. In 1964, with others on his staff, he launched the Ford Mustang, which, thanks to brilliant styling and marketing, introduced a new wave of sports cars, set a first-year sales record for any model, gave its name to a generation, and landed its creator’s picture on the covers of Time and Newsweek.

In 1960 Iacocca was named Ford’s vice president of the car and truck group; in 1967, executive vice president; and in 1970, president. Pocketing an annual salary and bonus of $977,000, the flashy executive also earned a reputation as one of the greatest salesmen in U.S. history. Of Iacocca, it has been said that he was always selling, whether products, ideas—or himself.

From Ford to Chrysler

Iacocca was let go from Ford Motor Company in June 1978 by Chairman Henry Ford II for reasons Ford never revealed. Though bitter at being dismissed from Ford, Iacocca was not out of the car business for long. Five months after his dismissal, Iacocca was named president of Chrysler (becoming chairman in 1979) and began transforming the number three automaker from a sluggish moneymaker into a highly profitable business.

How was Chrysler turned around? By downsizing (to make smaller) expenses to a much lower break-even point; by winning approval of $1.5 billion in federal loan guarantees; by selling off profitable units such as the tank division; and by introducing timely products. In addition, Chrysler welcomed, for the first time in U.S. corporate history, a union president to a board of directors. In 1984 the company posted profits of $2.4 billion (higher than in the previous sixty years combined), and in 1985 it bought Gulf-stream Aerospace Corporation for $637 million and E. F. Hutton Credit Corporation for $125 million.

In the early 1980s Chrysler issued the K-car and what would later become its best seller—the minivan. Just as the Mustang reestablished the sports car for Ford, the minivan would be loved by the young family in need of room and efficiency and revitalize Chrysler. In 1983 Chrysler paid the government back its loans and Iacocca became a star, a symbol of success and the achievement of the American dream.

Along with spearheading Chrysler’s rise, Iacocca took leadership roles in many noteworthy causes, most notably the chairmanship of the President’s Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial Commission, which was set up to raise funds for and to oversee restoration of the two monuments in New York City. While Iacocca gained a worldwide reputation through business leadership, television commercials, and association with the Statue of Liberty, he gained much additional exposure through his 1984 autobiography (a book written by someone about their life). Iacocca: An Autobiography, the best-selling nonfiction hardcover book in history, had two million copies in print by July 1985.

Folk hero

By the mid-1980s Iacocca had achieved folk-hero status. The Saturday Evening Post described him as “the sex symbol of America” and Reader’s Digest as “the living embodiment of the American dream.” Talk of Iacocca-for-president became increasingly widespread, and a 1985 poll of 1988 presidential preferences showed that the cocky industrialist trailed Vice President George Bush (1924–) by only three percentage points (41 to 38 points).

The late 1980s and early 1990s were not as kind to Iacocca. His public image, like Chrysler’s earnings, began to fall. At a time when the American people, in the grip of a recession (a temporary slowing of the economy), criticized the huge paychecks of executives whose companies were hurting, Iacocca who had once achieved a publicity coup (takeover) when, for a time, he only accepted one dollar a year from Chrysler, was paid a 1987 salary of $18 million. In addition, Iacocca, criticized Japanese trading practices, blaming them for the ills that American car manufacturers had suffered. Critics stated that the American public believed that Japanese cars were superior

With the fuel crisis of the 1970s, Americans were looking for automobiles that were more fuel efficient and inexpensive than previous models. As a result, Iacocca introduced small compact cars from Chrysler that the American public embraced. These small models, along with the minivan, were ideas that had been rejected by Ford. The smaller Chrysler models were a hit and the minivan became the essential family vehicle as soon as it was introduced only a few years later.

Iacocca eventually left Chrysler in 1993, but not before acquiring AMC, the parent company of the Jeep brand. The Jeep Grand Cherokee had been in Lee Iacocca’s sights for a long time and he helped Chrysler acquire the rights prior to his departure.

Besides contributing to the American automotive industry, Lee Iacocca also wrote a series of books detailing his life and work. He has also been a long-time supporter of diabetes research ever since his first wife, Mary McCleary, died of complications from diabetes in 1983. Although he has officially retired from Chrysler, Iacocca continues to write and speak on behalf of the company and contributes to websites and editorials concerning politics and the state of America.

