Philanthropy etymologically means "the love of humanity." In modern practical terms, it is "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of life"—balancing the social-scientific aspect emphasized in the twentieth century, with the long-traditional and original humanistic core of the word's ancient coinage.

Put simply, philanthropy is the pursuit of excellence in every facet of human life, for every human life, by imagining and implementing new systems, to bring that philosophy to fruition.

An important distinction should be made, that while being admirable, charity is not the same as philanthropy. Simply argued by the concept that an implemented philanthropic idea may make its owner rich, if he or she so wishes. Compare this to the singular act of giving money away, associated with charity, the two concepts almost oppose each other. "A philanthropist knows the act of philanthropy before knowing the definition of the word". (Paul Gignac Philanthropist.)

Etymology and original meaning

It is generally agreed that the word was coined 2500 years ago in ancient Greece by the playwright, Aeschylus, or whoever else wrote ''Prometheus Bound'' (line 11). There the author told as a myth how the primitive creatures that were created to be human, at first had no knowledge, skills, or culture of any kind—so they lived in caves, in the dark, in constant fear for their lives. Zeus, the tyrannical king of the gods, decided to destroy them, but Prometheus, a Titan whose name meant “forethought,” out of his "''philanthropos tropos''" or “humanity-loving character” gave them two empowering, life-enhancing, gifts: fire, symbolizing all knowledge, skills, technology, arts, and science; and “blind hope” or optimism. The two went together—with fire, humans could be optimistic; with optimism, they could use fire constructively, to improve the human condition.

The new word, φιλάνθρωπος ''philanthropos'', combined two words: φίλος ''philos'', “loving” in the sense of benefitting, caring for, nourishing; and ἄνθρωπος ''anthropos'', “human being” in the sense of “humankind”, “humanity”, or “human-ness”. What Prometheus evidently “loved”, therefore, was their human potential—what they could accomplish and become with “fire” and “blind hope”. The two gifts in effect completed the creation of humankind as a distinctly civilized animal. 'Philanthropia'—loving what it is to be human—was thought to be the key to and essence of civilization.

The Greeks adopted the “love of humanity” as an educational ideal, whose goal was excellence (''arete'')—the fullest development of body, mind and spirit, which is the essence of liberal education. The Platonic Academy's philosophical dictionary defined ''Philanthropia'' as: “A state of well-educated habits stemming from love of humanity. A state of being productive of benefit to humans.” ''Philanthropia'' was later translated by the Romans into Latin as, simply, ''humanitas''—humane-ness. And because Prometheus’ human-empowering gifts rebelled against Zeus’ tyranny, ''philanthropia'' was also associated with freedom and democracy. Both Socrates and the laws of Athens were described as “philanthropic and democratic”—a common expression, the idea being that philanthropic humans are reliably capable of self-government.

Putting all this together in modern terms, there are four relatively authoritative definitions of “philanthropy” that come close to the Classical concept: John W. Gardner’s “private initiatives for the public good”; Robert Payton’s “voluntary action for the public good”; Lester Salamon’s “the private giving of time or valuables…for public purposes” and Robert Bremner’s “the aim of philanthropy…is improvement in the quality of human life”. Combining these to connect modern philanthropy with its entire previous history, “philanthropy” may best be defined as, “private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of life.”

This distinguishes it from government (public initiatives for public good) and business (private initiatives for private good). Omitting the definite article “the” with “public good” avoids the dubious assumption that there is ever a single, knowable public good, and in any case people rarely if ever agree on what that might be; rather, this definition merely says that the benefactor intends a “public” rather than an exclusively “private” good or benefit. The inclusion of “quality of life” ensures the strong humanistic emphasis of the Promethean archetype.

The Classical view of philanthropy disappeared in the Middle Ages, was rediscovered and revived with the Renaissance, and came into the English language in the early 17th century. Sir Francis Bacon in 1592 wrote in a letter that his “vast contemplative ends” expressed his “philanthropia”, and his 1608 essay ''On Goodness'' defined his subject as “the affecting of the weale of men... what the Grecians call philanthropia.” Henry Cockeram, in his English dictionary (1623), cited “philanthropie” as a synonym for “humanitie” (in Latin, humanitas) — thus reaffirming the Classical formulation.

