Multi-billionaire George Soros (born August 12, 1930) is one of the world’s largest donors to radical left-wing nonprofit organizations and politicians worldwide. Soros has given hundreds of millions of dollars to nearly 5,000 liberal and ultra-left organizations campaigning for a more powerful role in international affairs for the United Nations, population control, socialism, and the defeat of Republicans and election of Democrats in the U.S.

Soros amassed much of his fortune via the controversial practice of global currency speculation, including earning $1 billion in a day by manipulating the British pound – which earned him the title of the “man who broke the Bank of England” in 1992. The dual Hungarian and U.S. citizen has used that fortune to manipulate world events. Soros is credited with funding and organizing the downfall of Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze and Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic.

Some of the largest beneficiaries of Soros’ non-profit and political giving include the ACLU Foundation, Center for American Progress, League of Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Tides Foundation, and Hillary Clinton – who has benefited from nearly $10 million in grants to her political action committees in the 2016 presidential election.

An article in the Winter 2017 edition of City Journal titled “Connoisseur of Chaos” noted how Soros giving and power is underrported in the press, stating “Soros’s global reach and influence far outstrip those of the Koch brothers or other liberal bogeymen – and that underlying it all is a vision both dystopian and opportunistic.”

In October 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Soros had transferred a staggering $18 billion to his Open Society Foundation, meaning the bulk of his lifelong fortune would be dedicated to promoting left-wing causes and organizations.

Biography & Background

George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930 as György Švarc, or George Schwartz, of parents Tivadar (Theodore) and Erzebet (Elizabeth). Both were nonobservant Jews. His mother came from a family that owned a thriving silk shop and his father was a lawyer from a harsh background – held prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest. Tivadar was a leading proponent of Esperanto, the constructed trans-European language promoted by those who desired a world free of nationality. When George and his older brother Paul were still young, his father changed the family name to Soros, a successor in Hungarian, but intended as the Esperanto Soros, meaning soar (in the future tense, will soar). Anti-nationalism is embedded in George Soros’ name as well as in his character.

As a child, according to his authorized biographer, Michael T. Kaufmann, Soros felt he had extraordinary powers, of even being “God-like.” It developed into an adult sense of messianic personal destiny and a power urge that emerged as practical action rather than delusionary lust. But that would take many years and substantial hardship.

The Soros family in Budapest was well-off until George was 13 years old and Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944. Jewish children were barred from attending school by the Nazis. Tivadar obtained false identity papers for his family and they each fled to separate homes, hidden as Christians. George lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture and continued school. In 1945, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city. He saw the rubble and the corpses. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied Hungary, Soros learned his first lesson in survival, making an indelible mark on his character and personal philosophy. Through a tangled chain of narrow escapes, all four members of the Soros family survived the Nazi occupation. They reunited, but fell under an oppressive communist regime when the Soviets took over Hungary in 1947.

George was 16 when he finished the last year of gymnasium, the equivalent of an American high school. Unlike his fellow students, he was consumed by philosophy. He read enough to teach himself a variety of classical schools of thought – from Plato to Epictetus to Archimedes. He wanted to leave Hungary to make something of himself, to get a fine education, to exercise his “extraordinary powers.” He settled upon England, meaning he had to struggle through months of getting a visa and passport. Tivadar arranged for George’s departure and gave his son a small amount of money. He stayed with distant relations in London and began to learn English.

Down and Out in London

Michael T. Kaufmann told the story in his authorized biography, Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire. In 1947, Soros immigrated to austere post-war England and the home of distant relations, and he was not very welcome. He looked for work, learned stiff-upper-lip Brit bus riding queue etiquette, and found a cheap bed and breakfast – the first in a long series of low dumps he’d call home. Soros walked the streets to save bus money as he learned the city, and went from one day labor job to another. Everywhere he went, Soros was an unwelcome outsider who did not speak English well.

