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Soros TIME
dawn star wrote:
>
> $$$$$$$
>
> TIME
> SEPTEMBER 1, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 9
>
> HALL OF FAME OF PHILANTHROPY
>
> Turning Soros has doled out more than $1.3 billion. If he
> Dollars continues at his current pace of more than $350 million
> Into a year, within a decade he could pass some of America's
> Change greatest givers.
>
> John D. Andrew Carnegie Walter Annenberg
> Rockefeller 1835-1919 Born 1908
> 1839-1937
> SOURCE OF WEALTH
> A founder of Created a steel Publishing; revived
> Standard Oil Co., empire that debt-ridden company
> which made him dominated the and made TV Guide
> America's first industry in the the highest-
> billionaire late 1800s circulation
> magazine in the
> U.S.
> PHILANTHROPIC FOCUS
> Education, Free libraries Arts and education
> religion and throughout the
> health world
> TOTAL (1996 DOLLARS)
> $5.4 billion $4.5 billion At least $2
> during his during his billion--and
> lifetime lifetime counting
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> time-webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> $$$$$$$$$$$$
> [American Plastics Council]
> [TIME Logo] BUSINESS
> SEPTEMBER 1,
> 1997 VOL. 150 HEDGE FUNDS--OR, HOW THE RICH GET RICHER
> NO. 9
> BY JOSHUA COOPER RAMO
> ---------------- ------------------------------------------
> Cover: Turning It is 9:30 a.m. on Wall Street. four
> dollars into blocks from the New York Stock Exchange
> change and eight stories up, fund manager James
> Cramer is up and shouting with the market
> bell, greeting the first move of the tape
> with his usual salute: "There goes
> Swifty!" Cramer picked up the incantation
> at a dog track in his youth (Swifty was
> the mechanical rabbit), but he's used it
> to start trading since the day two years
> ago when, he says, he had "a huge up day"
> after muttering the phrase. Cramer, who
> manages hundreds of millions of dollars
> for a group of 38 rich families, isn't
> above a little superstition.
>
> Of course it's not superstition that his
> clients are paying for. It's his numbers.
> Cramer runs a hedge fund, a Wall Street
> investment vehicle for superrich
> investors looking for hyperterrific
> returns in all sorts of economic weather.
> While most investors bet on the broader
> market or particular stocks, wealthy
> clients want to protect their pile by
> "hedging" their risk with funds that
> adjust to economic conditions as fast as
> the market changes. With stocks teetering
> at record highs, demand for that sort of
> insurance is blossoming. The best hedge
> funds have become as exclusive as Augusta
> National, and hot managers are the rock
> stars of the investing world. Among the
> sexiest: George Soros, whose Quantum Fund
> has tallied a 33% annual return
> historically, vs. 7% for stocks; and
> Julian Robertson, whose Tiger funds are
> to Park Avenue what fur is to Gstaad.
>
> The initial aim of the funds, which were
> developed in the 1950s, was to protect
> against market risk and earn greater
> return in times of sluggish stock-market
> performance. The notion had a simple
> elegance: If rich investors could cash in
> during booms by betting on winners,
> couldn't they profit during busts by
> betting against losers? The first funds
> were fairly simple, usually holding 50%
> of their assets in long-term investments
> that were expected to rise over time, and
> 50% in short positions in stocks or bonds
> that were considered overvalued. (In a
> basic short position a fund sells
> borrowed shares at one price with plans
> to repurchase them at a lower price after
> the stock falls.) If the market rose,
> they still had an upside in the winners;
> if it fell, they profited from short
> sales. The idea stuck: there are nearly
> 3,500 U.S. hedge funds today, with equity
> of $134 billion.
>
> But hedge funds now describe a kind of
> management that is far more aggressive.
> Lawmakers insist that clients be
> "experienced with risky assets" and rich
> enough (in some cases, at least $5
> million in investable assets) that they
> won't be wiped out by some slap-happy
> manager who bets everything on the Thai
> baht. Hedge funds shine in volatile
> markets. Says Robert Jaeger, president of
> Evaluation Associates Capital Markets:
> "The whole idea behind hedge funds is to
> have some money invested with people
> whose returns aren't going to be totally
> determined by whether the market is up or
> down. It's a different risk."
>
> If hedge funds look like a good deal for
> their millionaire clients, they are even
> better for fund managers. Unlike
> mutual-fund managers, who generally work
> for a fixed compensation tied to the size
> of their fund, hedge managers get paid on
> two very lucrative tiers. They collect 1%
> to 2% of their funds' assets as a
> management fee and, the real jackpot,
> anywhere from 10% to 30% of their trading
> profits. At larger funds, where those
> profits can run into hundreds of
> millions, that means multimillion-dollar
> paychecks for fund managers.
