George Soros

In a discussion at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in 2006, Alvin Shuster, former foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times, asked Soros, "How does one go from an immigrant to a financier? ... When did you realize that you knew how to make money?" Soros replied, "Well, I had a variety of jobs and I ended up selling fancy goods on the seaside, souvenir shops, and I thought, that's really not what I was cut out to do. So, I wrote to every managing director in every merchant bank in London, got just one or two replies, and eventually that's how I got a job in a merchant bank."[52]

In 1954, Soros began his financial career at the merchant bank Singer & Friedlander of London. He worked as a clerk and later moved to the arbitrage department. A fellow employee, Robert Mayer, suggested he apply at his father's brokerage house, F.M. Mayer of New York.[53]

In 1956, Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader for F. M. Mayer (1956–59). He specialized in European stocks, which were becoming popular with U.S. institutional investors following the formation of the Coal and Steel Community, which later became the Common Market.[54]

In 1959, after three years at F. M. Mayer, Soros moved to Wertheim & Co.. He planned to stay for five years, enough time to save $500,000, after which he intended to return to England to study philosophy.[55] He worked as an analyst of European securities until 1963.

During this period, Soros developed the theory of reflexivity based on the ideas of his tutor at the London School of Economics, Karl Popper. Reflexivity posits that market values are often driven by the fallible ideas of participants, not only by the economic fundamentals of the situation. Ideas and events influence each other in reflexive feedback loops. Soros argued that this process leads to markets having procyclical "virtuous" or "vicious" cycles of boom and bust, in contrast to the equilibrium predictions of more standard neoclassical economics.[56][57]

From 1963 to 1973, Soros's experience as a vice president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder resulted in little enthusiasm for the job; business was slack following the introduction of the Interest Equalization Tax, which undermined the viability of Soros's European trading. He spent the years from 1963 to 1966 with his main focus on the revision of his philosophy dissertation. In 1966 he started a fund with $100,000 of the firm's money to experiment with his trading strategies.

In 1969, Soros set up the Double Eagle hedge fund with $4m of investors' capital including $250,000 of his own money.[58] It was based in Curaçao, Dutch Antilles.[59] Double Eagle itself was an offshoot of Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder's First Eagle fund established by Soros and that firm's chairman Henry H. Arnhold in 1967.[60] [61]

In 1973, the Double Eagle Fund had $12 million and formed the basis of the Soros Fund. George Soros and Jim Rogers received returns on their share of capital and 20 percent of the profits each year.[54]

In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management and became its chairman. Among those who held senior positions there at various times were Jim Rogers, Stanley Druckenmiller, Mark Schwartz, Keith Anderson, and Soros's two sons.[62][63][64]

In 1973, due to perceived conflicts of interest limiting his ability to run the two funds, Soros resigned from the management of the Double Eagle Fund. He then established the Soros Fund and gave investors in the Double Eagle Fund the option of transferring to that or staying with Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder.

It was later renamed as the Quantum Fund, named after the physical theory of quantum mechanics. By that time the value of the fund had grown to $12m, only a small proportion of which was Soros's own money. He and Jim Rogers reinvested their returns from the fund, and also a large part of their 20% performance fees, thereby expanding their stake.[53]

By 1981, the fund had grown to $400m, and then a 22% loss in that year and substantial redemptions by some of the investors reduced it to $200m.[65]

In July 2011, Soros announced that he had returned funds from outside investors' money (valued at $1 billion) and instead invested funds from his $24.5 billion family fortune, due to changes in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, which he felt would compromise his duties of confidentiality to his investors. The fund had at that time averaged over 20% per year compound returns.[66]

In 2013, the Quantum Fund made $5.5 billion, making it again the most successful hedge fund in history. Since its inception in 1973, the fund has generated $40 billion.[67]

The fund announced in 2015 that it would inject $300 million to help finance the expansion of Fen Hotels, an Argentine hotel company. The funds will develop 5,000 rooms over the next three years throughout various Latin American countries.[68]

Soros had been building a huge short position in pounds sterling for months leading up to September 1992. Soros had recognized the unfavorable position of the United Kingdom in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. For Soros, the rate at which the United Kingdom was brought into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was too high, their inflation was also much too high (triple the German rate), and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices.[69]

By September 16, 1992, the day of Black Wednesday, Soros's fund had sold short more than $10 billion in pounds,[62] profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or float its currency.

Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound. Soros's profit on the bet was estimated at over $1 billion.[70] He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England".[71] The estimated cost of Black Wednesday to the UK Treasury was £3.4 billion.[72] Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound and stated: "[Soros's] contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position."[73][74]

On October 26, 1992, The New York Times quoted Soros as saying: "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."

Soros was believed to have traded billions of Finnish markkas on February 5, 1996, in anticipation of selling them short. The markka had been put floating as a result of the early 1990s depression. The Bank of Finland and the Finnish Government commented at the time they believed that a "conspiracy" was impossible.[75]

In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Following on a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge"[76]) and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir met with Soros and afterward stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis.[77] In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:

The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity ... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently, Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline—we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)[78]

In 1999, economist Paul Krugman was critical of Soros's effect on financial markets.

[N]obody 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 fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is 'Soroi'.[79]

In an interview regarding the late-2000s recession, Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been "some kind of an ideological excess." In Soros's view, the markets' moods—a "mood" of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which the markets look at reality—"actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles."[80]

In reaction to the late-2000s recession, he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think tank composed of international economic, business, and financial experts, who are mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organizing the international economic and financial system.

In 1988, Soros was contacted by a French financier named Georges Pébereau, who asked him to participate in an effort to assemble a group of investors to purchase a large number of shares in Société Générale, a leading French bank that was part of a privatization program (something instituted by the new government under Jacques Chirac).[81] Soros eventually decided against participating in the group effort, opting to personally move forward with his strategy of accumulating shares in four French companies: Société Générale, as well as Suez, Paribas, and the Compagnie Générale d'Électricité.

In 1989, the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (COB, the French stock exchange regulatory authority) conducted an investigation of whether Soros's transaction in Société Générale should be considered insider trading. Soros had received no information from the Société Générale and had no insider knowledge of the business, but he did possess knowledge that a group of investors was planning a takeover attempt. Initial investigations found Soros innocent, and no charges were brought forward.[82] However, the case was reopened a few years later, and the French Supreme Court confirmed the conviction on June 14, 2006,[83] although it reduced the penalty to €940,000.[83]

Soros denied any wrongdoing, saying news of the takeover was public knowledge[84] and it was documented that his intent to acquire shares of the company predated his own awareness of the takeover.[83] In December 2006, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on various grounds, including that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing.[85] On the basis of Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, stating that no person may be punished for an act that was not a criminal offense at the time that it was committed, the court agreed to hear the appeal.[81] In October 2011, the court rejected his appeal in a 4–3 decision, saying that Soros had been aware of the risk of breaking insider trading laws.[86]

Protesters in Tbilisi with flag of the Democratic Republic of Georgia blocking the way from the Open Society Institute office, 2005

According to Waldemar A. Nielsen, an authority on American philanthropy,[115] "[Soros] has undertaken ... nothing less than to open up the once-closed communist societies of Eastern Europe to a free flow of ideas and scientific knowledge from the outside world."[116] From 1979, as an advocate of 'open societies', Soros financially supported dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union.[117] In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary with a budget of $3 million.[118]

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros' funding has played an important role in the newly independent countries. A 2017 study found that a grant program by George Soros which awarded funding to over 28,000 scientists in the former Soviet republics shortly after the end of the Soviet Union "more than doubled publications on the margin, significantly induced scientists to remain in the science sector, and had long-lasting [beneficial] impacts."[119] His funding of pro-democratic programs in Georgia was considered by Georgian nationalists to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution, although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated."[120] Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2.5 million.[121]

Former Georgian foreign minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like the Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratization and that all the NGOs that gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.[122]

Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.[123] Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey, said in an interview that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs ... Last year Russia passed a special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well."[124] In 1997, Soros closed his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations." According to The New York Times, the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control the Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society."[125]

In June 2009, Soros donated $100 million to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the economic crisis on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations.[126]

