Soros and his views

[rimau]

Here is report from SCMP, HK

Saturday November 1 1997

Shares dive 'cost Soros $15 billion'

George Soros, the billionaire speculator, is reported
to have lost US$2 billion (HK$15.44 billion) as a
result of this week's worldwide stock market
plunge.

His high-profile Quantum Fund dropped US$1
billion on various currency, bond and stock bets,
according to The Times in London. Five other
funds managed by Stanley Druckenmiller, Mr
Soros' right-hand man, had lost US$1 billion.

Mr Soros' biggest loss was believed to have been
US$400 million in Moscow, where the stock
market index fell 20 per cent.

Other big investors have fared as badly. Hedge
fund manager Victor Niederhoffer lost all of the
US$70 million in his Global Systems fund. On
Monday, Mr Niederhoffer - a so-called contrarian
investor - bet on US shares rising.

This follows Global Systems' loss of 50 per cent of
its money this summer when Mr Niederhoffer bet
that Thai stocks would rebound.

In an article published in Britain yesterday, Mr
Soros, the archetypal capitalist, said he believed
that financial markets were so unstable that they
could "destroy society".

Dubbed "the man who moves markets", Mr Soros
emerges as a man who wants concerted, global
regulation of markets and even harmonised taxation
to mitigate what he believes are the inequalities
created by market fluctuation.

He told the New Statesman magazine that if
fluctuations become too large "you can have
breakdown". "It will come through political and,
eventually, military events, rather than events merely
in the financial markets."