Views

Philosophy

The purpose of philanthropy is also debated. Some equate philanthropy with benevolence and charity for the poor. Others hold that philanthropy can be any altruistic act that fulfills a social need that is not served, is under-served, or is perceived as such by the market.

Some believe that philanthropy can be a means to build community by growing community funds and giving vehicles. When communities see themselves as being resource rich instead of asset poor, the community is in a better position to solve community problems.

However, some believe the purpose of philanthropy is often tribute and self-aggrandizement, as arguably shown by the prevalence of self-titled foundations, rarity of large anonymous donations, and lack of support for unpalatable causes such as the treatment of diarrhea (which despite being easily treatable is the second leading cause of infant death worldwide.)

Philanthropy responds to either the present or the future needs. The charitable response to an impending disaster is an action of philanthropy. It offers immediate honor for the philanthropist, yet requires no foresight. Responding to future needs, however, draws on the donor's foresight and wisdom, but seldom recognizes the donor. Prevention of future needs will often avert far more hardship than a response after the fact. For example, the charities responding to starvation from overpopulation in Africa are afforded swift recognition. Meanwhile, philanthropists behind the U.S. population control movement of the 1960s and 1970s were never recognized, and are lost to history.

Uses of the word

Conventional usage

By the conventional definition of philanthropy , donations are dedicated to a narrowly defined cause and the donation is targeted to effect a recognizable change in social conditions. This often necessitates large donations and financial support sustained over time.

The need for a large financial commitment creates a distinction between philanthropy and ''charitable giving'', which typically plays a supporting role in a charitable organization initiated by someone else. Thus, the conventional usage of ''philanthropy'' applies mainly to wealthy persons, and sometimes to a trust created by a wealthy person with a particular cause or objective targeted.

Many non-wealthy persons have dedicated – thus, donated – substantial portions of their time, effort and wealth to charitable causes. These people are not typically described as philanthropists because individual effort alone is seldom recognized as instigating significant change. These people are thought of as charitable workers but some people wish to recognize these people as philanthropists in honor of their efforts.

A growing trend in philanthropy is the development of giving circles, whereby individual donors—often a group of friends—pool their charitable donations and decide together how to use the money to benefit the causes they care about most. The re-emergence of philanthropy in recent years, led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, which involves applying the techniques of business to philanthropy has been termed philanthrocapitalism.'

Largest individual bequests

$31 billion from Warren Buffett to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (initial value of the gift)

$9 billion from Chuck Feeney to Atlantic Philanthropies

$2 billion from Azim Premji to the Azim Premji Foundation in 2010. $500 million from T. Boone Pickens to Oklahoma State University. $500 million from Walter Annenberg to public school reform in the United States $350 million ($7 billion in modern terms) from Andrew Carnegie in 1901 who distributed most of his wealth to good causes, including the building Carnegie Hall New York City. $424 million from managers of the Reader's Digest fortune to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

$350 million from Michael Jackson who distributed most of his wealth to good causes, and who supported over 39 charity organizations. He was listed in the Guinness Book Of World Records for the "Most Charities Supported By a Pop Star".

$350 million from Yank Barry and his Global Village Champions in food, education and medical supplies to the needy around the World from 1990 to the present.

$225 million from Raymond and Ruth Perelman, parents of Ronald O. Perelman, to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 2011.

$200 million from Joan B. Kroc to National Public Radio in 2003 $100 million from John D. Rockefeller to the Rockefeller Foundation, 1913-1914 $100 million from Henry and Betty Rowan to Glassboro State College

See also

Alfanar

Triodos Bank

Ethical banking

Altruism

Charitable contributions (tax aspects)

Charitable organization

Charity (practice)

Foundation (nonprofit organization)

"Friends of" organization

Giving Circles

High impact philanthropy

History of Public Library Advocacy

Impact Investing

Microgiving

Misanthropy

Non-profit organization

Philanthropy in the United States

Public Library Advocacy

Tithe

Tzedakah

Venture philanthropy

Volunteer

Volunteerism

Youth philanthropy

Zakat

;Lists

List of philanthropists

List of wealthiest foundations

References

External links

ULIB.IUPUI.edu, Joseph and Matthew Payton Philanthropic Studies Library

ULIB.IUPUI.edu, Philanthropic Studies Index

NPtrust.org, History of Philanthropy, 1601–present compiled and edited by National Philanthropic Trust

MCCORD-museum.qc.ca, "A Bourgeois Duty: Philanthropy, 1896-1919" — Illustrated historical essay

GPR.hudson.org, PDF file from the Hudson Institute at ''The Index of Global Philanthropy 2006'' 83 page.

