Matthew Lynn says hedge-fund pioneer and currency speculator George Soros is still a brilliant player of markets — but as a philosopher, frankly, he’s incomprehensible
If nothing else, three decades as one of the world’s most successful speculators has taught George Soros how to pitch a book. While the main title of his latest work, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, might not be the kind of thing to get Waterstone’s managers clearing their shelves, its subtitle — The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means — makes it bang up to date. Even better, Soros rushed it out as a digital download within days of the final words being penned. The implication was that the world couldn’t possibly wait until 19 May — when the print version published by PublicAffairs is released — to find out what Soros made of the credit crunch.
The hedge-fund billionaire, still best know for his role in forcing the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, immediately hit the television studios to frighten everyone.
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