Since 2012 the Hungarian Fidesz government labelled George Soros as enemy of the state due to his humanitarian and political involvement in the European refugee crisis. The government has attacked OSF, the international civil support foundation created by George Soros, and tried to revoke the licence of Central European University (Budapest) (which failed mostly due to significant public outrage[127]). In response Soros called the government "a mafia state".[128]

As the 2018 election period started the government introduced public posters with the photo of Soros,[129] to create hostility in the general public towards him, using statements such as "Soros wants millions of migrants to live in Hungary", and "Soros wants to dismantle the border fence". The government also prepared a three-part law plan called "Stop Soros package" (which followed other various law changes[130] in the same year which hindered workings of several international NGOs in Hungary), which would include various steps against NGOs doing volunteer work related to the refugee crisis.

Anti George Soros sentiment graffiti in Resen, Macedonia (2018). It reads: #Stop Soros #I will profit

In March 2017, six US senators sent a letter to then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson[131] asking that he look into several grants the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have given to groups funded by "left-wing" Soros. According to the Heritage Foundation, the letter expressed specific concern about Soros' influence on Macedonian politics, a concern which has also been expressed by members of the conservative Macedonian government.[132] In the same context, the conservative group Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and USAID compelling them to release records regarding $5 million transferred from USAID to Soros' Open Society branch in Macedonia. The suit alleges that the money was deliberately used to destabilize the Macedonian government.[133] The Open Society Foundation has said its activities in Macedonia were aimed at ethnic reconciliation with the Albanian minority and other forms of assistance since the collapse of Yugoslavia.[134]

In January 2017, the "Stop Operation Soros" (SOS) initiative was launched in Macedonia. SOS seeks to present "questions and answers about the way Soros operates worldwide" and invites citizens to contribute to the research. In a press conference held during the same month, Nenad Mircevski, one of the founders of the initiative, stated that SOS would work towards the "de-Soros-ization" of Macedonia.[135]

On May 16, 2018, Soros' Open Society Foundations announced they would move its office from Budapest to Berlin, blaming the move on an "increasingly repressive" environment in Hungary.[136][137][138]

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa is a Soros-affiliated organization.[139]

In November 2005, Soros said: "My personal opinion is there's no alternative but to give Kosovo independence."[140] Soros has helped fund the non-profit group called Independent Diplomat.[141] It represented Kosovo, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (under military occupation by Turkey since 1974),[142] Somaliland and the Polisario Front of Western Sahara.[141]

Soros has funded worldwide efforts to promote drug policy reform. In 2008, Soros donated $400,000 to help fund a successful ballot measure in Massachusetts known as the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative which decriminalized possession of less than 1 oz (28g) of marijuana in the state. Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine.[143] Among the drug decriminalization groups that have received funding from Soros are the Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation.[144] Soros donated $1.4 million to publicity efforts to support California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed ballot measure that would have expanded drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for persons convicted of non-violent drug-related offenses.[145]

In October 2010, Soros donated $1 million to support California's Proposition 19.[146]

According to remarks in an interview in October 2009, it is Soros' opinion that marijuana is less addictive but not appropriate for use by children and students. He himself has not used marijuana for years.[147] Soros has been a major financier of the Drug Policy Alliance – an organization that promotes cannabis legalization – with roughly $4 million in annual contributions from one of his foundations.[148]

The Project on Death in America, active from 1994 to 2003,[149] was one of the Open Society Institute's projects, which sought to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement."[150] In 1994, Soros delivered a speech in which he reported that he had offered to help his mother, a member of the right-to-die advocacy organization Hemlock Society, commit suicide.[151] In the same speech, he also endorsed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act,[152] proceeding to help fund its advertising campaign.[153]

Soros's writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals enter into market transactions, potentially changing the fundamentals of the economy. Soros argues that different principles apply in markets depending on whether they are in a "near to equilibrium" or a "far from equilibrium" state. He argues that, when markets are rising or falling rapidly, they are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the "efficient market hypothesis") does not apply in these situations. Soros has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions.[57] He has stated that his own financial success has been attributable to the edge accorded by his understanding of the action of the reflexive effect. Reflexivity is based on three main ideas:[57]

1. Reflexivity is best observed under special conditions where investor bias grows and spreads throughout the investment arena. Examples of factors that may give rise to this bias include (a) equity leveraging or (b) the trend-following habits of speculators.
2. Reflexivity appears intermittently since it is most likely to be revealed under certain conditions; i.e., the character of the equilibrium process is best considered in terms of probabilities.
3. Investors' observation of and participation in the capital markets may at times influence valuations and fundamental conditions or outcomes.