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Peter F. Drucker

  By admin | February 23, 2011 - 2:07 am | Celebrity Leave a comment

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.”[1] His books and scholarly and popular articles explored how humans are organized across the business, government and the nonprofit sectors of society.[2] He is one of the best-known and most widely influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management theory and practice. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning.[3] In 1959, Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” and later in his life considered knowledge work productivity to be the next frontier of management.

History of Peter F. Druker

Born November 19, 1909, in Vienna, Drucker was educated in Austria and England and earned a doctorate from Frankfurt University in 1931.  He became a financial reporter for Frankfurter General Anzeiger in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929, which allowed him to immerse himself in the study of international law, history and finance.

Drucker moved to London in 1933 to escape Hitler’s Germany and took a job as a securities analyst for an insurance firm.  Four years later he married Doris Schmitz and the couple departed for the United States.

In 1939, Drucker landed a part-time teaching position at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.  He joined the faculty of Bennington College in Vermont in 1942 and the next year put his academic career on hold to spend two years studying the management structure of General Motors.  This experience let to his book “Concept of the Corporation,” an immediate bestseller in the United States and Japan, which validated the notion that great companies could stand among humankind’s noblest inventions.

From 1950 to 1971, Drucker was a professor of management at the Graduate Business School of New York University.  He was awarded the Presidential Citation, the university’s highest honor.

Drucker came to California in 1971, where he was instrumental in the development of one of the country’s first executive MBA programs for working professionals at Claremont Graduate University (then known as Claremont Graduate School).  The university’s management school was named the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management in his honor in 1987.  He taught his last class at the school in the spring of 2002.  His courses consistently attracted the largest number of students of any class offered by the university.

Drucker had long wished to have the name of a benefactor attached to the school that bore his name.  His wish was fulfilled in January of 2004, when the name of his friend, Japanese businessman Masatoshi Ito, was added to the school.  It is now known as the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management.

From his early 20′s to his death, Mr. Drucker held various teaching posts, including a 20-year stint at the Stern School of Management at New York University and, since 1971, a chair at the Claremont Graduate School of Management. He also consulted widely, devoting several days a month to such work into his 90′s. His clients included G.M., General Electric and Sears, Roebuck but also the Archdiocese of New York and several Protestant churches; government agencies in the United States, Canada and Japan; universities; and entrepreneurs.

For over 50 years, at least half of the consulting work was done free for nonprofits and small businesses. As his career progressed and it became clearer that competitive pressures were keeping businesses from embracing many practices he advocated, like guaranteed wages and lifetime employment for industrial workers, he became increasingly interested in “the social sector,” as he called the nonprofit groups.

According to Claremont Graduate University, Mr. Drucker’s survivors include his wife, Doris, an inventor and physicist; his children, Audrey Drucker of Puyallup, Wash., Cecily Drucker of San Francisco, Joan Weinstein of Chicago, and Vincent Drucker of San Rafael, Calif.; and six grandchildren.

Early last year, in an interview with Forbes magazine, Mr. Drucker was asked if there was anything in his long career that he wished he had done but had not been able to do.

“Yes, quite a few things,” he said. “There are many books I could have written that are better than the ones I actually wrote. My best book would have been “Managing Ignorance,” and I’m very sorry I didn’t write it.”

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Adam Smith

  By admin | February 10, 2011 - 11:23 am | Celebrity Leave a comment

Adam Smith (baptised 16 June 1723 – died 17 July 1790 [OS: 5 June 1723 – 17 July 1790]) was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economics. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. It earned him an enormous reputation and would become one of the most influential works on economics ever published. Smith is widely cited as the father of modern economics and capitalism.

Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and the University of Oxford. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow teaching moral philosophy, and during this time he wrote and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In his later life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day. Smith returned home and spent the next ten years writing The Wealth of Nations, publishing it in 1776. He died in 1790.