He read books borrowed from students he got to know and studied as much as he could. It took a year for him to become proficient in English. Soros tried to get into a college, hoping for the prestigious Fabian socialist London School of Economics (LSE). He took the matriculation examination and passed all parts of it, though his score was not good enough to enter the LSE. Instead, Soros was accepted into Kentish Town Polytechnic – a commuter college without reputation or cachet – and enrolled in basic economics, which he found uninspiring. But it put him in contact with a student camp that arranged jobs picking apples, giving him a meager but steady income.

By chance, Soros met a Hungarian Esperanto speaker in Hyde Park who became something of a mentor and took in the young man to live in his apartment with another student near the Polytechnic. Soros began to cut school regularly and sneak into lectures at the London School of Economics, hearing the ideas of great minds. He was found out and expelled from the Polytechnic, leaving only correspondence courses as a way toward education.

Soros moved on, taking several odds jobs, including one as a lifeguard at a swimming pool close to the attic room he had rented near the Thames. An LSE student lived in the same building, and loaned Soros significant books from his own collection. Soros found that the lifeguard job gave him the opportunity to read while “guarding lives.” He had plenty of time to go through the works of Adam Smith, Hobbes, Ricardo, Bergson, and Machiavelli, among others. He read about great ideas and he felt that he was finally on the right track. In the spring of 1949, Soros took another set of examinations, and this time earned a score good enough to gain him admission to the LSE.

The Importance of Karl Popper

At the LSE, Soros met the man who changed his life, spurred his philosophic streak, inspired his reflexivity theory, and gave his foundations and institutes the “Open Society” name. There are many stories about Soros’ philosophy degrees from LSE and his study under the iconic star of the school – philosopher of science Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and its Enemies in two volumes, The Spell of Plato and Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath. Popper’s book focused on closed societies that suppressed reason – ones he condemned as “magical, tribal or collectivist” – but didn’t say much about the open society itself, beyond freedom of scientific inquiry and the freedom to dissent. The truth is that Soros slipped into a few of Popper’s lectures, but never took a single course under the great philosopher. Soros’s degrees were not in philosophy.

Biographer Kaufman wrote:

“In the autumn of 1949, George Soros began legally attending lectures and seminars at the London School of Economics on Houghton Street. The impact this period had on Soros’s later philanthropic work would be evident in his emphasis on ‘big’ ideas to change profoundly the way people live, and in the boldness with which his foundations would implement massive programs as Communism first shuddered and then fell. “But at age 19, Soros did not recognize the period as particularly distinctive or instructive. He was still grumbling about his cool reception by an England he thought to be unfeeling and austere. Yet at the same time, he was being made aware of an intellectual world of impressive polymaths, whom he openly envied.”

Soros’ first year was full of frustration. He heard the great ideas of great minds, especially the great philosopher Karl Popper, a brilliant but thorny and critical personality. But Soros was mired in his economics major and had no way to employ his own blossoming ideas. His second year was the same.

Kaufman wrote:

“He could have left after two years with a degree from the University of London, the LSE parent, but if he stayed on an extra year, doing whatever he wanted, he would be eligible for the more prestigious LSE degree. All he had to do was pay the fees and eventually take exams. That is when he decided to ask Karl Popper to be his mentor.”

Kaufman also explained a momentous event for Soros in the Spring of 1952: “Soros had read Popper’s Open Society with great interest and some identification. Once more showing his abundant confidence, Soros at the age of 21 wrote to the aloof and critical Popper:

‘I have just read Open Society and it made a profound impression on me. Although it was my interest in historical generalizations that has led me to read it, I agree with most of your statements. I believe, however, that a theory of historical development need not necessarily be historicist. In fact, I find no argument in your book to contradict this. ‘I am, however, in no position to argue the subject and that is exactly why I am writing to you. My interest, as I said, lies in the study of human development because I think that the laws of change are the only ones that are universally valid for all forms of society. For my first degree, however, I specialized in international trade and at the moment in lieu of a third year B.Sc. Econ course, I am registered for a part time M.Sc. in Welfare Economics. ‘Having read your book, I am convinced you could help me greatly by directing my studies. I know that it is a very unrewarding service that I ask of you because although I want to work as a postgraduate, my present knowledge on the subject is that of a fresher. If you could spare me the time, I would be very much obliged if you could see me one evening after 6 o’clock.’

