George Soros

George Soros (pronounced: /ˈsɔroʊs/ or IPA: //ˈsɔrəs//, Hungarian IPA: /ˈʃoroʃ/) (born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György in Budapest, Hungary) is a Hungarian-American currency speculator, stock investor, businessman, philanthropist, and political activist.

Forbes lists Soros as the 29th-richest person in the world, with a net worth estimated at . Soros has given $6 billion to various causes since 1979.

Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from Communism to Capitalism in Hungary (1984-89), and provided Europe's largest ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest. Later, his funding and organization of Georgia's Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial to its success. In the United States, he is known for having donated large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. He helped found the Center for American Progress.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in 2003 in the foreword of Soros' book The Alchemy of Finance:

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>