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<\/a><\/p>\nMulti-billionaire George Soros (born August 12, 1930) is one of the world\u2019s largest donors to radical left-wing nonprofit organizations and politicians worldwide. Soros has given hundreds of millions of dollars to nearly 5,000 liberal and ultra-left organizations campaigning for a more powerful role in international affairs for the United Nations, population control, socialism, and the defeat of Republicans and election of Democrats in the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n Soros amassed much of his fortune via the controversial practice of global currency speculation, including earning $1 billion in a day by manipulating the British pound \u2013 which earned him the title of the \u201cman who broke the Bank of England\u201d in 1992. The dual Hungarian and U.S. citizen has used that fortune to manipulate world events. Soros is credited with funding and organizing the downfall of Georgia\u2019s President Eduard Shevardnadze<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>and Yugoslavia\u2019s Slobodan Milosevic<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the largest beneficiaries of Soros\u2019 non-profit and political giving include the ACLU Foundation, Center for American Progress, League of Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Tides Foundation, and Hillary Clinton \u2013 who has benefited from nearly $10 million in grants to her political action committees in the 2016 presidential election.<\/span><\/p>\n An article in the Winter 2017 edition of City Journal<\/em> titled \u201cConnoisseur of Chaos<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u201d noted how Soros giving and power is underrported in the press, stating \u201cSoros\u2019s global reach and influence far outstrip those of the Koch brothers or other liberal bogeymen \u2013 and that underlying it all is a vision both dystopian and opportunistic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In October 2017, The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong> reported<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that Soros had transferred a staggering $18 billion to his Open Society Foundation, meaning the bulk of his lifelong fortune would be dedicated to promoting left-wing causes and organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930 as Gy\u00f6rgy \u0160varc, or George Schwartz, of parents Tivadar<\/a> (Theodore) and Erzebet (Elizabeth). Both were nonobservant Jews. His mother came from a family that owned a thriving silk shop and his father was a lawyer from a harsh background \u2013 held prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest. Tivadar was a leading proponent of Esperanto, the constructed trans-European language promoted by those who desired a world free of nationality. When George and his older brother Paul were still young, his father changed the family name to Soros, a successor<\/em> in Hungarian, but intended as the Esperanto Soros, meaning soar<\/em> (in the future tense, will soar<\/em>). Anti-nationalism is embedded in George Soros\u2019 name as well as in his character.<\/span><\/p>\n As a child, according to his authorized biographer, Michael T. Kaufmann<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, Soros felt he had extraordinary powers, of even being \u201cGod-like.\u201d It developed into an adult sense of messianic personal destiny and a power urge that emerged as practical action rather than delusionary lust. But that would take many years and substantial hardship.<\/span><\/p>\n The Soros family in Budapest was well-off until George was 13 years old and Nazi Germany<\/strong><\/span><\/a> occupied Hungary<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in March 1944. Jewish children were barred from attending school by the Nazis. Tivadar obtained false identity papers for his family and they each fled to separate homes, hidden as Christians. George lived with and posed as the godson<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture and continued school. In 1945, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city. He saw the rubble and the corpses. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied Hungary, Soros learned his first lesson in survival, making an indelible mark on his character and personal philosophy. Through a tangled chain of narrow escapes, all four members of the Soros family survived the Nazi occupation. They reunited, but fell under an oppressive communist regime when the Soviets took over Hungary in 1947.<\/span><\/p>\n George was 16 when he finished the last year of gymnasium, the equivalent of an American high school. Unlike his fellow students, he was consumed by philosophy. He read enough to teach himself a variety of classical schools of thought \u2013 from Plato to Epictetus to Archimedes. He wanted to leave Hungary to make something of himself, to get a fine education, to exercise his \u201cextraordinary powers.