If George Soros had not become a financier, he might have
made a good
psychiatrist. After all, he has a similar (Jewish, Central European)
pedigree to Sigmund Freud. Or
perhaps he should have been a comedian: the quote above could easily
have come from the mouth of
Woody Allen.
Instead, Soros makes money by trading money. And as we
all know by
now, he's pretty darn good at it.
His Quantum Fund NV has the best record of any investment
fund in the
world over the last quarter century: if you had invested US$100,000
in it in 1969, you would have
owned $130 million by the spring of 1994.
But unlike so many other businessmen, Soros seems to have
dedicated
his life to non-material pursuits.
He claims to spend half of his income and most of his time
on
building up his impressive philanthropic empire. You can see the breadth
of his vision by visiting the Soros
Foundations Network website at <http://www.soros.org/>.
Soros' political concerns are every bit as far-reaching
as his financial interests. He has set up more
than two dozen independent, non-profit foundations in
Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, Haiti,
South Africa and the US.
Apart from his supposed speculative attacks on the baht,
Soros'
biggest impact on Thailand probably comes through his support for the
Burma Project, which is run out of
Soros' New York-based Open Society Institute and is dedicated to helping
Burma make the
transition from a closed to an open society.
Now I wonder what Khun Samak would say if he knew about that... Maybe he'd send those Phetchburi godfathers out on a house call!
The Burma Project's activities are outlined on its website at <http://www.soros.org/burma.html>.
Curiously, it does not mention the BurmaNet/BurmaNews listserve,
which sends
subscribers daily news updates via the Internet and has become an invaluable
tool for
Burma-watchers everywhere. According to a staffer, however, the Open
Society Institute was one of the
founders of BurmaNet, which you can access by sending e-mail to majordomo@igc.org,
and writing "subscribe burmanews-l" in the first line of the message.
Soros has managed to ruffle bigger feathers than Samak's.
Most recently, he wrote the cover article
for the Feb issue of Atlantic Monthly, entitled The Capitalist
Threat. You can read it at
<http://www.theatlantic.com/atlantic/issues/97feb/capital/capital.htm>.
The article has created quite a stir by arguing that with
the demise
of communism and fascism unchecked capitalism now represents the biggest
threat to free and
open societies. No less an authority than The Economist, defender of
the free-market faithful,
saw fit to rebut Soros, labelling his argument as "preposterous".
"The uninhibited pursuit of self-interest... is currently
running riot... only, thank goodness, in Mr
Soros's imagination," harrumphs the editorial writer,
who sounds like another chap that could use an
eye-opening visit to Thailand. You can check out The Economist's
editorial, entitled "Palindrome
Repents", at <http://www.economist.com/issue/25-01-97/ld4519.html>.
If you want to find out about Soros the man, you'd be well
advised to pay a visit to Darren Goh's
Unofficial George Soros home page, at <http://geocities.datacellar.net/WallStreet/3880>.
Through his speeches and quotes, you can get an inkling of his philosophical
leanings, which include a rejection of the notion that ultimate truth is
attainable, and a belief that random, chaotic processes have far more impact
than classically acknowledged.
Economic theory needs to be fundamentally reconsidered,
Soros says. There is an element of uncertainty
in economic processes that has been largely unaccounted
for. He admits his own analytical abilities
are deficient, but he compensates through a strong critical
faculty hence the claim to being an
insecurity analyst.
"Discern the chaos, and you could become rich," he adds.
Thus, no doubt, the name Quantum Fund, which refers to the revolution that
overthrew classical physics and enshrined an element of uncertainty into
the universe.
Soros, in short, is doing what a lot of us would like to
do if we became nauseatingly wealthy - follow
our intellectual pursuits - but he stands out because
so few of the super-rich seem to do likewise. Most
simply seem obsessed with making more money.
"Soros is always trying to be a philosopher," writes Goh.
"He fails to realise that he [already] is a
philosopher." By mastering the markets, and putting his
philosophic leanings into practice, he has
become a philosopher of life.
Or as Soros himself puts it: "The philosophy which guided
me both in making and spending money... is
not about money, it is about the human condition."