The Face of a Prophet

By LOUISE STORY

George Soros will not go quietly.

At the age of 77, Mr. Soros, one the world's most successful investors and richest men, leapt out of retirement last summer to safeguard his fortune and legacy. Alarmed by the unfolding crisis in the financial markets, he once again began trading for his giant hedge fund -- and won big while so many others lost.

Mr. Soros has always been a controversial figure. But he is becoming more so with a new, dire forecast for the world economy. Last week he rushed out a book, his 10th, warning that the financial pain has only just begun.

"I consider this the biggest financial crisis of my lifetime," Mr. Soros said during an interview Monday in his office overlooking Central Park. A "superbubble" that has been swelling for a quarter of a century is finally bursting, he said.

Mr. Soros, whose daring, controversial trades came to symbolize global capitalism in the 1990s, is now busy promoting his book, "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets," which goes on sale next month.

And yet this is not the first time that Mr. Soros has prophesied doom. In 1998, he published a book predicting a global economic collapse that never came.

Mr. Soros thinks that this time he is right. Now in his eighth decade, he yearns to be remembered not only as a great trader but also as a great thinker.

The market theory he has promoted for two decades and espoused most of his life -- something he calls "reflexivity" -- is still dismissed by many economists. The idea is that people's biases and actions can affect the direction of the underlying economy, undermining the conventional theory that markets tend toward some sort of equilibrium.

Mr. Soros said all aspects of his life -- finance, philanthropy, even politics -- are driven by reflexivity, which has to do with the feedback loop between people's understanding of reality and their own actions.

Perhaps this explains Mr. Soros' self confessed lack of guilt over surviving the holocaust by making an avocation of gulling other jews to turn themselves in to german authorities, to be stripped of valuables and then sent off to .....

Society as a whole could learn from his theory, he said. "To make a contribution to our understanding of reality would be my greatest accomplishment," he said.

Yes, we could abandon all values to expediency. That would, Mr, Soros, be the pinnacle of achievement for a man such as yourself.

Many of the people Mr. Soros wants to influence may view him with skepticism, in part because of how he made his fortune. In 1992, his fund famously bet against the British pound and helped force the British government to devalue the currency. Five years later, he bet -- correctly -- that Thailand would be forced to devalue its currency, the baht. The resulting bitterness toward him among Thais was such that Mr. Soros canceled a trip to the country in 2001, fearing for his safety.

No single investor can move a currency, he said. "Markets move currencies, so what happened with the British pound would have happened whether I was born or not, so therefore I take no responsibility."

Mr. Soros, came of age in Nazi-occupied Hungary and has for decades longed to write a masterpiece that might put him among thinkers like Hegel or Keynes, said Michael T. Kaufman, who wrote a book about Mr. Soros. "He spent years writing papers and letters to people, but everyone ignored him," Mr. Kaufman said.

Ever hear a pusher lament after being put away ..'hey, if I didn't do it someone else would'?

And then THIS PUTRID, CONSCIOUSLY MISLEADING LINE:

He continues to be one of the top givers to charities around the world, and has given more than $5 billion away through his foundations.

And that would be to.....what political organizations set up as non profits?

He envisions a time, not so distant, when the dollar is no longer the world's main currency...