\u201d He settled upon England, meaning he had to struggle through months of getting a visa and passport. Tivadar arranged for George\u2019s departure and gave his son a small amount of money. He stayed with distant relations in London and began to learn English.<\/span><\/p>\n Michael T. Kaufmann<\/strong><\/span><\/a> told the story in his authorized biography, Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span>. In 1947, Soros immigrated to austere post-war England and the home of distant relations, and he was not very welcome. He looked for work, learned stiff-upper-lip Brit bus riding queue etiquette, and found a cheap bed and breakfast \u2013 the first in a long series of low dumps he\u2019d call home. Soros walked the streets to save bus money as he learned the city, and went from one day labor job to another. Everywhere he went, Soros was an unwelcome outsider who did not speak English well.<\/span><\/p>\n He read books borrowed from students he got to know and studied as much as he could. It took a year for him to become proficient in English. Soros tried to get into a college, hoping for the prestigious Fabian socialist London School of Economics (LSE). He took the matriculation examination and passed all parts of it, though his score was not good enough to enter the LSE. Instead, Soros was accepted into Kentish Town Polytechnic \u2013 a commuter college without reputation or cachet \u2013 and enrolled in basic economics, which he found uninspiring. But it put him in contact with a student camp that arranged jobs picking apples, giving him a meager but steady income.<\/span><\/p>\n By chance, Soros met a Hungarian Esperanto speaker in Hyde Park who became something of a mentor and took in the young man to live in his apartment with another student near the Polytechnic. Soros began to cut school regularly and sneak into lectures at the London School of Economics, hearing the ideas of great minds. He was found out and expelled from the Polytechnic, leaving only correspondence courses as a way toward education.<\/span><\/p>\n Soros moved on, taking several odds jobs, including one as a lifeguard at a swimming pool close to the attic room he had rented near the Thames. An LSE student lived in the same building, and loaned Soros significant books from his own collection. Soros found that the lifeguard job gave him the opportunity to read while \u201cguarding lives.\u201d He had plenty of time to go through the works of Adam Smith, Hobbes, Ricardo, Bergson, and Machiavelli, among others. He read about great ideas and he felt that he was finally on the right track. In the spring of 1949, Soros took another set of examinations, and this time earned a score good enough to gain him admission to the LSE.<\/span><\/p>\n At the LSE, Soros met the man who changed his life, spurred his philosophic streak, inspired his reflexivity theory, and gave his foundations and institutes the \u201cOpen Society\u201d name. There are many stories about Soros\u2019 philosophy degrees from LSE and his study under the iconic star of the school \u2013 philosopher of science Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and its Enemies<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a> in two volumes, The Spell of Plato<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/em> and Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/em>. Popper\u2019s book focused on closed societies that suppressed reason \u2013 ones he condemned as \u201cmagical, tribal or collectivist\u201d \u2013 but didn\u2019t say much about the open society itself, beyond freedom of scientific inquiry and the freedom to dissent. The truth is that Soros slipped into a few of Popper\u2019s lectures, but never took a single course under the great philosopher. Soros\u2019s degrees were not in philosophy.<\/span><\/p>\n Biographer Kaufman wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn the autumn of 1949, George Soros began legally attending lectures and seminars at the London School of Economics on Houghton Street. The impact this period had on Soros\u2019s later philanthropic work would be evident in his emphasis on \u2018big\u2019 ideas to change profoundly the way people live, and in the boldness with which his foundations would implement massive programs as Communism first shuddered and then fell.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut at age 19, Soros did not recognize the period as particularly distinctive or instructive. He was still grumbling about his cool reception by an England he thought to be unfeeling and austere. Yet at the same time, he was being made aware of an intellectual world of impressive polymaths, whom he openly envied.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Soros\u2019 first year was full of frustration. He heard the great ideas of great minds, especially the great philosopher Karl Popper, a brilliant but thorny and critical personality. But Soros was mired in his economics major and had no way to employ his own blossoming ideas. His second year was the same.