ULIB.IUPUI.edu, Philanthropy Resources Online

MyGivingPoint.org

IMPACT.UPENN.edu, Center for High Impact Philanthropy in the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2)

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Coordinates	56°09′″N40°25′″N
Name	Marc Benioff
Birth date	1964
Birth place	San Francisco, California
networth	US$2.1 billion (2011)
Spouse	Lynne Benioff
Organization	Salesforce.com
Influenced	}}

Marc Russell Benioff (born September 25, 1964, San Francisco, California) is Chairman & CEO of salesforce.com, a cloud computing company.

Benioff started salesforce.com in March 1999 in a rented San Francisco apartment and defined its mission as The End of Software. He is “credited with turning the software industry on its head” by using the Internet to “revamp the way software programs are designed and distributed.” He has long evangelized software as a service as the model that would replace traditional enterprise software. He is the creator of the term “platform as a service” and has extended salesforce.com’s reach by allowing customers to build their own applications on the company’s architecture, or in the salesforce.com “cloud”. He is the author of three books, including the national best seller Behind the Cloud.

Career

Prior to founding salesforce.com, Benioff was at Oracle Corporation for 13 years in a variety of executive positions in sales, marketing, and product development. At 23, he was named Oracle's Rookie of the Year and three years later he was promoted to vice president, the company's youngest person to hold that title. Before joining Oracle, Benioff worked as an assembly language programmer at the Macintosh Division of Apple Computer, where he was inspired by the company and its co-founder, Steve Jobs. While still in high school, he founded ''Liberty Software'', which specialized in microcomputer games, creating and selling games for the Atari system among others.

Education

Benioff received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California in 1986 where he was a member in the TKE social fraternity. He graduated from Burlingame High School in 1982.

Influence and honors

In 2010 Fortune named him one of the Smartest 50 People in Techas well as one of the Top 50 People in Business.The San Francisco Business Times named Benioff 2009 Executive of the Year, "for defying the fierce economic downdraft--and taking the lead role in the creation of an industry."

He was appointed by President George W. Bush as the co-chairman of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and served from 2003–2005, overseeing the publishing of critical reports on health care information technology, cybersecurity, and computational sciences.

Salesforce.com has received many accolades including a Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation award. It has been lauded as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, named No. 7 on The Wired 40, and twice selected as a Top Ten Disrupter by Forbes. In addition, Forbes named salesforce.com one of America's Best Companies.

Philanthropy

Benioff pioneered the 1/1/1 Integrated Philanthropic model, by which companies contribute 1 percent of profits, 1 percent of equity, and 1 percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves. Parts of this 1/1/1 model have been adopted by many other companies, including Google.In 2005, the members of the World Economic Forum named him as one of its Young Global Leaders. In 2007 the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy presented Benioff with the Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award and in 2008 invited him to become a director of the board.

In June 2010 Lynne and Marc Benioff announced a $100 Million Gift to UCSF Children's Hospital with the goal of not only seeing the new hospital built but significantly advancing children’s health worldwide. In 2010, Benioff and his wife were named one of the Top 25 Most Effective Philanthropists by Barron’s.

