'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

[D-Mack]

'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 5:13 PM on 25th March 2009

A hedge fund manager who predicted the global credit crunch has said the financial crisis has been 'stimulating' and the culmination of his life's work.

George Soros, who predicted the global financial crisis twice before, was one of the few people to anticipate and prepare for the current economic collapse.

Mr Soros said his prediction meant he was better able to brace his Quantum investment fund against the gloabal storm.

But other investors failed to take notice of his prediction and his decision to come out of retirement in 2007 to manage the fund made him $US2.9 billion.

And while the financial crisis continued to deepen across the globe, the 78-year-old still managed to make $1.1 billion last year.

'It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,' he told national newspaper The Australian.

Soros is one of 25, top hedge fund managers from across Wall Street who have defied the credit crunch crisis to reap a total of $11.6billion (£7.9bn) last year.

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That he still found time for making money ,while calling for SDR's and carbon taxes........

[cjppjc]

Re: 'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

'It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,' he told national newspaper The Australian.


A sad commentary on his life. I wonder how he feels when he reads that quote.

[GRG55]

Re: 'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

'It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,' he told national newspaper The Australian.


A sad commentary on his life. I wonder how he feels when he reads that quote.

I don't understand why you would think this?

I have a brother who is a junkie for physical danger. When we were younger we used to do stupid things like ski avalanche chutes together. His limits were always beyond mine. Quite some time ago he stopped being satisfied with any "civilian" extreme activity. Instead he decided to go fly McDonnell Douglas Hornets. Now retired from that, he does it by placing himself in the most dangerous bloody situations he can. In the past few years that includes Iraq and Afghanistan, over and over again. We worry about him, but I've come to understand that he simply cannot seem to feel fulfilled unless he does this. So be it.

Soros is someone who needs the adrenaline rush that comes from taking big financial risks. He's been fortunate to live at a time where those opportunities have presented themselves, and he's lived his life accordingly. So what.

[cjppjc]

Re: 'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

I don't understand why you would think this?

I have a brother who is a junkie for physical danger. When we were younger we used to do stupid things like ski avalanche chutes together. His limits were always beyond mine. Quite some time ago he stopped being satisfied with any "civilian" extreme activity. Instead he decided to go fly McDonnell Douglas Hornets. Now retired from that, he does it by placing himself in the most dangerous bloody situations he can. In the past few years that includes Iraq and Afghanistan, over and over again. We worry about him, but I've come to understand that he simply cannot seem to feel fulfilled unless he does this. So be it.

Soros is someone who needs the adrenaline rush that comes from taking big financial risks. He's been fortunate to live at a time where those opportunities have presented themselves, and he's lived his life accordingly. So what.

Maybe you are right.
This statement:

'It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,'


Taken literally, evoked a sadness in me that I perhaps projected onto him.

[CanuckinTX]

Re: 'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

I can see both sides of this.

On the one hand you wonder that a guy with all that wealth would see something like this as the culminating point of his life's work. It's not that he started a foundation, or changed anyone's lives with his wealth, but that he just amassed a great fortune. That's what he wants as his legacy, really?

The other side of it is that countless people have placed their family's wealth in his trust and he didn't let them down. He navigated them through this tough time and so far has emerged even better off, which is exactly what he was hired to do.

I guess only he can decide what fulfills him.

[GRG55]

Re: 'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

...It's not that he started a foundation, or changed anyone's lives with his wealth, but that he just amassed a great fortune. That's what he wants as his legacy, really?...

He's started more than one.

He is perhaps a bit more complex than you give credit.

When he says this is culmination of his life's work, I sense he's means something well beyond his legendary money making abilities.

George Soros
Founder and Chairman
Open Society Institute

http://www.soros.org/

A global financier and philanthropist, George Soros is the founder and chairman of a network of foundations that promote, among other things, the creation of open, democratic societies based upon the rule of law, market economies, transparent and accountable governance, freedom of the press, and respect for human rights.

Philosophy

At the London School of Economics, Soros became acquainted with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his intellectual development. Specifically, Soros's experience of Nazi and Communist rule attracted him to Popper’s critique of totalitarianism, The Open Society and Its Enemies, in which he maintained that societies can only flourish when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights.