Kaufman, Soros’ official biographer, continued:

“Popper responded by urging him to write a paper about the differences between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ societies. Soros submitted such a paper, and he is certain that Popper then invited him to his house to offer criticism. ‘He was very nice and encouraging, though critical. I was supposed to correct the essay based on our discussion, but instead, I wrote him another essay about historical dynamics.’ “This second paper contained the first kernel of Soros’s ideas about reflexivity, or the dynamic relationship between reality and attempts to perceive it, which was to become a favored theme he would later apply to finance with stunning success. Popper was disappointed that he had not revised his first paper, but Soros is not sure whether this displeasure was conveyed in writing or at another meeting. In any case, his contacts with Popper were then suspended: ‘So that was that with Popper, until much later.’ “Actually, the contact between the two during Soros’s final year at LSE was not very close at all. It was, in fact, so remote that when Soros wrote to Popper in the spring of 1982 to inform him of the fund and the scholarships established in his name, the 79-year-old philosopher wrote back saying he could barely recall Soros. ‘Let me first thank you for not having forgotten me,’ wrote the recently knighted Sir Karl in a firm hand. ‘I am afraid I forgot you completely; even your name created at first only the most minute resonance. But I made some effort, and now, I think, I just remember you, though I do not think I should recognize you.’”

So Soros never studied with Popper at LSE, and his degrees are in international trade and welfare economics, according to Soros’ note to Popper. Yet his meager contacts produced Soros’ Open Society organizations that changed the world and continue doing so today.

Soros Family Today

Soros is guarded but not secretive where his family is concerned. He has discussed his home life with interviewers over the years and allowed related feature articles to be published. His family members, including adult children, have their own well-reported lives and interests.

George Soros has married three times: Tamiko Bolton (m. 2013), Susan Weber Soros (m. 1983–2005), Annaliese Witschak (m. 1960–1983). He has four sons and a daughter: Jonathan Soros (mother Annaliese Witschak); Andrea Soros (mother Annaliese Witschak), Robert Soros, (mother Annaliese Witschak); Alexander Soros (mother Susan Weber Soros), Gregory Soros (mother Susan Weber Soros).

Financial Career

Soros’ his first job out of LSE was at the merchant bank Singer & Friedlander of London. He worked as a clerk and later moved to the arbitrage department. A fellow employee, Robert Mayer, suggested he apply at his father’s brokerage house, F.M. Mayer of New York.

In 1956 Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader for F.M. Mayer (1956–59). He specialized in European stocks, which were becoming popular with U.S. institutional investors following the formation of the Coal and Steel Community, which later became the Common Market.

In 1959, after three years at F.M. Mayer, he moved to Wertheim & Co. as an analyst of European Securities, where he stayed until 1963. He planned to stay for five years, enough time to save $500,000, after which he intended to return to England to study philosophy. During this period, Soros developed and refined his theory of reflexivity based on the ideas of Karl Popper.

Reflexivity posited that market values are often driven by the fallible ideas of participants, not only by the economic fundamentals of the situation. Reflexive feedback loops are created where ideas influence events and events influence ideas. Soros further argued that this leads to markets having procyclical “virtuous or vicious” cycles of boom and bust, in contrast to the equilibrium predictions of more standard neoclassical economics.

From 1963 to 1973, Soros’s experience as a vice president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder gave him little enthusiasm for the job; business was slack following the introduction of the interest equalization tax, which undermined the viability of Soros’s European trading. He spent the years from 1963 to 1966 with his main focus on the revision of a self-imposed philosophy dissertation. In 1966 he started a fund with $100,000 of the firm’s money to experiment with his trading strategies. But he was principally motivated by a desire to assert himself as an investor to profit from his reflexivity insights.”

