George Soros
George Soros
George Sorosis a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, political activist and author who is of Hungarian-Jewish ancestry and holds dual citizenship. He is chairman of Soros Fund Management. He is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds, making him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. Soros is one of the 30 richest people in the world...
NationalityHungarian
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth12 August 1930
CityBudapest, Hungary
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
My approach works not by making valid predictions but by allowing me to correct false ones.
There is no point in being confident and having a small position.
If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin. But when I made my way in the world I wanted to indulge myself in my fantasies to the extent that I could afford.
Unfortunately, the more complex the system, the greater the room for error.
There is very little difference between speculation and investment. The only difference is basically that investments are successful speculations because if you successfully anticipate the future you make a speculative profit.
Start by assuming the market is always wrong, so if you copy everybody else on Wall Street, you're doomed to do poorly.
To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride.
Democracy, by its very nature, can't be imposed on people. Democracy has to be the people deciding for themselves.
My sense of insecurity keeps me alert, always ready to correct my errors.
The hardest thing to judge is what level of risk is safe.
Studying economics is not a good preparation for dealing with it.
Advocating democracy has, by other people, often been taken as a form of imperialism, and not without some justification. So the important thing in a democracy is that it doesn't necessarily have to agree with what America's interests are, and it doesn't necessarily have to be serving American interests.
These public-private partnerships are very, very dangerous. The most rotten part of the financial system in the US consisted of the government sponsored entities. They really kicked off this crisis. The state should set the rules and enforce them but not become involved as a market player.