Philanthropy

As his financial success mounted, Soros applied his wealth to help foster the development of open societies. In 1979, Soros provided funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Soon he created a foundation in Hungary to support culture and education and the country’s transition to democracy. (One of his projects imported photocopy machines that allowed citizens and activists in Hungary to spread information and publish censored materials.) Soros also distributed funds to the underground Solidarity movement in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet physicist-dissident Andrei Sakharov. In 1982, Soros named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Fund, in honor of Karl Popper, and began granting scholarships to students from Eastern Europe. Bolstered by the success of these projects, Soros created more programs to assist the free flow of information. He supported educational radio programs in Mongolia and later contributed $100 million to provide Internet access to every regional university in Russia.

More...

[CanuckinTX]

Re: 'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

He's started more than one.

He is perhaps a bit more complex than you give credit.

Yeah, what I meant was he wasn't singling out any foundation as the 'culmination'.

I agree that for someone who has such a varied, complex life it can strike some people as odd that the success of his hedge fund is cited as the culmination of his life's work.

[GRG55]

Re: 'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

Yeah, what I meant was he wasn't singling out any foundation as the 'culmination'.

I agree that for someone who has such a varied, complex life it can strike some people as odd that the success of his hedge fund is cited as the culmination of his life's work.

That's the way it may have come out in the article. That may not have been anything close to what he meant when he said it to the journalist.

Soros is the only one that knows for certain though.

btw: I am not a big Soros fan; I particularly do not like his role at Davos, and wish he would disengage from that useless forum. However, I'm not unfamiliar with what the media can do to the words of an interviewee...

[halcyon]

Re: 'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

In the past few years that includes Iraq and Afghanistan, over and over again. We worry about him, but I've come to understand that he simply cannot seem to feel fulfilled unless he does this. So be it.

Chemical imbalance of the brain, leading to a functional imbalance of his CNS. There is treatment for this, other than self-medicating limbic fear. Read "Change your Brain, Change Your Life" by R. Amen. Buy the audio book version for your brother. Really, I mean it.

Soros is someone who needs the adrenaline rush that comes from taking big financial risks. He's been fortunate to live at a time where those opportunities have presented themselves, and he's lived his life accordingly. So what.

Based on my admittedly cursory reading of Soros' life, I don't see it all like that.

He is deeply intellectual and reflective person, thinking with systems and trying to see after what comes next.

I think he's just happy to see his major thesis playing out fairly accurately as he has put it forward earlier and he wants to be on a first row seat seeing it all unfold.

He doesn't come across like an adrenaline junkie at all

As for his comments, I think he's slightly getting carried away. We the people fall in love without our ideas. While it might be that he turns out to be right and that this will develop into a full blown world-wide chaos, including wars, breakdown of financial and civil orders, etc. - it would still be intellectually more honest to think probabilistically about the options.

Still, a great thinker and I recommend "The New Paradigm for
Financial Markets" to everyone interested in macro-finance or financial psychology. With that said, it is interesting to note how his opinion has changed from last April, as new information has come to front and things have developed further:

Soros, in April 2008:

"The post–World War II period of credit expansion will not be followed by an equally long period of credit contraction. Boom-bust processes are asymmetric in shape: a long, gradually accelerating boom is followed by a short and sharp bust"

"While a recession in the United States is now (April 2008) inevitable, there is no reason yet to expect a global recession. Powerful expansionary forces are at work in other parts of the world, and they may well counterbalance a recession in the United States and a slowdown in Europe and Japan."

"As I look at history, I see stable periods come and go. Now I see a relatively stable period going."

Soros, in March 2009

"I think all hell will break loose. For instance, having put the financial system on artificial life support after the Lehman breakdown, then created problems for the periphery countries that were not able to give the same kind of credible guarantees as the European countries and America, now you face the situation where a lot of loans are going to come due that cannot be rolled over. So unless the authorities get their act together and do something to prevent it, there will be tremendous problems."

I don't think he's very positive about the outcome anymore

BTW, he also failed to see the rally in the dollar in '08, but was able to catch the next leg down, because he understood it was not 'flight to quality', but 'flight to debt-servicing-currencies' that was driving the effect.

In fact, neither would I, after having read the leaked G-20 meeting resolution on the net. If they can't muster anything better, down we go.