Birth of the Soros Fortune

In 1967, Soros talked his employers into letting him start an offshore fund called First Eagle, long positions only, with $250,000 of his own money and $6 million from investors. It went well, and two years later he launched the Double Eagle hedge fund with $4 million of investors’ capital including $250,000 of his own money. It was based in Curaçao, Dutch Antilles, a Caribbean tax haven beyond U.S. regulation. All of its investors were also beyond U.S. regulation: Soros only accepted very rich non-U.S. citizens, mostly European. Soros worked from New York and was only its “investment advisor” collecting a management fee and a 15 percent incentive fee, so he had no investment for the U.S. to regulate.

Soros amicably departed from Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder to create his new Soros Fund, which became the Quantum Fund. He gave the shareholders in the Double Eagle Fund their choice of either keeping their assets in the old fund or transferring them to the new venture. Quantum was the star fund. The name came from quantum physics, especially the indeterminacy principle of Werner Heisenberg. Soros liked “Quantum” as a symbol of the impossibility of accurately determining the future movement of markets as well as subatomic particles. He had developed his own theory that individual biases (e.g., the trend-following habits of speculators) introduce disequilibrium into an economy, so conventional “efficient market” theory doesn’t work. Soros extends his reflexivity theory to just about everything.

In finance, Soros uses it to explain “boom-bust cycles.” He goes further, arguing that when any social enterprise begins to rise – whether a market, a business, a movement, or a nation – the biases of individuals (investors, executives, movement leaders, or statesmen) create instability. They build a bandwagon effect, overvaluing or overreaching, which creates an artificial “bubble” that eventually bursts. Soros has attributed his hedge fund success to his reflexivity theory. Others call it luck.

In 1981, Institutional Investor magazine put Soros on the cover as “the world’s greatest money manager.” But there were thorns in the hedge: Critics accused him of calculated hit-and-run tactics by quietly buying into a market – gold, for example, as he did in 1993 – deliberately leaking his “secret,” watching the bandwagon stampede drive the price up, then bailing out before the bubble bursts.

Quantum had only one losing year in its first two decades and George Soros obtained enormous personal wealth. Even though he failed to predict the stock market crash of 1987 and took a $300 million hit, Quantum was actually up 14 percent for the calendar year – and his personal compensation of $75 million made him the second-highest-paid man on Wall Street. In 1993, Quantum earned him $1.1 billion – making George Soros the top earner on Wall Street, with personal holdings greater than the gross national product of 42 nations.

First Philanthropy

According to author Ron Arnold in the book Freezing in the Dark, Soros’ foundation work began modestly.

“When he set up his Open Society Fund in New York in 1979 he was not particularly proud. He had long cast himself as a curmudgeon, saying he didn’t believe in philanthropy. His original fund was what the law calls a ‘charitable lead trust,’ which Soros described as ‘a very interesting tax gimmick’ allowing him to pass large sums to his heirs untaxed. But his charitable intent – and power lust – was genuine, and he soon went to work giving money away.”

Soros’ maiden philanthropic effort was a scholarship program for black students in Apartheid South Africa. He held the visionary belief that “the creation of elites among persecuted people is the most effective way to overcome prejudice.” He arranged to have his bold program administered through the University of Capetown. It was a failure, but once he had stumbled into the usual pitfalls of philanthropy – grants being diverted by administrators, no tracking of results, sabotage by opponents – Soros gained enough savvy to undermine the Soviet empire and then cast his anti-capitalist web on the United States.

Controversies

Currency Manipulation

Extreme leverage is a George Soros character trait. Most readers of the financial pages know about the spectacularly leveraged coup that earned him a billion dollars overnight in a giant gamble in 1992. He bet $10 billion – most of it borrowed money – that by selling enough sterling short he could force the Bank of England to devalue the British pound and make a killing.

Soros, with a keen grasp of money and politics, had calculated that bankers in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (EERM), pegged to the German mark, would refuse to uphold the overvalued pound because at the time Germany had its own problems paying for reunification. Great Britain’s inflation was also much too high (triple the German rate), and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices.

The EERM did refuse, so Britain pulled out and tried to prop up its sinking currency by itself. Prime Minister John Major and Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont spent billions of the government’s foreign reserves buying back pounds, trying desperately to shore up the value of sterling in the face of the daunting speculative tsunami that Soros started.

