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“That is not so easy,” he said in the interview in London. “There is a lot of confusion, and I am also confused.”

Soros, who was born in Hungary, promoted opposition to Russia’s communist regime before it collapsed in 1991. In 1993, he founded the Open Society Institute to help formerly communist countries make the transition to democracy.

The biggest mistake governments made in responding to 2008 credit freeze was failing to approve rules that would regulate banks and other financial firms across the globe, Soros said. While markets have become integrated, individual nations continue to set their own rules, which has allowed “deregulation to spread like a virus,” he said.

Returning Investors’ Money

“Regulation is very difficult and we haven’t solved it at all,” he said. “We are very early in the process and we are not making much progress.”

Soros’s hedge fund decided in July to return money to outside investors, meaning it will only manage assets for him and his family. The move will end an investing career that spanned more than four decades and gained Soros international acclaim in 1992 after he made US$1 billion betting that the Bank of England would be forced to devalue the pound.

Soros, in the interview, said he now spends all his time on philanthropy, describing it as a “full-time job.”

Bloomberg.com