>
> While Soros' "macro" fund stalks giant
> economic trends, Cramer invests and makes
> his money mostly in U.S. stocks. Roughly
> half of his $315 million fund is locked
> down in stocks he believes will
> outperform the market over the next
> decade. The other half Cramer and partner
> Jeff Berkowitz trade every day, with a
> feverish enthusiasm fired by the glee of
> making the right bets and the crunching
> agony of picking a loser. In the course
> of a day's trading, the firm will be in
> and out of 50 stocks, betting millions on
> tiny ticks of the tape. Cramer, whose 22%
> compound annual return over nine years
> marks him as a winning investor, is
> perhaps an even greater show. He spends
> most of the trading session jumping up
> and down out of a very worn chair,
> shouting orders at the calm traders who
> surround him. Says Cramer, who abandoned
> the security of Goldman Sachs for life as
> a trader: "Hedge-fund managers used to
> seem like Errol Flynn to me."
>
> A steadily rising market, however, can
> make a hedge-fund manager look more like
> Dumbo. In the past two years rich
> investors would have done better putting
> their money into indexed mutual funds,
> just like ordinary folk. That's to be
> expected, says George Van, a hedge-fund
> adviser. Hedge funds, after all, are
> designed to protect against bad times,
> which means forgoing some riches during
> good times. Van's research shows that in
> the six quarters since 1988 when the
> market has gone down, mutual-fund
> investors have lost an average of 24%,
> while hedge-fund clients have made 3%.
>
> So how much are average fund buyers
> missing by being locked out of these rich
> investors' clubs? Cramer, for one, says
> most investors can get everything they
> need from mutual funds: "I sure wish I
> could tell you that the public should be
> in hedge funds. But I think it's better
> for most people to have their money with
> a guy like Will Danoff at Fidelity than
> with some crazy man who's running around
> shorting everything in sight," he
> explains minutes before the market opens
> for another up day. Then, with a clap of
> the hands, it's off to the trading floor
> and the seductive promise of the dog
> track: "Let's go make some money!" There
> goes Swifty.
>
> --With reporting by Lisa Granatstein
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> time-webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> $$$$$
> OCTOBER 28, 1996 VOL. 148 NO. 20
> NATION
> MARIJUANA: WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIRE
> BY RICHARD LACAYO
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> If you know anybody who ever had cancer--or if you ever had it
>
> yourself--you know the ordeal that Jo Daly has gone through.
>
> When she started chemotherapy for colon cancer, the side effects
>
> included a "nuclear implosion" of nausea. Then came a burning
>
> pain under the nails of her fingers and toes. The good news is
>
> that she eventually found relief. The bad news is that it came
>
> from marijuana, which is not available by legal means. Worse
>
> news is that Daly is a former member of the San Francisco police
>
> commission, the body that regulates the police department. Even
>
> in easygoing San Francisco, felony drug possession is no joke,
>
> especially for her. Then again, neither is cancer. "I have a lot
>
> better things to do with my life," she says, "than breaking the
>
> law."
>
> Enter on big, rough wheels the state of California, which helped
>
> pioneer the tricky practice of democracy through referendum.
>
> This year's most controversial example is Proposition 215. It
>
> would permit patients with cancer, aids, glaucoma, arthritis and
>
> other serious illnesses to grow, possess and use marijuana. It
>
> would also allow doctors to "prescribe" pot without fear of
>
> prosecution--or merely to recommend it, without committing
>
> themselves to a note pad. Though the change would not overrule
>
> federal or state laws that criminalize the recreational use of
>
> marijuana, Prop 215 would provide voter-approved legal backing
>
> for patients or doctors who were hauled into court. A poll shows
>
> that California voters favor it by about 2 to 1.
>
> "This is an attempt to bring medicine to people who are
>
> needlessly suffering for lack of it," says Bill Zimmerman of
>
> Californians for Medical Rights, which sponsors the proposition.
>
> Many patients say pot eases the nausea of chemotherapy. It may
>
> also stimulate the appetite to counter the wasting effects of
>
> AIDS and reduce eye pressure caused by glaucoma. As a substitute
>
> the Food and Drug Administration has approved Marinol, a
>
> synthetic pill version of THC, marijuana's psychoactive
>
> ingredient. But patients often report it doesn't alleviate
>
> nausea. Daly tried it without success before turning to pot. "If
>
> it had worked for me, I wouldn't be doing this," she says.