They ran out of foreign reserves. Soros’s fund sold short more than $10 billion in pounds. The pound crashed, making Soros a profit of $1 billion. On September 16, 1992 – a day known thereafter as Black Wednesday – British subjects woke up to find their money worth about 20 percent less than the day before when compared to American dollars, German marks, or even French francs.

On October 26, 1992, The Times of London quoted Soros as saying:

“Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell.”

Soros quickly became known as “the man who broke the Bank of England.” His daring short position paid off big, putting him among the elite in international finance. Had he lost that bet, nobody would know his name today.

Source: Freezing in the Dark

Insider Trading Conviction

Political changes in 1988 piqued Soros’ interest in purchasing shares in French companies. The new government under Prime Minister Jacques Chirac began an aggressive privatization program, leaving newly privatized companies with undervalued shares. French financier Georges Pébereau contacted a Soros adviser with a plan for a group of investors to purchase a large number of shares in Société Générale, a leading French bank, with the intent to take it over. Without ever having met the financier, Soros decided against joining the group, which predictably failed. He did, however, continue his strategy of accumulating shares in four French companies: Société Générale, Suez, Paribas, and the Compagnie Générale d’Électricité.

In 1989, the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (COB, the French stock exchange regulatory authority) investigated whether Soros’s transaction in Société Générale should be considered insider trading. Soros had received no information from the Société Générale and had no insider knowledge of the business, but he did possess knowledge that a group of investors was planning a takeover attempt. The COB concluded that the statutes, regulations, and case law relating to insider trading did not clearly establish that a crime had occurred and that no charges should be brought against Soros.

Several years later, a Paris-based prosecutor reopened the case against Soros and two other French businessmen, disregarding the COB’s findings. This resulted in Soros’s 2005 conviction for insider trading by the Court of Appeals. (He was the only one of the three convicted). The French Supreme Court confirmed the insider-trading conviction on June 14, 2006, but reduced the penalty. In December 2006, Soros appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, and the court agreed to hear the appeal on the basis that he had no insider information, but in October 2011 the court rejected his appeal in a 4–3 decision, saying that Soros had been aware of the risk of breaking insider trading laws.

DCLeaks Revealations

In August of 2016, the DCLeaks network posted more than 2,500 hacked documents from the servers of his Open Society Foundations. Predictably, the spotlight was on Soros’s global network, but the shocker was the undue influence Soros exerts over every level of America’s domestic government. The hacked documents reveal initiatives to federalize local police forces, campaigns to rig elections of state attorneys general in favor of Democrats, and racial-based initiatives intended to tilt the 2020 U.S. Census so redistricting would guarantee Democrat control of Congress for at least a decade.

Headlines expressed the shock. Breitbart News evoked Star Wars: “Dark Lord: Hacked Documents Reveal Magnitude Of George Soros’s Domestic Influence.” WND.com suggested zoology: “George Soros: Vilest creature in America.” LifeNews.com focused on his radical stance on abortion: “George Soros Gave Planned Parenthood $1.5 Million to Cover Up Sales of Aborted Baby Parts.” Politico reported it: “George Soros’ quiet overhaul of the U.S. justice system.” And Twitter took action against the leakers: “Twitter Suspends DCLeaks Account After Huge George Soros Leak.”

Overthrowing Nations

No headlines noted Soros’ proven power to overthrow nations. He is credited with funding and organizing the downfall of Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze, Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic, and the general collapse of the Soviet Empire. Morton Abramowitz, former ambassador to South Korea, said that Soros is “the only man in the United States who has his own foreign policy and can implement it.”