A recent example of reflexivity in modern financial markets is that of the debt and equity of housing markets.[57] Lenders began to make more money available to more people in the 1990s to buy houses. More people bought houses with this larger amount of money, thus increasing the prices of these houses. Lenders looked at their balance sheets which not only showed that they had made more loans, but that the collaterals backing the loans – the value of the houses – had gone up (because more money was chasing the same amount of housing, relatively). Thus they lent out more money because their balance sheets looked good, and prices rose higher still.

This was further amplified by public policy. In the US, home loans were guaranteed by the Federal government. Many national governments saw home ownership as a positive outcome and so introduced grants for first-time home buyers and other financial subsidies, such as the exemption of a primary residence from capital gains taxation. These further encouraged house purchases, leading to further price rises and further relaxation of lending standards.

The concept of reflexivity attempts to explain why markets moving from one equilibrium state to another tend to overshoot or undershoot. Soros's theories were originally dismissed by economists,[204] but have received more attention after the 2008 crash including becoming the focus of an issue of the Journal of Economic Methodology.[205]

The notion of reflexivity provides an explanation of the theories of complexity economics, as developed at the Santa Fe Institute, although Soros had not publicized his views at the time the discipline was originally developed there in the 1980s.[206][207][208][209]

Although the primary manifestation of the reflexive process that Soros discusses is its effects in the financial markets, he has also explored its effects in politics. He has stated that whereas the greatest threats to the "open society" in the past were from communism and fascism (as discussed in The Open Society and Its Enemies by his mentor Karl Popper), the largest current threat is from market fundamentalism.

He has suggested that the contemporary domination of world politics and world trade by the United States is a reflexive phenomenon, insofar as the success of military and financial coercion feeds back to encourage increasingly intense applications of the same policies to the point where they will eventually become unsustainable.[210]

Soros argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. He blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism.[211]

Soros's book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (May 2008), described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he has written that have predicted disaster. As he states:

I have a record of crying wolf ... I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998), and now in this book. So it's three books predicting disaster. [After] the boy cried wolf three times ... the wolf really came.[212]

He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.

I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong ... I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away.[212]

In February 2009, Soros said the world financial system had in effect disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.[213] "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system ... It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."

In January 2016, at an economic forum in Sri Lanka, Soros predicted a financial crisis akin to 2008 based on the state of the global currency, stock and commodity markets as well as the sinking Chinese yuan.

China has a major adjustment problem. I would say it amounts to a crisis. When I look at the financial markets there is a serious challenge which reminds me of the crisis we had in 2008.[214][215]

When asked about what he thought about Israel, in The New Yorker, Soros replied: "I don't deny the Jews to a right to a national existence – but I don't want anything to do with it."[216] According to hacked emails released in 2016, Soros's Open Society Foundation has a self-described objective of "challenging Israel's racist and anti-democratic policies" in international forums, in part by questioning Israel's reputation as a democracy.[217] He has funded NGOs which have been actively critical of Israeli policies[218][219][220] including groups that campaign for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.[218]

Speaking before a 2003 conference of the Jewish Funders Network, Soros said that the administrations of George W. Bush in the U.S. and Ariel Sharon in Israel, and even the unintended consequences of some of his own actions, were partially contributing to a new European antisemitism. Soros, citing accusations that he was one of the "Jewish financiers" who, in antisemitic terms, "ruled the world by proxy", suggested that if we change the direction of those policies, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League later said that Soros's comments held a simplistic view, were counterproductive, biased and a bigoted perception of what's out there, and "blamed the victim" when holding Jews responsible for antisemitism. Jewish philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, who arranged for Soros's appearance at the conference, clarified, "George Soros does not think Jews should be hated any more than they deserve to be."[221] Soros has also said that Jews can overcome antisemitism by "giv[ing] up on the tribalness".[222]