He left academia in 1764 to tutor the young duke of Buccleuch. For more than two years they traveled throughout France and into Switzerland, an experience that brought Smith into contact with his contemporaries Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, François Quesnay, and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot. With the life pension he had earned in the service of the duke, Smith retired to his birthplace of Kirkcaldy to write The Wealth of Nations. It was published in 1776, the same year the American Declaration of Independence was signed and in which his close friend David Hume died. In 1778 he was appointed commissioner of customs. In this job he helped enforce laws against smuggling. In The Wealth of Nations, he had defended smuggling as a legitimate activity in the face of “unnatural” legislation. Adam Smith never married. He died in Edinburgh on July 19, 1790.

Today Smith’s reputation rests on his explanation of how rational self-interest in a free-market economy leads to economic well-being. It may surprise those who would discount Smith as an advocate of ruthless individualism that his first major work concentrates on ethics and charity. In fact, while chair at the University of Glasgow, Smith’s lecture subjects, in order of preference, were natural theology, ethics, jurisprudence, and economics, according to John Millar, Smith’s pupil at the time. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith wrote: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”1

At the same time, Smith had a benign view of self-interest, denying that self-love “was a principle which could never be virtuous in any degree.”2 Smith argued that life would be tough if our “affections, which, by the very nature of our being, ought frequently to influence our conduct, could upon no occasion appear virtuous, or deserve esteem and commendation from anybody.”

Smith moved to London in 1776, where he published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which examined in detail the consequences of economic freedom. It covered such concepts as the role of self-interest, the division of labor, the function of markets, and the international implications of a laissez-faire economy. “Wealth of Nations” established economics as an autonomous subject and launched the economic doctrine of free enterprise.

Smith laid the intellectual framework that explained the free market and still holds true today. He is most often recognized for the expression “the invisible hand,” which he used to demonstrate how self-interest guides the most efficient use of resources in a nation’s economy, with public welfare coming as a by-product. To underscore his laissez-faire convictions, Smith argued that state and personal efforts, to promote social good are ineffectual compared to unbridled market forces.

In 1778, he was appointed to a post of commissioner of customs in Edinburgh, Scotland. He died there on July 17, 1790, after an illness. At the end it was discovered that Smith had devoted a considerable part of his income to numerous secret acts of charity.

Adam Smith Biography

  • Born: June 1723
  • Birthplace: Kirkcaldy, Scotland
  • Died: 17 July 1790
  • Best Known As: The author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Scottish philosopher Adam Smith is the author of the 1776 book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a classic of modern economics beloved especially by free market advocates. He began his academic career as a professor of logic and moral philosophy in Glasgow (1751-64), but after about 1748 he was famously part of the Edinburgh intellectual circle that included David Hume. Smith gained international attention for his 1759 examination of societal ethics, Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which he argued that people are naturally empathetic to those suffering in their midst. But his Wealth of Nations secured Smith’s fame — the book sold out five editions during his lifetime, including revised versions in 1784 and 1789. He is credited with being the first to examine the importance of the division of labor and worker productivity, and for advancing the idea that free markets thrive on the basis of mutual self-interest. Although Smith warned against monopolies and mercantilism, his notion that markets are driven toward the public good by an “invisible hand” has made him a venerated figure among free market doctrinaires. He spent his last years in Edinburgh as a government official, as the Commissioner of Customs.

Most sources list his birthdate as 5 June 1723, the date of his baptism… His father died before Smith was born; Smith lived with his mother most of his life and never married.

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Dick Cook

  By admin | December 17, 2010 - 6:17 am | Celebrity 1 Comment

Richard W. “Dick” Cook is the former Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. At the time of his separation from the company, he was the only remaining top Disney executive who had worked for the company since before Michael Eisner took charge in 1984. Cook holds a degree in political science from the University of Southern California (USC).

Dick Cook Career

Cook began his career with Disney in 1970 as a monorail and steam locomotive amusement park ride operator at Disneyland in Anaheim and moved to the Disney Studios in Burbank in 1977 to manage pay television and non-theatrical releases. In 1980, he moved to the company’s film distribution department, eventually heading both its distribution and marketing efforts. He earned a reputation there by his marketing of Disney’s home video collection and hosting media-worthy movie premieres, for example securing a United States Navy aircraft carrier based in Pearl Harbor to host the debut of the film Pearl Harbor.