>
> The California legislature twice passed bills to bar prosecution
>
> of people who grow or use marijuana for legitimate medical
>
> reasons. But both times those were vetoed by Republican Governor
>
> Pete Wilson, who has also come out strongly against the ballot
>
> measure. Other opponents include law-enforcement agencies,
>
> drug-abuse programs, California's Democratic Senator Dianne
>
> Feinstein and White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey. "This
>
> proposition is not about medicine," charges Orange County
>
> Sheriff Brad Gates, co-chairman of Citizens for a Drug-Free
>
> California, the campaign opposing Prop 215. "It's about the
>
> legalization of marijuana."
>
> They complain that the referendum as written would permit almost
>
> anyone to buy marijuana. For one thing it would apply to
>
> patients suffering from "any" ailment for which marijuana
>
> provides relief, without specifying which complaints that would
>
> cover. As a picture of things to come, the opponents point to
>
> the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco, founded in 1991,
>
> which at one time claimed 12,000 members. Until Aug. 4, when
>
> state narcotics agents raided and closed down the club, it sold
>
> pot to anyone who was desperately ill. And maybe to other
>
> people. Police say that during a two-year investigation,
>
> undercover agents made purchases of several pounds at a time.
>
> They also say that teens and people with forged doctors' notes
>
> were making buys.
>
> In the wake of that raid, agents came back to arrest Dennis
>
> Peron, the club's founder and a leader of support for the ballot
>
> measure. But his arrest was so controversial in San Francisco,
>
> where local police had already declined to shut down the club,
>
> that the indictment had to be obtained in nearby Alameda County.
>
> Events had already brought Doonesbury into the picture. For a
>
> week Zonker, the comic strip's aging soul-at-large, lamented the
>
> bust on Peron's club and went desperately in search of
>
> alternative sources for the patients it left stranded. Unfair,
>
> said Dan Lungren, California's politically ambitious attorney
>
> general, who was criticized by name in the strip for ordering
>
> the bust. He called on California newspapers to pull the
>
> offending strips. (None did.) "We simply have to tell people the
>
> basic facts about what this initiative does," says Lungren.
>
> Opponents say they have raised only $30,000 to defeat the
>
> measure. The war chest in favor of Prop 215 tops $1 million,
>
> much of it from sympathetic tycoons. On the recommendation of
>
> Baba Ram Dass, the spiritual leader who works with aids
>
> patients, Laurance S. Rockefeller contributed $50,000. Global
>
> financier George Soros has contributed $350,000. With deep
>
> pockets like those behind it, the fight over medical marijuana
>
> could easily go national next.
>
> --By Richard Lacayo. Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles
>
> $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
> [American Plastics Council]
> TIME Logo]
> DECEMBER 16, 1996 VOL. 149 NO. 1
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> THE FINE ART OF GIVING: HERE'S A NEW WAY FOR THE RICH TO KEEP SCORE: SLATE'S LIST OF THE BIGGEST
> GIVERS
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> In the game of life, some believe, accumulated wealth is the way the score
> is kept. Thus it's not enough to count your blessings in multimillions of
> dollars and want for nothing. It matters who is ahead and who is falling
> behind, as calibrated by Forbes magazine's annual listing of the 400
> richest Americans. Or so billionaire Ted Turner believes. Last summer he
> told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, "That list is destroying our
> country," claiming that the "ole skinflints" are so afraid of slipping down
> the Forbes list--"their Super Bowl"--that they hoard, rather than share,
> their wealth.
>
> Turner issued a challenge: rank the biggest givers instead of the biggest
> getters. Last week Microsoft's online magazine Slate took him up, launching
> the Slate 60, a list of the largest charitable donations in the country by
> families or individuals gathered from publicly available sources. These are
> numbers, and deeds, well worth highlighting. Last year Americans gave a
> record $143.9 billion to charity, with more than 70% of households
> contributing. The richest one-half of one percent of households were
> responsible for 11% of all giving.
>
> The Slate 60, which will become an annual event, is a work in progress that
> follows some rather arbitrary rules, and new details are coming in daily.
> (Slate will publish an updated version in January.) The list omits
> anonymous gifts, which means at least 12 very big-ticket donors are missing
> from its 1996 ranks. It also excludes gifts by corporate foundations rather
> than individuals, and any gifts less than $1 million. Judging by a single
> year's giving, rather than by a lifetime of charity, causes distortions
> too. Microsoft head Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren
> Buffett, for instance, have said they intend to give away most of their
> money in the end. And Turner, who became vice chairman of Time Warner in
> October, did not make the initial list, even though he has made gifts
> totaling $200 million in the past few years. Still, if the Slate 60 works
> as Turner predicts, that could be his greatest gift of all: making
> conspicuous giving the newest status symbol for those who have everything.