In a subsequent article for The New York Review of Books, Soros emphasized that

I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.[223]

In 2017, Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz filed a $10 million lawsuit against Soros, alleging that Soros had influenced the government of Guinea to freeze Steinmetz's company BSG Resources out of iron ore mining contracts in the African country due to "long-standing animus toward the state of Israel".[224][225][226] Steinmetz claims that Soros engaged in a "smear" campaign against him and his companies and blames Soros for scrutiny of him by American, Israeli, Swiss, and Guinean authorities.[227] Soros called Steinmetz's suit "frivolous and entirely false" and said that it was "a desperate PR stunt meant to deflect attention from BSGR's mounting legal problems across multiple jurisdictions".[228]

During an award ceremony for Imre Kertész, Soros said that the victims of violence and abuse were becoming "perpetrators of violence", suggesting that this model explained Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians, which led to walkouts and Soros being booed.[229]

In July 2017, in Hungary a billboard campaign backed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán which was considered to be anti-semitic by the country's Jewish groups vilified Soros as an enemy of the state using the slogan "Let's not allow Soros to have the last laugh".[230] The campaign was estimated to have cost 5.7bn forints (then US$21 million).[231] According to the Israeli ambassador the campaign "evokes sad memories but also sows hatred and fear", a reference to Hungary's role in the deportation of 500,000 Jews during the Holocaust.[232] Lydia Gall of Human Rights Watch asserted that it was reminiscent of Nazi posters during the Second World War featuring "'the laughing Jew'".[233] Orbán and his government's representative said they had a "zero tolerance" of antisemitism explaining the posters were aiming to persuade voters Soros was a "national security risk".[230]

Hours later, in an apparent attempt to ally Israel with Hungary, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a "clarification", denouncing Soros, stating that he "continuously undermines Israel's democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself".[234]

Soros' son Alexander said in an interview that his father cares about Israel, and that he "would like to see Israel in Yitzhak Rabin's image. His views are more or less the common views in Meretz and in the Labor Party." According to Alexander, Soros supports a two-state solution. The younger Soros recounts that after his bar mitzvah in 1998, his father told him: "If you're serious about being Jewish, you might want to consider immigrating to Israel."[235]

On November 11, 2003, in an interview with The Washington Post, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death". He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat Bush "if someone guaranteed it".[236][237] Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million[238] to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. On September 28, 2004, he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multistate tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush[239] delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as "factcheck.com" in the vice presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros's site.[240]

External video

Booknotes interview with Soros on The Bubble of American Supremacy, February 29, 2004, C-SPAN

His 2003 book, The Bubble of American Supremacy[241], was a forthright critique of the Bush administration's "War on Terror" as misconceived and counterproductive, and a polemic against the re-election of Bush. He explains the title in the closing chapter by pointing out the parallels in this political context with the self-reinforcing reflexive processes that generate bubbles in stock prices.

When Soros was asked in 2006 about his statement in The Age of Fallibility that "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States", he responded that "it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that's rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a 'war on terror' after September 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world ... When you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims."[242]

Soros described Donald Trump as a con man.[243] Soros expects Trump to fail because Soros believes Trump's ideas are self-contradictory. Soros said in 2017 he believed Trump was preparing for a trade war and expected financial markets to do badly.[244]

In October 2011, Soros drafted an open letter entitled "As concerned Europeans we urge Eurozone leaders to unite",[245] in which he calls for a stronger economic government for Europe using federal means (Common EU treasury, common fiscal supervision, etc.) and warns against the danger of nationalistic solutions to the economic crisis. The letter was co-signed by Javier Solana, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Andrew Duff, Emma Bonino, Massimo D'Alema, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga.