Walt Disney Dick Cook

In 2002 Eisner named him as Peter Schneider’s replacement as chairman of studios, popularly called the studio chief. Cook was in charge of developing, distributing and marketing all films, live-action or animated, released by Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures. Cook was also the executive in charge of the Disney Music Group, which encompasses Hollywood Records and the better known Walt Disney Records. He also oversaw the Home Entertainment and Home Entertainment International divisions of Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group. He was responsible for legal and business matters relating to the studio.

Cook, described by BusinessWeek in 2003 as “the nicest guy in Disney’s jungle,” is known for his down-to-earth personality and his good relations with Disney’s partners, including Jerry Bruckheimer.[1]

On September 18, 2009, Cook stepped down as chairman of Walt Disney Studios, allegedly having been asked to do so by Bob Iger, president/CEO of the Walt Disney Company.[2] He was then replaced by Disney Channel president Rich Ross.

Dick Cook Honors

The Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers will fete former Walt Disney Studios chair Dick Cook during the inaugural edition of CinemaCon, the exhibition confab hosted by the National Assn. of Theater Owners.

CinemaCon — the new version of the former ShoWest — runs March 28-31 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Cook will receive the 2011 Pioneer of the Year award during a gala dinner on March 30.

The decision by NATO and Will Rogers to partner in honoring Cook was made in a show of industry unity.

“From the outset, NATO’s main objective for CinemaCon was to create an event about, and for, the entire industry. Our partnership with Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation demonstrates our commitment to that important goal,” NATO prexy-CEO John Fithian said.

“The most exciting aspect, of course, is having Dick Cook as the honoree of our first joint effort. Exhibitors have held Dick in the highest regard throughout his illustrious career,” Fithian continued.

During Cook’s tenure at the top of Disney Studios, the Mouse House released 60 films that grossed north of $100 domestically, a rare feat.

Paramount vice chair Rob Moore was this year’s Pioneer of the Year.

Dick Cook Leave Disney

With all the signs of a classic Hollywood shake-up, Dick Cook, the longtime head of Walt Disney Studios, abruptly left the company Friday afternoon after 38 years.

The news, which came just as offices were emptying out for the weekend, stunned the entertainment industry for its suddenness, even as it revealed a rift between Cook and Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger. The studio has had an uneven box-office performance and has been struggling creatively. It lost money in its most recent financial quarter.

Why Is Dick Cook Leaving Disney?

Even Hollywood insiders were shocked by the news late Friday that Dick Cook, the Walt Disney veteran and beloved chairman of Walt Disney Studios is stepping down immediately. Just last week at Disney’s big expo, D23, I spoke to Cook about his plans to revive Disney’s studio and innovate with 3-D technology in the home. The fact that Disney’s studio has gone through a rough patch this year is responsible for this surprise news. The studio lost $12 million in the company’s most recent quarter, down from a $97 million profit in the year-ago period and CEO Bob Iger has singled out the studio as a drag on company results.

Walt Disney Dick Cook

What now for Disney [DIS 37.01 0.06 (+0.16%) ]? Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006, earlier this year made a deal with Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider’s DreamWorks to distribute their films, and just last month acquired Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. Industry insiders tell me—and this makes sense—that Disney could be moving towards a model of dramatically cutting back its own creative development. Instead Disney would focus entirely on distributing films from Pixar, DreamWorks, Marvel Entertainment, and Jerry Bruckheimer films, and perhaps also Disney Animation. DreamWorks plans to release six movies a year, Pixar generally produces one a year, Marvel is shooting for two a year, and if Bruckheimer releases two a year: that alone is 11 films for Disney to release annually.

The idea would be that Disney would reserve its powerful “Walt Disney Pictures” brand for a select few theatrical products (cutting its production overhead way back) and let its crackerjack marketing and worldwide distribution pipeline deploy the DreamWorks, Marvel, Pixar brands. Some of my Hollywood sources are speculating that Mark Zoradi, currently president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group, which oversees marketing and distribution, would be a natural fit to take over the studio if it does indeed shift away from production.