>
> SLATE'S TOP 10
>
> 1. SAMUEL SKAGGS and ALINE SKAGGS This Utah grocery-and-drugstore magnate
> and his wife gave $100 million to San Diego's Scripps Research Institute to
> establish the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, which will study new
> approaches to pharmaceutical design. The Skaggs donation matches the
> largest gift ever made by an individual for medical research, a $100
> million donation to the University of Utah made by chemical-industry
> executive Jon M. Huntsman in 1995.
>
> 2. GEORGE SOROS The financier, who fled Hungary in 1956, gave $50 million
> to create the Emma Lazarus Fund to help legal immigrants become U.S.
> citizens, nearly $15 million to help change the nation's drug policy and at
> least $35 million to charitable projects in Russia. (See also Susan Soros,
> No. 7, below.) Total: $100 million.
>
> 3. KLAUS G. PERLS and AMELIA PERLS These Manhattan art dealers and
> collectors gave at least $60 million worth of 20th century masterpieces by
> Picasso, Modigliani, Braque and Leger to New York City's Metropolitan
> Museum of Art.
>
> 4. ROBERT W. GALVIN The chairman of Motorola's executive committee pledged
> $60 million to the Illinois Institute of Technology.
>
> 5. PRITZKER FAMILIES The Illinois Institute of Technology got another $60
> million pledge (over five years) from Robert A. Pritzker, a 1946 graduate
> and the chief executive officer of the Marmon Group, an international
> conglomerate based in Chicago, and his brother Jay A. Pritzker, a Chicago
> attorney.
>
> 6. GONDA (GOLDSCHMIED) The donor's full name is being kept private, but he
> gave $45 million to UCLA to create the Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and
> Genetics Research Center. This is the largest charitable gift from an
> individual in University of California history. The donor was described in
> a ucla statement as having long been committed to advancing medical
> progress against disease.
>
> 7. RICHARD FISHER, SUSAN SOROS and LEON LEVY These three trustees gave a
> total of $42 million to New York's Bard College, a gift that allows the
> school to more than double its endowment. Fisher is chairman of the Morgan
> Stanley Group Inc. Levy is general partner of Odyssey Partners, an
> investment firm. Susan Soros, George's wife, is the director of Bard's
> Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, based in Manhattan.
>
> 8. ARISON FAMILY Lin Arison, wife of Carnival Cruise Lines founder Ted,
> gave $40 million worth of Carnival Corp. stock to Miami Beach's New World
> Symphony, which was created in 1987 by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and
> Ted Arison to educate young musicians.
>
> 9. ROBERT M. BASS and ANNE BASS A $20 million donation from the 1970 Yale
> University graduate and his wife will help renovate Yale's aging
> residential colleges. The Basses also gave $10 million to Duke to enable
> the university to make chairs for full professorships available for only
> $1.1 million instead of the usual $1.5 million, with the hope of persuading
> other donors to endow professorships, and $1.4 million to bring these
> professors together in a group known as the Bass Fellows. Total: $31.4
> million. Previously the Basses have given $25 million to Stanford and $20
> million to Yale (Robert Bass attended both schools).
>
> 10. BILL GATES The Microsoft mogul gave $15 million to Harvard University,
> where he dropped out. This is part of a joint $25 million gift with
> Microsoft executive vice president Steve Ballmer--a Harvard graduate--to
> benefit research and teaching in computer science and electrical
> engineering. Of this, $20 million will be used to construct a research and
> teaching facility named after the donors' mothers. The remaining $5 million
> will endow a professorship. Gates and his wife, Melinda French Gates, also
> gave $12 million to the University of Washington to help pay for a proposed
> $52 million law school building that will be named after Gates' father
> William, who graduated from the law school in 1950. Total: $27 million.
>
> For full list, visit slate.com
>
> SEPTEMBER 1, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 9
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> ----------- How Soros Makes Billions...
> Soros' Quantum Fund makes money by anticipating economic
> Turning shifts around the world. In 1992 Soros thought the
> Dollars British pound would lose value because of political and
> into economic pressures. He borrowed billions of pounds and
> Change converted them to German marks. When the pound collapsed
> Sept. 16, Soros repaid the pounds at the lower rate and
> pocketed the difference. His profit: $1 billion.