<\/span><\/p>\n Kaufman wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe could have left after two years with a degree from the University of London, the LSE parent, but if he stayed on an extra year, doing whatever he wanted, he would be eligible for the more prestigious LSE degree. All he had to do was pay the fees and eventually take exams. That is when he decided to ask Karl Popper to be his mentor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Kaufman also explained a momentous event for Soros in the Spring of 1952: \u201cSoros had read Popper\u2019s Open Society<\/em> with great interest and some identification. Once more showing his abundant confidence, Soros at the age of 21 wrote to the aloof and critical Popper:<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018I have just read Open Society and it made a profound impression on me. Although it was my interest in historical generalizations that has led me to read it, I agree with most of your statements. I believe, however, that a theory of historical development need not necessarily be historicist. In fact, I find no argument in your book to contradict this.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018I am, however, in no position to argue the subject and that is exactly why I am writing to you. My interest, as I said, lies in the study of human development because I think that the laws of change are the only ones that are universally valid for all forms of society. For my first degree, however, I specialized in international trade and at the moment in lieu of a third year B.Sc. Econ course, I am registered for a part time M.Sc. in Welfare Economics.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Having read your book, I am convinced you could help me greatly by directing my studies. I know that it is a very unrewarding service that I ask of you because although I want to work as a postgraduate, my present knowledge on the subject is that of a fresher.<\/span><\/p>\n If you could spare me the time, I would be very much obliged if you could see me one evening after 6 o\u2019clock.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Kaufman, Soros\u2019 official biographer, continued:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPopper responded by urging him to write a paper about the differences between \u2018open\u2019 and \u2018closed\u2019 societies. Soros submitted such a paper, and he is certain that Popper then invited him to his house to offer criticism. \u2018He was very nice and encouraging, though critical. I was supposed to correct the essay based on our discussion, but instead, I wrote him another essay about historical dynamics.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis second paper contained the first kernel of Soros\u2019s ideas about reflexivity, or the dynamic relationship between reality and attempts to perceive it, which was to become a favored theme he would later apply to finance with stunning success. Popper was disappointed that he had not revised his first paper, but Soros is not sure whether this displeasure was conveyed in writing or at another meeting. In any case, his contacts with Popper were then suspended: \u2018So that was that with Popper, until much later.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cActually, the contact between the two during Soros\u2019s final year at LSE was not very close at all. It was, in fact, so remote that when Soros wrote to Popper in the spring of 1982 to inform him of the fund and the scholarships established in his name, the 79-year-old philosopher wrote back saying he could barely recall Soros. \u2018Let me first thank you for not having forgotten me,\u2019 wrote the recently knighted Sir Karl in a firm hand. \u2018I am afraid I forgot you completely; even your name created at first only the most minute resonance. But I made some effort, and now, I think, I just remember you, though I do not think I should recognize you.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n So Soros never studied with Popper at LSE, and his degrees are in international trade and welfare economics, according to Soros\u2019 note to Popper. Yet his meager contacts produced Soros\u2019 Open Society organizations that changed the world and continue doing so today.<\/span><\/p>\n Soros is guarded but not secretive where his family is concerned. He has discussed his home life with interviewers over the years and allowed related feature articles to be published. His family members, including adult children, have their own well-reported lives and interests.<\/span><\/p>\n George Soros<\/strong><\/span><\/a> has married three times: Tamiko Bolton<\/strong><\/span><\/a> (m. 2013), Susan Weber Soros<\/strong><\/span><\/a> (m. 1983\u20132005), Annaliese Witschak<\/strong><\/span><\/a> (m. 1960\u20131983). He has four sons and a daughter:\u00a0 Jonathan Soros<\/a><\/strong><\/span> (mother Annaliese Witschak<\/strong><\/span><\/a>); Andrea Soros<\/strong><\/span><\/a> (mother Annaliese Witschak<\/a><\/strong><\/span>), Robert Soros<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, (mother Annaliese Witschak<\/strong><\/span><\/a>); Alexander Soros<\/strong><\/span><\/a> (mother Susan Weber Soros<\/a><\/strong><\/span>), Gregory Soros<\/a><\/strong><\/span> (mother <\/span>Susan Weber Sor<\/span>os<\/strong><\/span><\/a>).