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The word
“eccentric” and “billionaire” are often partnered.
Jean Paul-Getty, for instance, was one of the
world’s wealthiest men yet he was so mean he
installed a pay-phone in his home for the use of
guests and refused to pay a ransom demand when his
grandson was kidnapped with the result the boy
returned home minus an ear. Movie-making
billionaire Howard Hughes became a recluse. He
refused to cut his hair or nails and was waited
upon by gloved servants. Bill Gates gives away his
money as fast as he can make it. Richard Branson
regularly risks life and limb crossing the
Atlantic in a hot air balloon.
But there is one billionaire who instills fear
into politicians and shakes financial markets for
a hobby. He’s George Soros, once dubbed ‘the man
who broke the Bank of England’ and now heading the
list of George W. Bush’s greatest antagonists.
George Soros is an enigma. Trying to understand
him is harder than memorizing the phone book.
Superficially he’s a web of contradictions. From
toppling economies he’s tried his hand at toppling
George W. Bush. Today, he’s in the news for
investing millions in Dick Cheney’s old company
Halliburton that has made massive profits from the
occupation of Iraq when at the same time he has
donated millions to anti-war movements such as
Move On.
Bush-bashing
He predicted the Iraq quagmire in his book “The
Bubble of American Supremacy” and blames President
Bush for ignoring the advice of top military and
diplomatic experts. “This is Bush’s war,” he says,
“And he ought to be held responsible for it. It’s
the wrong war, fought in the wrong way…In spite of
his Texas swagger, George W. Bush does not qualify
to serve as our Commander-in-Chief.”
Soros is equally scathing of neoconservatives
within the administration whom he blames for
exploiting the September 11 attacks to further
their long held full-scale domination agenda. He
calls them “A bunch of extremists guided by a
crude form of social Darwinism.”
In 2003, Soros said defeating Bush was “the
central focus of my life”, and referred to the
2004 election as “a matter of life and death”.
“America, under Bush, is a danger to the world and
I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is,” he
said. Indeed, he pledged to sacrifice his entire
fortune to anyone who could guarantee Bush’s
departure from office.
In 2004, he contributed financially to the
campaigns of Howard Dean and other Democratic
candidates. For 2008, he’s backing Barack Obama,
although given Soros’ outspoken views – including
equating the Bush administration with the Third
Reich - Senator Obama could be damaged by his
public support.
No tribal loyalty
According to the Jerusalem Bureau Chief of CNS
News, Soros is considering funding a new left-wing
Jewish lobby to include Americans for Peace Now,
the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace and the
Israel Policy Forum. These groups want to put
urgency into the Mid-East peace process and serve
as a counter to such right-wing pro-Israel
organizations as AIPAC. The Jerusalem Post has
labeled the new Lobby “anti-Israel”.
Soros has been perceived as being anti-Israel and
is often labeled a ‘self-hating Hebrew’ by
right-wingers since 2003 when he blamed Israel for
being partly responsible for the rise in
anti-Semitism due to its harsh response to
Palestinian insurgents.
He believes that “the Palestinian people yearn for
peace” and condemns the Israeli government for not
strengthening President Mahmoud Abbas and the
reformists. In his book “The Bubble of American
Supremacy” he blamed both Ariel Sharon and Yasser
Arafat for the collapse of the peace process.
Not averse to including himself in the blame game
he once told an outraged Jewish gathering that
Jewish financiers like him contributed to the rise
of anti-Semitism as they gave grist to the mill of
the old canard that Jews rule the world by proxy.
His biographer Michael Kaufmann says in his book
“The Messianic Millionaire” that the Jewish
identity of George Soros does not express itself
“in a sense of tribal loyalty that would have led
him to support Israel”.
Soros is no stranger to controversy, which seems
to bounce off him like water off a duck’s back.
Black Wednesday
In 1992, he was reported to have made a profit of
over one billion US dollars in one day known as
Black Wednesday at Britain’s expense.
This was the day that Britain catapulted out of
the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), a
precursor to the single European currency that
tied Sterling and other European currency values
to the German Mark. At the time British inflation
levels were way above Germany’s. Soros and other
FOREX speculators rightly predicted that the pound
would eventually be devalued against the Deutsch
Mark and sold off billion of pounds with the
intention of buying them at a depreciated rate.
The British government, led by John Major,
responded by hiking up interest rates to 12 per
cent and investing billions in buying back
sterling. But as fast as the government snapped up
the pound, Soros and friends sold. Naturally
Major’s policy failed and so on September 16, 1992
Britain had little choice but to exit the ERM and
peg Sterling’s value.
Front Page magazine termed this “economic rape
upon ordinary British working-class savings
accounts”.
Asian currency collapse
Five years later, in 1997, Soros and his hedge
fund came under fire for driving down the Thai
Bhat. Predicting the Bhat’s imminent devaluation,
speculators offloaded Bhat in exchange for
Dollars.
Initially, the Bank of Thailand used its reserves
to prop up the currency but eventually the Bhat
was floated causing financial tremors throughout
Southeast Asia and beyond. The Mayor of Bangkok is
quoted as asking “Doesn’t he feel ashamed, coming
to see our misery, which resulted from his
sinister actions? He deserves a good bang on the
head”.
