Viswanathan K's Thoughts

George Soros is famous for being the man who made a billion dollars on a single day . Less known are they very thought provoking series of lectures he gave. We know that the Semitic religions claim to know the one and only ultimate truth. Both Christianity and Islam have shown the evil that claim inevitably leads to. Soros says the same applies to non-religious ideologies too: “Ideologies which claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth are making a false claim; therefore, they can be imposed on society only by force. This applies to Communism, Fascism and National Socialism alike. All these ideologies lead to repression.” Soros goes on to talk about the two purposes of thought: “One is to understand the world in which we live; I call this the cognitive function. The other is to change the situation to our advantage. I call this the participating or manipulative function.” He then says that when both of the above functions work at the same time, they can interfere...

Becoming a billionaire is not all that uncommon. We know it can be done over decades. Or even just a few years, as happens so often in Silicon Valley. But I doubt anyone will ever beat George Soros’ time of doing it in a single day! Well ok, the build up to the event took time. But Soros’ net worth moved from way below a billion to more than a billion on a single day. And in the process, the man broke the British Pound and brought the Bank of England to its knees. Here’s the story as told by Rohin Dhar . But first, the backdrop. In 1979, the European Exchange Rate mechanism (ERM) was created “to fix their exchange rates with each other instead of “floating” their currency and letting capital markets set the rates”. But of course, one can’t just “set it and forget it”. As trade happens, market forces will put pressure that currencies increase or decrease in value. So the government needs to intervene, in one of two ways: 1)       Buy or sell its own ...