Born in Budapest , he survived Nazi Germany - occupied Hungary and emigrated to England in He attended the London School of Economics graduating with a bachelor's and eventually a master's in philosophy. He began his business career by taking various jobs at merchant banks before starting his first hedge fund , Double Eagle, in Profits from his first fund furnished the seed money to start Soros Fund Management , his second hedge fund, in Double Eagle was renamed the Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised.

He is a well-known supporter of American progressive and American liberal political causes and dispenses his donations through his foundation, the Open Society Foundations. Soros was born in Budapest in the Kingdom of Hungary to a well-to-do non-observant Jewish family , who, like many upper-middle class Hungarian Jews at the time, were uncomfortable with their roots.

Soros has described his home as antisemitic. His father Tivadar also known as Teodoro was a lawyer [22] and had been a prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest.

Tivadar was an Esperantist writer and taught Soros to speak Esperanto in his childhood. In Hungarian, soros means "next in line," or "designated successor"; in Esperanto it means "will soar. Soros was 13 years old in March when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis: I was told to go to the Jewish Council.

And there I was given these small slips of paper I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it.

This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported. Soros did not return to that job; his family purchased documents to say that they were Christians, thereby allowing them to survive the war. Later that year at age 14, Soros posed as the Christian godson of an official of the collaborationist Hungarian government 's Ministry of Agriculture, who himself had a Jewish wife in hiding.

On one occasion, rather than leave the 14 year old alone, the official took with him while he inventoried a rich Jewish family's estate, though Soros did not take part. Tivadar not only saved his immediate family but also many other Hungarian Jews, and George would later write that had been "the happiest [year] of his life," for it had given him the opportunity to witness his father's heroism.

In , Soros immigrated to England and became a student at the London School of Economics. When did you realize that you knew how to make money? 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. In , Soros earned a Bachelor of Science in philosophy and a Master of Science in philosophy in , both from the London School of Economics.

After graduating, Soros found it difficult to get work, and settled for a job as a traveling salesman for a fancy-goods wholesaler selling to retailers in Welsh seaside resorts.

He described this period as the "low point of my life," and wrote letters to a number of merchant banks requesting interviews. Many of these ignored him, and others humiliated him in the interviews.

He credits his acceptance at Singer and Friedlander to the fact that the managing director was a fellow Hungarian.

Donald Trump Took Liberal Icon George Soros’s Money

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. Mayer of New York. In Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader for F.

He specialized in European stocks, which were becoming popular with U. In , after three years at F. 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 "virtuous or vicious" cycles of boom and bust, in contrast to the equilibrium predictions of more standard neoclassical economics.

From to , 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 to with his main focus on the revision of his philosophy dissertation. But he was principally motivated by a desire to assert himself as an investor to profit from his reflexivity insights.

George Soros and Jim Rogers received returns on their share of capital and 20 percent of the profits each year. In 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.

In , 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.

It was later renamed as the Quantum Fund , named after Werner Heisenberg 's principle of quantum mechanics. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, which he felt would compromise his duties of confidentiality to his investors. The funds will develop 5, rooms over the next three years throughout various Latin American countries. Soros had been building a huge position in pounds sterling for months leading up to September 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.

Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound. On October 26, , The Times quoted Soros as saying: We planned to sell more than that. Stanley Druckenmiller , who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound and stated: In , 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" [58] and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in , Mahathir met with Soros and afterward stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis.

Open Society Endangered Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:. The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity By the beginning of , 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 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. In , economist Paul Krugman was critical of Soros's effect on financial markets. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is 'Soroi'. In an interview regarding the lates recession , Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the s.

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 reaction to the lates recession, he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October This is a think tank composed of international economic, business, and financial experts, mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organizing the international economic and financial system.

Soros has been married three times and divorced twice. In he married Annaliese Witschak. Annaliese was an ethnic German immigrant from Germany who had been orphaned during the war. Although she was not Jewish, she was well liked by Soros's parents as she had also experienced the deprivations and dislocation brought about by World War II. They had three children:. In , George Soros married Susan Weber , twenty-five years his junior. They divorced in They have two children:.

In , Soros met his current wife, Tamiko Bolton, 42 years his junior; [76] he married her on September 21, She was raised in California, earned an MBA from the University of Miami , and runs an Internet-based dietary supplement and vitamin-sales company. Soros's elder brother Paul Soros , a private investor and philanthropist, died on June 15, Fraser and Soros separated in In , Soros was a minority partner in a group that tried to buy the Washington Nationals , a Major League baseball team.

Some Republican lawmakers suggested that they might move to revoke Major League Baseball 's antitrust exemption if Soros bought the team.

Soros was a financial backer of Washington Soccer L. United when the league was founded in , but the group lost these rights in Soros was not a large donor to U. The groups aimed to defeat President Bush. After Bush's re-election Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance , which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America.

He was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress , and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations. In October , a Reuters story, "Soros: According to Waldemar A.

