Tag Archives: George Soros

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.”