>
> ...And Gives Away Millions
>
> In 1996 Soros' foundations distributed $360 million for
> projects all over the world. Some countries received more
> money from Soros during the year than from the U.S.
> government.
> BLUE TYPE shows where Amount Soros U.S. Aid in 1996
> Soros outgave the Gave in 1996
> U.S. Government
>
> 1 Russia $24,198,000 $108,140,000
>
> 2 Hungary $15,769,000 $15,096,000
>
> 3 Ukraine $15,323,000 $141,100,000
>
> 4 Yugoslavia $11,180,000 0
>
> 5 Albania $10,219,000 $19,900,000
>
> 6 Romania $10,180,000 $28,680,000
>
> 7 Bulgaria $9,326,000 $27,865,000
>
> 8 Bosnia $8,869,000 $245,294,000
>
> 9 Poland $7,568,000 $44,445,000
>
> 10 Belarus $6,019,000 $4,600,000
>
> Sources: Open Society Institute; U.S. Agency for
> International Development
>
> SEPTEMBER 1, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 9
> SOROS' NEW EMPHASIS: THE U.S.
>
> Turning In early 1996 Soros' foundation decided to expand its
> Dollars work in the U.S. It has so far dispersed $50 million to
> into various causes. Some of the future commitments it has
> Change made:
>
> $50 million to the Emma Lazarus Fund to help legal
> aliens
>
> $25 million to address drugs, poverty, crime and
> education in Baltimore, Md.
> $20 million to the Project on Death in America
>
> $15 million for drug-policy reform and needle
> exchanges
>
> $12 million to the Algebra Project, an education
> program
>
> $8.3 million to the Center on Crime, Communities and
> Culture
>
> $3.2 million to promote political-campaign-finance
> reform
>
> $2.5 million to help low-income organizations deal
> with welfare devolution
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> time-webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> TIME Cover
> SEPTEMBER 1, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 9
>
> Turning Dollars into Change
>
> Savvy financier George Soros gave away $1
> billion in Europe. Now he's turned homeward
> with some unusual ideas and deep pockets
>
> BY WILLIAM SHAWCROSS/LONDON
> -----------------------------------------------
>
> [Starter] Great philanthropists often follow a simple
> formula: 1) make billions of dollars in ways that stir
> controversy and occasional outpourings of ire; 2) give much
> of it away to marble-plaqued institutions like colleges and
> libraries so that public revulsion gradually melts into
> reverence.
>
> George Soros got the first part right. As a detached and
> mysterious currency speculator, he made billions by moving
> markets in a manner that made him a whipping boy for
> besieged bankers and ministers. In one famous week in 1992,
> he made $1 billion betting against the British pound,
> earning him the grudging title of the Man Who Broke the Bank
> of England. This summer Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
> Mohamad accused him of being a criminal. He said Soros the
> speculator had attacked Southeast Asian currencies to punish
> their governments for admitting the Burmese military
> regime--which Soros the humanitarian opposes--to asean, a
> regional political and trade organization.
>
> Now Soros is gleefully flouting the script for Act II. With
> a unique and astonishing passion for challenging
> conventional wisdom, he is leveraging his billions to move
> controversial ideas and speculate in policy. In the process,
> he has made himself the most influential, intriguing and to
> some the most infuriating philanthropist of our era. Says
> he: "When I was offered an honorary degree at Oxford, they
> asked me how I wanted to be described, and I said I would
> like to be called a financial, philanthropic and
> philosophical speculator."
>
> Initially, he focused his philanthropic speculation on
> Central and Eastern Europe. A survivor of the Holocaust and
> communism, he spread hundreds of millions of dollars to
> support democracy in countries struggling to break from the
> old Soviet orbit. In the waning years of the cold war, he
> bought photocopiers for his native Hungary so the communists
> couldn't monopolize information. Later, with Russia adrift,
> he spent $100 million to help Soviet science, and
> scientists, survive the transition. In Yugoslavia he was
> outraged by what he perceived to be the pusillanimity of the
> West, so he doled out $50 million to try to save Sarajevo
> from Serb depredations. He has spent millions more funding
> Open Society foundations around the world, which finance
> education, freedom of speech and human-rights projects.
>
> He is now turning his attention to the U.S., his adopted
> country. The reason? The good guys won abroad; there's work
> to do at home. The collapse of the Soviet Empire, he says
> with typical forthrightness, "was a historical opportunity,
> and I rose to the occasion, so there was no time for any
> other activity. When things calmed down, I had the
> opportunity to start thinking about what could be done
> here."
>
> So what kind of reception can this champion of human rights
> and open debate expect for the hundreds of milli