Bibliography

''Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well'' with Karen Southwick (2004)

''The Business of Changing the World: 20 Great Leaders on Strategic Corporate Philanthropy'' with Carlye Adler (2006)

''Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry'' with Carlye Adler (2009)

External links

Official company biography Salesforce.com website

San Francisco Chronicle interview

Sonshi.com interview

PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer cloud computing segment

President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) Report, Revolutionizing Health Care Through Information Technology

PITAC Report, Cyber Security: A Crisis of Prioritization

PITAC Report, Computational Science: Ensuring America's Competitiveness

Book review in The Economist-Mystic Marc's Guide to Success

UCSF to Get $100 Million for Hospital by Robert A. Guth, The Wall Street Journal

References

Category:1964 births Category:American computer businesspeople Category:Living people Category:People from Burlingame, California Category:People from San Francisco, California Category:University of Southern California alumni Category:Writers from California Category:Apple Inc. employees Category:Oracle employees

fr:Marc Benioff

Coordinates	56°09′″N40°25′″N
Name	Bill Clinton
Office	42nd President of the United States
Vicepresident	Al Gore
Term start	January 20, 1993
Term end	January 20, 2001
Predecessor	George H. W. Bush
Successor	George W. Bush
Order2	40th and 42nd Governor of Arkansas
Lieutenant2	Winston BryantJim Tucker
Term start2	January 11, 1983
Term end2	December 12, 1992
Predecessor2	Frank White
Successor2	Jim Tucker
Lieutenant3	Joe Purcell
Term start3	January 9, 1979
Term end3	January 19, 1981
Predecessor3	Joe Purcell (Acting)
Successor3	Frank White
Office4	50th Attorney General of Arkansas
Governor4	David PryorJoe Purcell (Acting)
Term start4	January 3, 1977
Term end4	January 9, 1979
Predecessor4	Jim Tucker
Successor4	Steve Clark
Birth date	August 19, 1946
Birth place	Hope, Arkansas, U.S.
Party	Democratic Party
Spouse	Hillary Rodham (m. 1975)
Children	Chelsea (b. 1980)
Alma mater	Georgetown University University College, OxfordYale Law School
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Baptist
Signature	Signature of Bill Clinton.svg
Signature alt	Cursive signature in ink
Website	Clinton Presidential Library }}

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Before that, he was Governor of the state of Arkansas. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Some of his policies, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and welfare reform, have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance, while on other issues his stance was left-of-center.

Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas where he grew to become both a student leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend University College, Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since January 21, 2009 and was the Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the National Governors Association.

As President, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, during the last three years of Clinton's presidency. After a failed attempt at health care reform by the Clinton administration, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 1994, for the first time in forty years. Two years later, in 1996, Clinton was re-elected and became the first member of the Democratic Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full term as president. Later he was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in a scandal involving a White House intern, but was acquitted by the U.S. Senate and served his complete term of office.

Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U.S. president since World War II. Since then, he has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. Based on his philanthropic worldview, Clinton created the William J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes such as treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming. In 2004, he released his autobiography ''My Life'', and was involved in his wife Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign and subsequently in that of President Barack Obama. In 2009, he was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Clinton teamed with George W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

Early life and career

Bill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe, III, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before Bill was born. His mother Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923–1994) traveled to New Orleans to study nursing soon after he was born. She left Bill in Hope with grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and operated a small grocery store. At a time when the Southern United States was racially segregated, Bill's grandparents sold goods on credit to people of all races. In 1950, Bill's mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton, Sr., who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas with his brother. The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950.

Although he assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Billy (as he was known then) turned fourteen that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather. Clinton says he remembers his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and half brother, Roger Clinton, Jr., to the point where he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them.

In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School – where he was an active student leader, avid reader, and musician. Fellow students included the late watercolorist and sculptor, Tonya Bailey. He was in the chorus and played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band's saxophone section. He briefly considered dedicating his life to music, but as he noted in his autobiography ''My Life'':

Clinton has named two influential moments in his life that contributed to his decision to become a public figure, both occurring in 1963. One was his visit as a Boys Nation senator to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy. The other was listening to Martin Luther King's 1963 ''I Have a Dream'' speech, which impressed him enough that he later memorized it.

College and law school years

With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.) degree in 1968. He spent the summer of 1967, the summer before his senior year, interning for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. While in college, he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Clinton was also a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth group affiliated with Freemasonry, but he never became a Freemason. He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi honorary band fraternity.

Upon graduation, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, though because he had switched programs and had left early for Yale University, he did not receive a degree there. He developed an interest in rugby union, playing at Oxford and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas. While at Oxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests, including organizing an October 1969 Moratorium event.