Nielsen, an authority on American philanthropy, [94] "[Soros] has undertaken Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros's funding has continued to play an important role in the former Soviet sphere. His funding of prodemocratic programs in Georgia was considered by Russian and Western observers to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution , although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.

Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Last year Russia passed a special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society. The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa is a Soros-affiliated organization.

In November , Soros said: Soros has funded worldwide efforts to promote drug policy reform. Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine. According to remarks in an interview in October , it is Soros's opinion that marijuana is less addictive but not appropriate for use by children and students. He himself has not used marijuana for years.

The Project on Death in America, active from to , [] was one of the Open Society Institute's projects, which sought to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement. Open Society , 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. Reflexivity is based on three main ideas: A recent example of reflexivity in modern financial markets is that of the debt and equity of housing markets.

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 their equity 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' theories were originally dismissed by economists, [] but have received more attention after the crash including becoming the focus of an issue of the Journal of Economic Methodology. The notion of reflexivity provides an explanation of the theories of Complexity economics , as developed at the Santa Fe Institute , although Soros had not publicised his views at the time the discipline was originally developed there in the s.

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.

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. Soros's book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets May , 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.

I have a record of crying wolf I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance in , then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism in , and now in this book. So it's three books predicting disaster. 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. In February , Soros said the world financial system had in effect disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.

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 at an economic forum in Sri Lanka, Soros predicted a financial crisis akin to based on the state of 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 When asked about what he thought about Israel , in the New Yorker , Soros replied that "I don't deny the Jews to a right to a national existence — but I don't want anything to do with it.

Soros has been accused of saying that both Jews and Israel are partially responsible for antisemitism , [] in response to his statement that the administrations of G. Bush in the U. He has also said that Jews can't overcome antisemitism without "giv[ing] up on the tribalness.

There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that.

It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish.

I can't see how one could confront it directly I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world As an unintended consequence of my actions I also contribute to that image. 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. On November 11, , 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.

These groups worked to support Democrats in the election. On September 28, , 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 [] delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, D. The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.

His book, The Bubble of American Supremacy , 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 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.

Soros described Donald Trump as a con man. Soros believes Trump is preparing for a trade war and expects financial markets to do badly. In October , Soros drafted an open letter entitled "As concerned Europeans we urge Eurozone leaders to unite," [] in which he calls for a stronger economic government for Europe using federal means Common EU treasury, common fiscal supervision, etc.

The letter was co-signed by Javier Solana , Daniel Cohn-Bendit , Andrew Duff , Emma Bonino , Massimo d'Alema , Vaira Vike-Freiberga. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.

Soros expects that Brexit will fail and the Premiership of Theresa May will last only a short time. 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.

In May Soros told CNN's Fareed Zakaria: And the foundation has been functioning ever since and played an important part in events now.

In January Soros said that "Europe needs to wake up and recognize that it is under attack from Russia. In July , 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.

A Russian intergovernmental letter released in December stated that Soros' charities were "forming a perverted perception of history and making ideological directives, alien to Russian ideology, popular. Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa, [96] and began funding dissident movements behind the Iron Curtain.

Soros's philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Foundations originally Open Society Institute or OSI and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland.

In former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword of Soros's book The Alchemy of Finance:. George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become "open societies," open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.

Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout central and eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo , and Transparency International. The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his microfinance bank Grameen Bank received support from the OSI. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support" but claimed later requests for support were declined. The New York Times termed this endeavor a "departure" for Soros whose philanthropic focus had been on fostering democracy and good government, but Soros noted that most poverty resulted from bad governance.

Soros played a role in the peaceful transition from communism to democracy in Hungary —89 [14] and provided a substantial endowment to Central European University in Budapest. Soros received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research New York , the University of Oxford in , the Corvinus University of Budapest , and Yale University in He received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in [ citation needed ] as well as an honorary degree in economics from the University of Bologna in , the oldest university in the world.

In , he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha 's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame along with David Swensen , Louis Bacon , Steven Cohen , Kenneth Griffin , Paul Tudor Jones , Seth Klarman , Michael Steinhardt , Jack Nash , James Simmons , Alfred Jones , Leon Levy , Julian Roberston , and Bruce Kovner.

George Soros has written many books, articles, and papers on economics, finance, stock trading, and geopolitics.

George Soros: I am here to make money, regardless of social consequences

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Soros disambiguation. Soros at the Munich Security Conference. For more details on George Soros' philanthropy, see List of projects supported by George Soros. Association football portal Biography portal Business and economics portal Hungary portal Judaism portal Sport portal United States portal. An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints and Voices.

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Did George Soros make his money betraying Jews? « H4CBlog

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Retrieved 15 January It's the crisis all over again". Buying a Better World: George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy. Archived from the original on November 19, Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East.

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Some of the money also underwrote the defense itself, Weil admitted, although after a while OSI quit donating cash to the effort.

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