George Soros

George Soros was was born August 12, 1930 as Schwartz György and is a Hungarian-American currency speculator, stock investor, businessman, supposed philanthropist, and political activist. He became known as the "Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.

Following the crisis of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism of September 1992, when the Bank of England was forced to abandon efforts to stabilize the pound sterling, a little-known financial figure emerged from the shadows to boast that he had personally made over $1 billion in speculation against the British pound.

In 1970, Soros co-founded the Quantum Fund which created the bulk of the Soros fortune. In 2007, the Quantum Fund returned almost 32%, netting Soros $2.9 billion. The Quantum Fund is registered in the Caribbean tax haven of the Netherlands Antilles. This also helps to mask the true nature of his investors and precisely what he does with their money.

In order to avoid U.S. government supervision of his financial activities, something normal U.S.-based investment funds must by law agree to in order to operate, Soros moved his legal headquarters to the Caribbean tax haven of Curacao. The Netherlands Antilles has repeatedly been cited by the Task Force on Money Laundering of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as one of the world's most important centers for laundering illegal proceeds of the Latin American cocaine and other drug traffic.

In 1988, Soros was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid but later bought a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989 and, in 2002, a French court ruled that it was insider trading, a felony as defined under French securities laws, and fined him $2.3 million, which was the amount that he made using the insider information.

Soros has taken care that the none of the 99 individual investors who participate in his various funds is an American national. In accordance with U.S. securities law, a hedge fund is limited to no more than 99 highly wealthy individuals, or so-called "sophisticated investors." By structuring his investment company as an offshore hedge fund, Soros manages to avoid public scrutiny.

In his younger days, Soros worked for the Nazis, identifying and expropriating the property of wealthy fellow Jews. Soros left Hungary after the war and established American citizenship after some years in London.

After WW II, Soros attended the London School of Economics, where he fell under the thrall of fellow atheist and Hungarian, Karl Popper, one of his professors. Popper was a mentor to Soros until Popper’s death in 1994. Two of Popper’s most influential teachings concerned “the open society,” and Fallibilism. Fallibilism is the philosophical doctrine that all claims of knowledge could, in principle, be mistaken.

Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute (OSI) and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. In the United States, he is known for donating large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. He also helped found the Center for American Progress and supports many affiliate organizations.

There are numerous secondary affiliates of the Soros network. These include organizations which do not receive direct funding from Soros and OSI but which are funded by one or more organizations that do. These secondary affiliates also include groups that work collaboratively or synergistically with Soros-funded entities.