Soros criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his handling of the European migrant crisis in 2015: "His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle."[246]

Soros expected that Brexit would fail and the Premiership of Theresa May would last only a short time.[244] Soros is opposed to Brexit and donated £400,000 to the anti-Brexit 'Best for Britain' group.[247] Soros also hosted a dinner for Conservative donors at his London home to encourage them to follow his lead. Soros's Open Society Foundations also donated a total of £303,000 to two pro-EU organizations, the European Movement UK and Scientists for EU, and a center-right think-tank, Bright Blue.[248]

In 2018, Soros highlighted that Europe faces major challenges, in particular, that related to immigration, austerity, and nations leaving the political block.[249] He holds that Europe is facing an existential crisis, in view of the rise of populism, the refugee crisis and a growing rift between Europe and the United States.[250] Soros has also stated that "the euro has many unresolved problems" which "must not be allowed to destroy the European Union". He advocated replacing the notion of a multi-speed Europe by the aim of a "multi-track Europe" that would allow member states a wider variety of choices.[251]

In view of the possibility of a further increase of the number of refugees from Africa to Europe, Soros proposes that the European Union devise a Marshall Plan for Africa (see Marshall Plan), fostering education and employment in Africa in order to reduce emigration.[249][251]

Soros has expressed concern about the growth of Chinese economic and political power, saying, "China has risen very rapidly by looking out for its own interests ... They have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well." Regarding the political gridlock in America, he said, "Today, China has not only a more vigorous economy but actually a better functioning government than the United States."[252] In July 2015, Soros stated that a "strategic partnership between the US and China could prevent the evolution of two power blocks that may be drawn into military conflict".[253] In January 2016, during an interview at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Soros stated that "[a] hard landing is practically unavoidable". Chinese state media responded by stating "Soros' challenge to the RMB and Hong Kong dollar are doomed to fail, without any doubt."[254]

In January 2019, Soros used his annual speech at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, to label Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President of China, as the "most dangerous opponent of open societies", saying: "China is not the only authoritarian regime in the world but it is the wealthiest, strongest and technologically most advanced". He also urged the United States not to allow the Chinese technology companies Huawei and ZTE to dominate the 5G telecommunications market as this would present an "unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world".[255][256] Soros also criticized the newest form of China's Big Brother-like system of mass surveillance called the Social Credit System, saying it would give Xi, "total control" over the people of China."[257]

In May 2014, Soros told CNN's Fareed Zakaria: "I set up a foundation in Ukraine before Ukraine became independent from Russia. And the foundation has been functioning ever since and played an important part in events now."[258]

In January 2015, Soros said that "Europe needs to wake up and recognize that it is under attack from Russia." He also urged Western countries to expand economic sanctions against Russia for its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.[259]

In January 2015, Soros called on the European Union to give $50 billion of bailout money to Ukraine.[260]

In July 2015, Soros stated that Putin's annexation of Crimea was a challenge to the "prevailing world order," specifically the European Union. He hypothesized that Putin wants to "destabilize all of Ukraine by precipitating a financial and political collapse for which he can disclaim responsibility, while avoiding occupation of a part of eastern Ukraine, which would then depend on Russia for economic support."[253] In November 2015, Russia banned the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI)-- two pro-democracy charities founded by Soros—stating they posed a "threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation and the security of the state."[261][262] In January 2016, 53 books related to Soros's "Renewal of Humanitarian Education" program were withdrawn at the Vorkuta Mining and Economic College in the Komi Republic, with 427 additional books seized for shredding. A Russian intergovernmental letter released in December 2015 stated that Soros's charities were "forming a perverted perception of history and making ideological directives, alien to Russian ideology, popular". Most of these books were published with funds donated by Soros's charities.[263][264]

