Forbes George Soros back doing what he does best

"Financier George Soros is back doing the two things he does best -- punishing a global currency and spending some of his billions on projects that irk those in power.

This week Soros, who "broke" the British pound in 1992, helped push the U.S. dollar down to a near all-time low against the euro by announcing he was selling greenbacks.

The self-proclaimed "dissident by nature" also said he was setting up a watchdog group to make sure Washington does not misspend oil revenues from Iraq."

The Age Billionaires bash Bush tax plan

""However, this move is not designed to have much effect now. It is meant to have an effect over an extended period and is basically using the recession to redistribute income to the wealthy," Soros told CNBC financial news television.

"I think that is really not a very effective way of using a deficit. I think we do need right now both a stimulative monetary policy and a temporary deficit, not a permanent one.""

redux [05.07.02]
The New York Review of Books A Fair Deal for the World

"George Soros has written a brilliant, powerful book, On Globalization , which goes beyond just describing the failures of the current international arrangements. He proposes concrete, practical reforms. Soros, having made his fortune on the international capital markets, should know something about them. But what makes this book so impressive is that he combines these insights with a humanity that comes through in every subject he touches on.

What makes some of his proposals so convincing, especially those concerning foreign assistance, is that he has acted on them. He has been as successful as a social entrepreneur as he has been as a financier. He has put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, and his network of Open Society foundations has had enormous influence, especially in Eastern Europe, first in supporting dissidents and then in setting up post-Communist institutions such as the Central European University in Budapest. His overall program has been far more successful--and far more influential--than those of most governments, including that of the US."

redux [03.04.01]
The New York Review of Books The World on a String

"George Soros is the best-known financial speculator of our time, godfather of hedge funds, those fast-moving and largely unregulated raiders in the corporate jungle that make their killings from fluctuations in the prices of stocks, commodities, currencies. When he writes books readers might reasonably expect tips on how to make money. They will be disappointed. Soros's ambitions are altogether more exalted. Having become a billionaire, he has set himself up as the philosopher and statesman of global capitalism, tirelessly telling the world that it now needs to remove the ladder by which he himself climbed to fame and fortune.""

The Philanthropy Roundtable Colossal Speculation

"Remember that very embodiment of the Peter Principle, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara? Once the Ford chief executive who unveiled the Edsel, at the Pentagon he introduced body counts as quantitative measures of success in Vietnam, and a self-defeating doctrine of slow escalation. As its director, he reoriented the World Bank to giving fish to poor nations rather than teaching them to fish. And as a 1980s eminence grise he added to his nonsensical nuclear notion of "purposeful vulnerability" by proposing to foreswear first strikes.

It is this oracle who comes to mind in reading financier George Soros's latest book on the international financial system and tensions between capitalism and democracy. The guilt which inspired McNamara's commitment to a "Basic Human Needs" doctrine at the World Bank and apology for Vietnam in In Retrospect can be found in Soros as well, whose penitent critique of capitalism's inequities is probably not unrelated to his colossal success in currency speculation." ."

The Nation George Soros's Long Strange Trip

"One thing about George Soros everyone can agree on: He isn't worried what people think of him. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad blamed the American billionaire for nearly ruining Malaysia's economy with massive currency speculation. Hard-core Russian nationalists decried as "meddling" his funding of progressive newspapers and institutions in post-Soviet Russia. Now, it's a prickly domestic cause--drug policy--that has folks taking aim at this hard-nosed financier and controversial philanthropist."