Earning and Turning

Philanthropists. The word ushers to mind the rare super-wealthy gifted with a heart of gold. In reality, many philanthropists were misnamed; they mere donated to charities because it was the "thing to do" and anything is worth improving your image. But a new billionaire today has struck out onto the philanthropic path, and he is one whose name belongs among the greats like John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Walter Annenberg. His name? George Soros.

"Born the son of a Hungarian Jewish lawyer in 1930, Soros was a boy when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944." (Time, Turning Dollars into Change, p. 51) His father was the devisor of the family’s escape, and eventually George ended up in England, learning from philosopher Karl Popper. He eventually turned to banking, and moved to the U.S. in 1956. "By the end of the ‘60s he had delved into the obscure discipline of arbitrage-a branch of financial physics that involves buying and selling securities in different markets in order to skim profits off the transactions." (Time, Turning Dollars into Change, p. 51) His most notable "skim" was when he earned his title of "the man who broke the bank of England." Basically, he borrowed and converted enough British pounds during the pound collapse to earn himself $1 billion. "An investment of $100,000 with Soros in 1969 would be worth $300 million today." (Time, Turning Dollars into Change, p. 50)

After a few depressions in his life involving deaths and divorces, Soros sought comfort in a new "hobby:" philanthropy. He has since given charitably to eastern European and former-USSR nations to help them forge new governments. He even outspent United States monetary aid in three instances: Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Belarus. Now Soros is looking inward at the United States, and planning to focus on helping of legal aliens, addressing drugs, poverty, crime, and education in Baltimore, Md., the Project on Death in America, drug-policy reform and needle exchanges, the Algebra project for education, the Center on Crime, Communities, and Culture, promoting political-campaign-finance reform, and helping low-income organizations deal with welfare devolution. (Time, Turning Dollars into Change, p. 52)