According to the book, Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy by Ron Arnold, Soros “built a string of Open Society foundations in communist countries: his native Hungary in 1984, China in 1986, the Soviet Union in 1987, and Poland in 1988.” Arnold wrote:

“Despite KGB interference, Soros made significant gains as the Soviet economy tottered. He gave $100 million to support Soviet science when the country had no money to maintain laboratories or pay scientists’ salaries. He committed close to another $100 million to introduce non-Marxist educational materials that had previously been banned. He gave another $100 million to wire all 33 regional universities to the Internet. His announced intent was to help those societies become more open by paying for such things as photocopiers, travel, theaters, filmmaking, sociological research, newspapers, magazines and the then-new Internet. To the communist leaders of those countries it looked like a foreign capitalist was trying to erode the ruling party’s monopoly over art, culture, and information. They accused him of promoting dissent to weaken their regime. As became evident in the Soviet collapse of 1989, they were right.”

Yet this anti-communist crusader quickly turned against capitalism. He wrote a 1997 Atlantic Monthly article titled “The Capitalist Threat:

“Although I have made a fortune in the financial markets, I now fear that the untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.”

Political Philosophy and Spending

A chapter in Freezing in the Dark details the Soros emergence into American politics, which for a long time never interested him. Soros admitted to his biographer, Michael T. Kaufman, that he didn’t feel fully American, even though he was a naturalized U.S. citizen with dual Hungarian citizenship. Soros said: “I did not particularly care for the United States. I had acquired some basic British prejudices; you know, the States were, well, commercial, crass, and so on.”

Soros paid no attention to his highest foundation staffers who proposed building a left-wing organizations on par with well-established conservative ones, but “I do not view my role as countering the Right,” became his mantra. Staffers who came to the defense of an ineffectual Democratic Party got the other Soros mantra: “I do not view my role as funding ‘the Left’ or the Democrats.” But the election of President George W. Bush changed Soros’ thinking and philanthropy dramatically.

Arnold wrote:

“On March 19, 2003, Soros couldn’t stand it anymore. American and British forces attacked Iraq in a preemptive strike. His deepest beliefs had been violated and President George W. Bush had violated them. It wasn’t just that Bush struck him as a common, uncouth, Texas redneck. Bush’s declaration that ‘you are either with us or you are with the terrorists,’ shortly after the 9/11 attacks really got Soros. He said it evoked memories of Hitler from his boyhood as a Jew in hiding from the Nazis in his native Hungary. It looked to him like American society, the world’s most open, was closing.”

Soros’ 2003 book, The Bubble of American Supremacy: The Costs of Bush’s War in Iraq, was a forthright critique of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” as misconceived and counterproductive. He explains the title in the closing chapter by pointing out the parallels in this political context with the self-reinforcing reflexive processes that generate bubbles in stock prices.

In a November 11, 2003 interview with The Washington Post, Soros said that removing President Bush from office was the “central focus of my life” and “a matter of life and death.” He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat Bush “if someone guaranteed it,” and gave many millions to left-wing organizations even with no guarantees. Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election, which resulted in the re-election of President Bush and gains for Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives.

After the 2004 Republican victories, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance, which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America. On October 26, 2010, Soros donated $1 million to the organization, the largest donation in the campaign.

On September 27, 2012, Soros announced that he was donating $1 million to the super PAC backing President Barack Obama’s reelection, Priorities USA Action. In October 2013, Soros donated $25,000 to Ready for Hillary, becoming a co-chairman of the super PAC’s national finance committee.

In June 2015, Soros again donated $1 million to the Super PAC, Priorities USA Action, which supports Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. Since then he donated an additional $6 million to the PAC to support Clinton. Soros’ immersion in American politics is now routine.

George Soros’ Related Wealth

Personal fortune $24.9 billion in 2016 – 16th richest in the Forbes 400 in 2016.

Foundation to Promote Open Society, 2014 assets $4,986,868 744.

Open Society Institute, 2014 assets $1,757,161,818.

Quantum Endowment Fund posted strongest gains of any other hedge fund in 2013, $5.5 billion return on $28.6 billion investments.

Soros Fund Management is the private family office of the Soros operations and does not release its financials.