The former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad has called Soros “a moron” and accused him
of targeting the Malysian Ringgit out of political
motives. Mahathir believes that Soros deliberately
undercut Asian currencies in an effort to punish
ASEAN for allowing membership to Myanmar’s
military regime.
There is some suggestion that Soros has
contributed to the depreciation of the Dollar by
bolstering the Euro.
Soros, who is generally thought of as a man with
the Midas touch, hasn’t always turned a profit.
Indeed, in 1998 it is believed he lost US$ 2
billion when the Russian Ruble devalued. In 2000,
he lost an unknown amount when tech stocks went
south and in 2002, he was heftily fined by a
French court for insider trading; a charge he is
currently appealing.
But overall his financial acumen has paid off to
the tune of US$ 7 billion or more. Much of this
has been gleaned from his hedge fund that during
the years from 1969 to 1999 provided an average
annual return of thirty percent. In other words,
if someone had invested US$ 100,000 in the fund in
1969 by the year 2000 he would have had a whopping
US$ 420 million in the kitty.
Philanthropy
Those who have been burned by George Soros accuse
him of being unscrupulous but in fact he has been
a prominent and generous philanthropist since the
1970s, when he funded the studies of Black South
African students at the University of Cape Town
and gave financial support to a number of
anti-Soviet Union dissident groups. He was also a
keen supporter of Poland’s Solidarity Movement.
In recent times, via his Open Society Institute
and Soros Foundation and their offshoots, he has
helped Muslim Bosnian civilians, pledged US$ 50
million to alleviating poverty in Africa and has
given hundreds of millions to universities and
scientific research projects. Nobel Laureate
Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank are also
believed to have benefited from his largesse.
It is believed that as many as 20 subsidiaries of
the Soros Foundation are today active in former
Soviet Union countries and up to 30 elsewhere.
They claim they are “dedicated to building and
maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of
an open society”.
It’s said that his Open Society Institute helped
underwrite Georgia’s Rose Revolution but Soros
denounces this as an exaggeration.
Early years
No doubt his natural affiliation with Eastern
Europe stems from his birthplace Budapest,
Hungary, where he was born György Schwartz in
1930. Due to growing threats against Jews, the
family - which George Soros once said was
uncomfortable with its religious roots - changed
its name to Soros.
Some members of his family later converted to
Christianity. While interviewed by “60 Minutes”
Soros admitted to being an atheist. People close
to him have described him as a “devout secular
ideologue”.
When Hungary was occupied by the Nazis in 1944,
Soros was sent by his father, an author, to live
with a Christian couple masquerading as their
godson in the hopes he would escape being sent to
a death camp.
It was a wise move. In 1947 Soros escaped
communist oppression by moving to London where he
studied at the London School of Economics working
variously as a waiter, a railway porter and a shop
mannequin maker to fund his stay. Eventually he
found a position more suited to his talents with
an investment bank.
He was impressed with the British National Health
system, which treated him without charge when he
broke a leg but bitter that Jewish agencies were
not more helpful to him during a time of financial
hardship.
In 1956, lured by the American dream and full of
admiration for American values, Soros left England
for the US.
“I chose America as my home because I value
freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open
society. When I had made more money than I needed
for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to
promote the values and principles of a free and
open society,” Soros once said.
There, he soon found work as a trader in bonds,
stocks and currencies. He later joined several
companies as a financial analyst before being
elevated to the Vice-President of Arnhold and S.
Bleichroeder.
Quantum Fund
But Soros held a burning ambition to go it alone
and in the early 1970s he started up his own
investment company along with his famous Quantum
Fund credited with providing the bulk of his
fortune.
The fund that allows investors to gamble on the
rise and fall of stocks, bonds and currencies has
often been denigrated as immoral due to its
applying pressure on currencies to benefit
cut-and-run speculators.
Soros has been known to respond to these attacks
by saying “as a market participant, I don’t need
to be concerned with the consequences of my
actions”. He also refutes accusations that his
charitable and philanthropic instincts are in any
way fuelled by guilt or out of a desire for good
public relations.
“Markets are designed to allow individuals to look
after their private needs and to pursue profit,”
he says. “It’s really a great invention and I
wouldn’t under-estimate the value of that, but
they are not designed to take care of social
needs.”
It is thought that over the years he has given
away as much as US$ 5 billion, most of it to fund
pro-Democracy and liberal causes. He reasons he
couldn’t have given money away unless he made it
first.
Icon of the left
Recently George Soros has emerged as an icon of
the left due to his anti-Bush stance. The left
also appreciates his battles against racism and
championing of affirmative action groups. Soros
also strongly believes in open borders,
immigration entitlements, tax increases, higher
government spending, legalizing pot and euthanasia
while just as vehemently opposing the death
penalty.
But for all his unbounded ambition, powerful
opinions and financial puissance, there is one
thing that he is precluded from being by an
accident of birth – President of the United
States. Under the US constitution presidential
candidates must be home grown. Governor of
California Arnold Schwarzenegger is limited by the
same constraints.
The rightwing must be gratified there’ll never be
a Soros in the White House even if his name is
George, but, in truth, a man described as ‘the
only US citizen with his own foreign policy’ who
can overturn economies, break banks and oust
governments is just as powerful out as in –
perhaps more so.
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