<\/p>\n Soros\u2019 his first job out of LSE was at the merchant bank Singer & Friedlander<\/a><\/strong><\/span> of London. He worked as a clerk and later moved to the arbitrage<\/strong><\/span><\/a> department. A fellow employee, Robert Mayer, suggested he apply at his father\u2019s brokerage house, F.M. Mayer of New York.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1956 Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader<\/a><\/strong><\/span> for F.M. Mayer (1956\u201359). He specialized in European stocks, which were becoming popular with U.S. institutional investors following the formation of the Coal and Steel Community<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, which later became the Common Market<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1959, after three years at F.M. Mayer, he moved to Wertheim & Co<\/strong><\/span>.<\/a> as an analyst of European Securities, where he stayed until 1963. He planned to stay for five years, enough time to save $500,000, after which he intended to return to England to study philosophy. During this period, Soros developed and refined his theory of reflexivity<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a> based on the ideas of Karl Popper<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Reflexivity posited that market values are often driven by the fallible ideas of participants, not only by the economic fundamentals of the situation. Reflexive feedback loops are created where ideas influence events and events influence ideas. Soros further argued that this leads to markets having procyclical \u201cvirtuous or vicious\u201d cycles of boom and bust, in contrast to the equilibrium predictions of more standard neoclassical economics.<\/span><\/p>\n From 1963 to 1973, Soros\u2019s experience as a vice president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder<\/strong><\/span><\/a> gave him little enthusiasm for the job; business was slack following the introduction of the interest equalization tax<\/em>, which undermined the viability of Soros\u2019s European trading. He spent the years from 1963 to 1966 with his main focus on the revision of a self-imposed philosophy dissertation. In 1966 he started a fund with $100,000 of the firm\u2019s money to experiment with his trading strategies. But he was principally motivated by a desire to assert himself as an investor to profit from his reflexivity insights.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In 1967, Soros talked his employers into letting him start an offshore fund called First Eagle<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, long positions only, with $250,000 of his own money and $6 million from investors. It went well, and two years later he launched the Double Eagle hedge fund<\/strong><\/span><\/a> with $4 million of investors\u2019 capital including $250,000 of his own money. It was based in Cura\u00e7ao, Dutch Antilles, a Caribbean tax haven beyond U.S. regulation. All of its investors were also beyond U.S. regulation: Soros only accepted very rich non-U.S. citizens, mostly European. Soros worked from New York and was only its \u201cinvestment advisor\u201d collecting a management fee and a 15 percent incentive fee, so he had no investment for the U.S. to regulate.<\/span><\/p>\n Soros amicably departed from Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder to create his new Soros Fund, which became the Quantum Fund. He gave the shareholders in the Double Eagle Fund their choice of either keeping their assets in the old fund or transferring them to the new venture. Quantum was the star fund. The name came from quantum physics, especially the indeterminacy principle of Werner Heisenberg<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. Soros liked \u201cQuantum\u201d as a symbol of the impossibility of accurately determining the future movement of markets as well as subatomic particles. He had developed his own theory that individual biases (e.g., the trend-following habits of speculators) introduce disequilibrium into an economy, so conventional \u201cefficient market\u201d theory doesn\u2019t work. Soros extends his reflexivity theory to just about everything.<\/span><\/p>\n In finance, Soros uses it to explain \u201cboom-bust cycles.\u201d He goes further, arguing that when any social enterprise begins to rise \u2013 whether a market, a business, a movement, or a nation \u2013 the biases of individuals (investors, executives, movement leaders, or statesmen) create instability. They build a bandwagon effect, overvaluing or overreaching, which creates an artificial \u201cbubble\u201d that eventually bursts. Soros has attributed his hedge fund success to his reflexivity theory. Others call it luck.