* Slideshow: The Highest Grossing Movies of All Time

Despite the studio’s under-performance, Cook’s departure is still such a surprise because he was so well-liked by key producers and big talent in the industry. Executives at Disney, DreamWorks and Marvel all say they were surprised by the news. Johnny Depp is quoted in the Los Angeles Times questioning whether he’ll want to continue playing his key role in “Pirates of the Carribean” sequels without Cook heading the studio. Steven Spielberg and Stacy Snider are both huge fans of Cook and that relationship was key to establishing their distribution deal with Disney. (Rumors that Snider would go take over Disney’s studio are easily dispelled as Snider is in a contract at Dreamworks, and her leadership is also key to Reliance’s financing deal with the studio).

Why push Cook out now? (And it does appear that he was pushed out). It’s been a rough summer for Disney’s studio performance and it appears that “Surrogates,” which will be released next week could be a big disappointment. But perhaps more importantly, Disney’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. Some have speculated that the company wants to take the hit of paying out Cook’s contract in a lump sum this quarter, when earnings from the studio are sure to still be weak, and flush out that salary hit before starting a new fiscal year.

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George Soros

  By admin | October 4, 2010 - 4:18 pm | Celebrity Leave a comment

George Soros (Hungarian: Soros György) (pronounced /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/,;[3] Hungarian IPA: [ˈʃoroʃ]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American currency speculator, stock investor, businessman, philanthropist, and liberal political activist.[4] He became known as “the Man Who Broke the Bank of England” after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises.[5][6]

Soros is chairman of Soros Fund management and the Open Society Institute and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from Communism to Capitalism in Hungary (1984–89),[6] and provided Europe’s largest-ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest.[7] Later, his funding and organization of Georgia’s Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial to its success. In the United States, he is known for donating large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush’s bid for re-election in 2004. He helped found the Center for American Progress.

Philosophy and finance

At the London School of Economics, Soros discovered the work of philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his thinking. He was attracted to Popper’s critique of totalitarianism, The Open Society and Its Enemies, which maintained that societies can only flourish when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights. Later, working as a trader and analyst, he adapted Popper to develop his own “theory of reflexivity,” a set of ideas that seeks to explain the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967 he helped establish an offshore investment fund; and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds.
Publications

Soros’s most recent book is The Soros Lectures: At the Central European University (2010). His other books include The Crash of 2008 and What it Means: The New Paradigm for Finance Markets (2009); The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of The War on Terror (2006); The Bubble of American Supremacy (2005); George Soros on Globalization (2002); Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Opening the Soviet System (1990); and The Alchemy of Finance (1987). His essays on politics, society, and economics appear frequently in major periodicals around the world.

George Soros and Asia econmy crisis

Daniel Burstein had sounded the alarm in 1988 with his book Yen: Japan’s new Financial Empire and its Treat to America.

George Soros wrote, in his book The Alchemy of Finance, “Japan has been accumulating assets abroard, while the United States has been amassing debts. … President Reagan … pursued the illusion of military superiority at the cost of rendering our leading position in the world economy illusory; while Japan wanted to keep growing in the shadow of the United States as long as possible. … Japan has, in fact, emerged as the banker to the world” (1987; New Preface 1994, John Wiley & Sons, New York), p. 350.

Just as Japanese methods were covert, so were Jewish methods. Soros, with the help of leading Jewish figures within World Finance, brought down the “Asia Model” in 1997.

George Soros: April 2009 Stagflation Predictions

About a year and a half ago, George Soros. billionare investor and chairman of Soros Fund Management, warned investors on the possibility of stagflation if the Federal Reserve decided to raise interest rates. Stagflation happens when there is a high unemployment rate and a high inflation rate. Many economist fear stagflation as no true macroeconomic policy exist to combat it. I found the interview interesting as it appears the U.S. has avoided a complete collapse and continue to slug along.

“The moment this fear of deflation turns into a fear of inflation, you’ll find interest rates rise in the long end which is going to choke off the recovery,” Soros says. “If we are successful [in preventing the total collapse of the economy], we are heading from the prospect of deflation to stagflation.”

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