• The Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival? (PublicAffairs, 2014). ISBN 978-1-61039-421-5.
• Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States: Essays (PublicAffairs, 2012). ISBN 978-1-61039-161-0.
• The Soros Lectures at the Central European University (PublicAffairs, 2010) ISBN 978-1-58648-885-7.
• The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means (PublicAffairs, 2008). ISBN 978-1-58648-683-9.
• The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror (PublicAffairs, 2006) ISBN 978-1-58648-359-3.
• Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise and Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe (Free Press, 1991) ISBN 978-0-02-930285-9 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 978-1-58648-227-5)
• George Soros on Globalization (PublicAffairs, 2002) ISBN 978-1-58648-125-4 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2005; ISBN 978-1-58648-278-7)
• The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (PublicAffairs, 2003) ISBN 978-1-58648-217-6 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 978-1-58648-292-3)
• Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2001) ISBN 978-1-58648-019-6.
• With Mark Amadeus Notturno, Science and the Open Society: The Future of Karl Popper's Philosophy (Central European University Press, 2000) ISBN 978-963-9116-69-6 (paperback: Central European University Press, 2000; ISBN 978-963-9116-70-2)
• The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (PublicAffairs, 1998) ISBN 978-1-891620-27-0.
• Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 978-0-471-12014-8 (paperback; Wiley, 1995; ISBN 978-0-471-11977-7)
• Opening the Soviet System (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990) ISBN 978-0-297-82055-0 (paperback: Perseus Books, 1996; ISBN 978-0-8133-1205-7)
• The Alchemy of Finance (Simon & Schuster, 1988) ISBN 978-0-671-66238-7 (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ISBN 978-0-471-44549-4)

• George Soros, "Why I support legal marijuana", The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2010.
• George Soros, "The Crisis and the Euro", The New York Review of Books, August 19, 2010.
• George Soros, "Paulson Cannot be Allowed a Blank Cheque". Archived from the original on September 26, 2008. Retrieved May 3, 2012.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link), Financial Times, September 24, 2008
• George Soros, "On Israel, America and AIPAC", The New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007.
• George Soros, "The Bubble of American Supremacy", The Atlantic, December 2003, also audio recording of this article via Assistive Media, read by Grover Gardner, 18 minutes.
• George Soros, "Soros on Brazil", Financial Times, August 13, 2002.
• George Soros, "Bitter Thoughts with Faith in Russia", Moskovskiye Novosti (Moscow News), translated from the Russian by Olga Kryazheva, February 27, 2000.
• George Soros, "The Capitalist Threat", The Atlantic Monthly, February 1997.
• A half-hour Opinions television lecture by Soros was transmitted by Channel 4 on August 1, 1993 and published the following day in The Times as "Why Appeasement Must Not Have Another Chance"[285]

• Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire by Michael T. Kaufman (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) ISBN 978-0-375-40585-3
• Soros: The World's Most Influential Investor by Robert Slater (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009) ISBN 978-0-07-160844-2

• John Authors, "A successful prophet of the markets". Archived from the original on June 2, 2008. Retrieved May 3, 2012.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link), Financial Times, May 19, 2008.
• Laura Blumenfeld, "Billionaire Soros Takes on Bush". Archived from the original on November 27, 2005. Retrieved April 7, 2004., The Washington Post, November 11, 2003
• Connie Bruck, Abstract of The New Yorker profile of Soros "The World According to Soros", The New Yorker, January 23, 1995.
• Malcolm Gladwell, gladwell.com "Blowing Up", The New Yorker, April 22 & 29, 2002.
• Matt Welch, Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist "Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a Socialist, Self-hating Jew". Reason, December 8, 2003
• "Time's 25 Most Influential Americans", Time, April 21, 1997. Retrieved May 21, 2007.
• "The Time 100: The Power Givers: George Soros", Time, May 14, 2007, Retrieved May 21, 2007.
• Nahum Barnea, Why they hate George Soros, Ynetnews, April 25, 2018.

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• Cross, R.; Strachan, D. (1997). "On George Soros and economic analysis". Kyklos. 50 (4): 561–574. doi:10.1111/1467-6435.00030.
• Kwong, C.P. (2008). "Mathematical analysis of Soros's theory of reflexivity". arXiv:0901.4447 [q-fin.GN].
• Nielsen, Waldemar A. (1996). Inside American Philanthropy: The Dramas of Donorship. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 77–82. ISBN 978-0-8061-2802-3.
• Pettis, Michael (2001). The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514330-0.
• Stone, Diane (2007). "Market Principles, Philanthropic Ideals and Public Service Values: The Public Policy Program at the Central European University" (PDF). PS: Political Science and Politics. 40 (3): 545–551. doi:10.1017/S1049096507070795.
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