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1981, Institutional Investor <\/strong><\/span><\/em>magazine put Soros on the cover<\/strong><\/span><\/a> as \u201cthe world\u2019s greatest money manager.\u201d But there were thorns in the hedge: Critics accused him of calculated hit-and-run tactics by quietly buying into a market \u2013 gold, for example, as he did in 1993 \u2013 deliberately leaking his \u201csecret,\u201d watching the bandwagon stampede drive the price up, then bailing out before the bubble bursts.<\/span><\/p>\n Quantum had only one losing year in its first two decades and George Soros obtained enormous personal wealth. Even though he failed to predict the stock market crash of 1987 and took a $300 million hit, Quantum was actually up 14 percent for the calendar year \u2013 and his personal compensation of $75 million made him the second-highest-paid man on Wall Street. In 1993, Quantum earned him $1.1 billion \u2013 making George Soros the top earner on Wall Street, with personal holdings greater than the gross national product of 42 nations.<\/span><\/p>\n According to author Ron Arnold in the book Freezing in the Dark<\/em>, Soros\u2019 foundation work began modestly.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen he set up his Open Society Fund in New York in 1979 he was not particularly proud. He had long cast himself as a curmudgeon, saying he didn\u2019t believe in philanthropy. His original fund was what the law calls a \u2018charitable lead trust,\u2019 which Soros described as \u2018a very interesting tax gimmick\u2019 allowing him to pass large sums to his heirs untaxed. But his charitable intent \u2013 and power lust \u2013 was genuine, and he soon went to work giving money away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Soros\u2019 maiden philanthropic effort was a scholarship program for black students in Apartheid South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. He held the visionary belief that \u201cthe creation of elites among persecuted people is the most effective way to overcome prejudice.\u201d He arranged to have his bold program administered through the University of Capetown. It was a failure, but once he had stumbled into the usual pitfalls of philanthropy \u2013 grants being diverted by administrators, no tracking of results, sabotage by opponents \u2013 Soros gained enough savvy to undermine the Soviet empire and then cast his anti-capitalist web on the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n Extreme leverage is a George Soros character trait. Most readers of the financial pages know about the spectacularly leveraged coup that earned him a billion dollars overnight in a giant gamble in 1992. He bet $10 billion \u2013 most of it borrowed money \u2013 that by selling enough sterling short he could force the Bank of England to devalue the British pound and make a killing.<\/span><\/p>\n Soros, with a keen grasp of money and politics, had calculated that bankers in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (EERM), pegged to the German mark, would refuse to uphold the overvalued pound because at the time Germany had its own problems paying for reunification. Great Britain\u2019s inflation was also much too high (triple the German rate), and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices.<\/span><\/p>\n The EERM did refuse, so Britain pulled out and tried to prop up its sinking currency by itself. Prime Minister John Major and Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont spent billions of the government\u2019s foreign reserves buying back pounds, trying desperately to shore up the value of sterling in the face of the daunting speculative tsunami that Soros started.<\/span><\/p>\n They ran out of foreign reserves. Soros\u2019s fund sold short<\/a><\/strong><\/span> more than $10\u00a0billion in pounds. The pound crashed, making Soros a profit of $1\u00a0billion. On September 16, 1992 \u2013 a day known thereafter as Black Wednesday \u2013 British subjects woke up to find their money worth about 20 percent less than the day before when compared to American dollars, German marks, or even French francs.<\/span><\/p>\n On October 26, 1992, The Times of London<\/em> quoted Soros as saying:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOur total position<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10\u00a0billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont<\/strong><\/span><\/a> said just before the devaluation<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that he would borrow nearly $15\u00a0billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBiography & Background<\/h2>\n
Down and Out in London<\/h2>\n
The Importance of Karl Popper<\/h2>\n
Soros Family Today<\/h2>\n
Financial Career<\/h2>\n
Birth of the Soros Fortune<\/h2>\n
First Philanthropy<\/h2>\n
Controversies<\/h2>\n
Currency Manipulation<\/h2>\n