George Soros

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George Soros

was born August 12, 1930, Budapest, Hungary, as György Schwartz.

Soros is famously known for “breaking the Bank of England” on Black Wednesday in 1992.

He is ranked by Forbes in richest persons in the World.

Soros’s support for the Solidarity labor movement in Poland, as well as the Czechoslovak human rights organization Charter 77, contributed to ending Soviet Union political dominance in those countries. His funding and organization of Georgia’s Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial to its success.

Mr. Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend Capetown University in apartheid South Africa. Today he is Chairman of the Open Society Institute and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations active in more than 50 countries in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States. These foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. In 1992, Mr. Soros founded the Central European University, with its primary campus in Budapest. In 2003 the Soros foundations network spent $474 million to support projects in education, public health, civil society development, and many other areas. Giving for 2004 is expected to remain at a similar level.

Soros is known for having donated large sums of money in a failed effort to defeat President George W. Bush’s bid for re-election in 2004.

Paul Volcker: “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.”

Mr. Soros is the author of eight books including the forthcoming The Bubble of America Supremacy (PublicAffairs January 2004). His other books include: George Soros on Globalization, 2002; The Alchemy of Finance, 1987; Opening the Soviet System, 1990; Underwriting Democracy, 1991; Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve, 1995; The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, 1998; and Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism, 2000. His articles and essays on politics, society, and economics regularly appear in major newspapers and magazines around the world.

GeorgeSoros.com: Official website of George Soros

Open Society Institute & Soros Foundations Network: George Soros Founder and Chairman

Forbes: George Soros

Google Videos: George Soros

Books, Google: George Soros

DiscoverTheNetworks, a Guide to the Political Left: George Soros

SorceWatch Encyclopedia: George Soros

The New York Review of Books: George Soros

The New York Review of Books: The Perilous Price of Oil, by George Soros

Take the Jewish World Review, by Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder: The sorry tale of George Soros

Wikipedia: George Soros

TimesOnline, by Richard Woods: Is George Soros right that economy is doomed?