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George Soros, enigmatic financier, liberalphilanthropist dies at XX
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By Todd Eastham
WASHINGTON, XXX
 | Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:41pm EDT
(Reuters) - Geor ge Soros, who died XXX at ageXXX, was a predatory and hugely successfulfinancier and investor, who argued paradoxically for years against the same sort of free-wheelingcapitalism that made him billions.
He was known as "the man who broke the Bank of England" for sellingshort the British pound in 1992 and helping force the United Kingdom towithdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which devaluedthe pound and earned Soros more than $1 billion.  And his Soros Fund Management was widely blamed for helping trigger  the Asian financial crisis of 1997, by selling short the Thai baht andMalaysian ringgit."Subsequently, Prime Minister Mahatir of Malaysia accused me of causingthe crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation," Soros wrote in The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered," in 1998."We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before thecrisis; on the contrary ... we were purchasing ringgits to realize profits onour earlier speculation."Still, economist Paul Krugman, was one of many observers who accusedSoros of helping trigger the crisis.In 1999, Krugman wrote that "nobody who has read a business magazine in the last few years canbe 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 fund and profit."Still, Soros has written extensively on the folly of what he has called free market "fundamentalism,"the belief of many conservative economists that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention.In Soros' view, markets and investors are subject to "mood" swings, or a prevailing positive or negative bias which can be exploited by savvy investors but which inevitably lead to damagingmarket bubbles and boom/bust cycles. An enigma, wrapped in intellect, contradiction and money. A Jew born in Hungary as the Nazis were gaining power in Germany, Soros survived World War Two and then emigrated to Great Britain, where he earned a degree from the London School of 
 
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Economics in 1952, and landed his first job in the financial industry largely through pure stubbornchutzpah.OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTEWhile at the London School, Soros studied under the economist and philosopher Karl Popper anda main vehicle for his philanthropy, the Open Society Institute, is named for Popper's two-volumework, "The Open Society and Its Enemies."In that work, Popper develops the philosophy of reflexivity, a theory first articulated by WilliamThomas in the 1920s that posits that individual biases enter into market transactions, coloring theperception of economic fundamentals. Soros has attributed his own financial success in part to hisunderstanding of the reflexive effect.Key to understanding that effect is recognizing when markets are in a condition of near-equilibrium, or in disequilibrium. Soros has observed that when markets are rising or falling rapidly,they are typically marked by rising disequilibrium, and the dispassionate investor can capitalize onthat recognition.While Soros has benefited enormously from this understanding (Forbes put his wealth in 2013 at$19 billion, making him the world's 30th richest person, not counting the roughly $8 billion he hasgiven away through various charitable entities he controls), he has argued nevertheless for strongcentral government regulation to correct for and counterbalance the excesses of greed, fear andthe free market.Popper's idea of fallibilism, which posits that anything one believes may in fact be wrong, isanother key principle that has guided Soros in his career, and his philanthropy.Soros' philanthropy since the 1970s, when he began funding the studies of black students at theUniversity of Cape Town in South Africa, has been marked as much by his personal journey as bythe needs of the communities he has set out to serve.His efforts through the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations have been skewedtoward the effort to promote democratic values in the post-Soviet economies of Central andEastern Europe, where he witnessed the rise of communism in Hungary after World War Two."The bulk of his enormous winnings (as an investor and speculator) is now devoted toencouraging transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,'" former FederalReserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword to Soros' "The Alchemy of Finance" (2003)."Open," Volcker wrote, "not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but - more important -tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior."PHILANTHROPY, POLITICSSoros also pledged $50 million in 2006 to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs,to provide educational, agricultural and medical aid to help poor villages in Africa. And the OpenSociety Institute has expanded its giving to more than 60 countries around the world, giving awayroughly $600 million a year.Soros was an early supporter of the peaceful transformation of the Solidarity movement in Polandand Open Society Institute programs were considered by many Western observers to be a keyfactor in the success of the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia.While his philanthropy has earned him friends around the world, his political giving has earned himboth friends and enemies. Former President George W. Bush, who Soros blamed for turning theUnited States into "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order," was perhaps the biggestsingle target of his political wrath."By declaring a 'war on terror' after Sept. 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world," Soros toldNewsweek magazine in a 2006 interview. "When you wage war, you inevitably create innocentvictims."In a bid to stop Bush's re-election, Soros donated $23.5 million to more than 500 liberal andprogressive groups during the 2003-2004 U.S. election cycle.Other causes that have attracted Soros' generosity include drug policy reform. He donated $1.4million to promote California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed initiative that would have expanded
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drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for non-violent drug offenders, and$400,000 to the successful 2008 Massachusetts initiative to decriminalize possession of less thanan ounce (28 grams) of marijuana.He has also been a vocal supporter of the right to die in dignity, revealing in 1994 that he hadoffered to help his own mother, a member of the Hemlock Society, commit suicide.While Soros' life has been marked by remarkable success in his far-flung endeavors, it has notbeen without defeat. His investment in France's Societe Generale following Jacques Chirac'saggressive program of privatization led to charges of insider trading, which he disputed, andeventual conviction and the payment of a small penalty. And he was a minority partner in a group that failed to acquire the Washington Nationals Major League baseball team.But these failings stand out in the life of this remarkably successful Hungarian-American financier,philanthropist and thinker, in contrast to his stubborn refusal to fail in virtually every other venture.
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