Soros Activist Empire

Listed alphabetically

Brain Trauma Foundation – director

Breakthrough Energy Coalition – member

Bretton Woods Committee – member

Council on Foreign Relations – member

Drug Policy Alliance – director

Earth Institute – advisory board member

Geosor Corp. – owner

Institute for New Economic Thinking – co-founder

International Crisis Group – board member

Most Influential New Yorkers – listed

Open Society Foundations – founder & chairman

Quantum Fund – founder

Ready PAC – co-chair, national finance council

Refugees International – director emeritus

Soros Charitable Foundation – trustee

Soros Economic Development Fund – founder

Soros Fund Charitable Foundation – director

Soros Fund Management – founder

Soros Humanitarian Foundation – chair

Soros Strategic Partners – founder

Sources: Wikipedia entry, Soros websites, Muckety

Open Society Institute Top 30 Grants 1998 – 2013

Compiled from the complete list with $2,733,270,910 total dollars paid for 10,532 grants to 4,894 recipients

George Soros Campaign Contributions:

Listed below are federal donations of $3,000+ reported to the FEC.

SOS for Democracy – $250,000 on 6/19/2014

Wake County Democratic Party Federal Campaign Committee – $10,000 on 7/17/2014

Nunn Victory Fund – $10,000 on 8/5/2014

Win Minnesota Federal PAC – $35,000 on 7/7/2014

Pac for a Level Playing Field – $5,000 on 12/26/2014

Friends of Democracy – $250,000 on 9/12/2014

House Majority Pac – $500,000 on 7/11/2014

Planned Parenthood Votes – $500,000 on 9/12/2014

League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund – $500,000 on 7/16/2014

Senate Majority PAC – $500,000 on 9/16/2014

Peters for Michigan – $5,200 on 6/20/2014

Peters for Michigan – $5,200 on 6/20/2014

Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee – $10,000 on 9/22/2014

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – $33,400 on 5/31/2015

Kentucky State Democratic Central Executive Committee – $10,000 on 10/16/2014

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $32,400 on 6/27/2014

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $5,200 on 6/12/2014

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $5,200 on 6/12/2014

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $5,200 on 6/12/2014

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $20,000 on 3/31/2013

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – $20,000 on 3/31/2014

American Bridge 21st Century – $500,000 on 2/7/2014

American Bridge 21st Century – $500,000 on 12/30/2013

Friends of Democracy – $5,000 on 12/20/2013

Pac for a Level Playing Field – $5,000 on 11/22/2013

Ready for Hillary PAC – $25,000 on 9/14/2013

Priorities USA Action – $1,000,000 on 10/4/2012

House Majority Pac – $250,000 on 10/2/2012

Progressive Change Campaign Committee – $5,000 on 7/16/2012

House Majority Pac – $100,000 on 8/31/2012

Planned Parenthood Action Fund Inc. PAC – $5,000 on 8/2/2012

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – $20,000 on 6/21/2012

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $20,000 on 6/22/2012

American Bridge 21st Century – $1,000,000 on 6/15/2012

Leadership That Listens PAC – $5,000 on 6/13/2012

Majority PAC – $100,000 on 12/29/2011

Pac to the Future – $5,000 on 6/17/2011

Campaign for Our Country – $5,000 on 2/7/2011

House Majority Pac – $75,000 on 5/19/2011

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $25,000 on 11/18/2010

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – $20,000 on 6/29/2010

Pac to the Future – $5,000 on 3/29/2010

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $15,000 on 12/31/2009

Democratic National Committee – $15,200 on 10/29/2009

Planned Parenthood Action Fund Inc. PAC – $5,000 on 8/12/2009

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $5,000 on 6/25/2009

Franken Recount Fund – $10,000 on 3/25/2009

Franken Recount Fund – $12,300 on 12/8/2008

Democratic Party of Virginia – $10,000 on 12/5/2008

Democratic National Committee – $21,750 on 6/30/2007

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – $21,750 on 6/29/2007

Actblue – $6,900 on 5/11/2008

Nebraskans for Kleeb – $4,600 on 5/13/2008

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – $21,750 on 6/29/2007

Source: Open Secrets

Network Interactions

Visit the George Soros Muckety Map for an interactive view of the Soros social network.

FOOTNOTE:

*Information in this section taken from the Soros’ Wikipedia entry.