Clinton's political opponents charge that to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War during his college years, he used the political influence of a U.S. Senator, who employed him as an aide. Col. Eugene Holmes, an Army officer who was involved in Clinton's case, issued a notarized statement during the 1992 presidential campaign: "I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to Senator Fullbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be admitted to the ROTC program... I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification." Although legal, Clinton's actions were criticized by conservatives and some Vietnam veterans during his presidential campaign in 1992.

After Oxford, Clinton attended Yale Law School and obtained a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1973. In a Yale library in 1971 he met fellow law student Hillary Rodham, who was a year ahead of him. They began dating and soon were inseparable. After only about a month, Clinton proposed to Rodham and postponed his plans to be a coordinator for the McGovern campaign for the 1972 United States presidential election in order to move in with her in California. They later married on October 11, 1975, and their only child, Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980.

Clinton did eventually move to Texas with Rodham to take a job leading McGovern's effort there in 1972. He spent considerable time in Dallas, at the campaign's local headquarters on Lemmon Avenue, where he had an office. There, Clinton worked with future two-term mayor of Dallas, Ron Kirk, future governor of Texas, Ann Richards, and then unknown television director (and future filmmaker), Steven Spielberg.

Political career 1978–1992

Governor of Arkansas

After graduating from Yale Law School, Clinton returned to Arkansas and became a law professor at the University of Arkansas. A year later, he ran for the House of Representatives in 1974. The incumbent, Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt, defeated Clinton in the general election by a 52% to 48% margin. With only minor opposition in the primary and no opposition at all in the general election, Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976.

Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas in 1978, having defeated the Republican candidate Lynn Lowe, a farmer from Texarkana. He became the youngest governor in the country at 32. Due to his youthful appearance, Clinton was often called the "Boy Governor", a referrent that continues to be used to refer to him during his gubernatorial era on occasion. He worked on educational reform and Arkansas's roads, with wife Hillary leading a successful committee on urban health care reform. However, his term included an unpopular motor vehicle tax and citizens' anger over the escape of Cuban refugees (from the Mariel boatlift) detained in Fort Chaffee in 1980. Monroe Schwarzlose of Kingsland in Cleveland County, polled 31% of the vote against Clinton in the Democratic gubernatorial primary of 1980. Some suggested Schwarzlose's unexpected voter turnout foreshadowed Clinton's defeat in the general election that year by Republican challenger Frank D. White. As Clinton once joked, he was the youngest ex-governor in the nation's history.

Clinton joined friend Bruce Lindsey's Little Rock law firm of Wright, Lindsey and Jennings. In 1982, he was again elected governor and kept this job for ten years. He helped Arkansas transform its economy and significantly improve the state's educational system. He became a leading figure among the New Democrats. The New Democrats, organized as the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), were a branch of the Democratic Party that called for welfare reform and smaller government, a policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans. He gave the Democratic response to President Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address and served as Chair of the National Governors Association from 1986 to 1987, bringing him to an audience beyond Arkansas. Clinton made economic growth, job creation and educational improvement high priorities. For senior citizens, he removed the sales tax from medications and increased the home property-tax exemption.

In the early 1980s, Clinton made reform of the Arkansas education system a top priority. The Arkansas Education Standards Committee, chaired by Clinton's wife, attorney and Legal Services Corporation chair Hillary Rodham Clinton, succeeded in reforming the education system, transforming it from the worst in the nation into one of the best. Many have considered this the greatest achievement of the Clinton governorship. Clinton and the committee were responsible for state educational improvement programs, notably more spending for schools, rising opportunities for gifted children, an increase in vocational education, raising of teachers' salaries, inclusion of a wider variety of courses, and mandatory teacher testing for aspiring educators. He defeated four Republican candidates for governor: Lowe (1978), White (1982 and 1986), and businessmen Woody Freeman of Jonesboro, (1984) and Sheffield Nelson of Little Rock (1990).

The Clintons' personal and business affairs during the 1980s included transactions that became the basis of the Whitewater investigation that dogged his later presidential administration. After extensive investigation over several years, no indictments were made against the Clintons related to the years in Arkansas.

According to some sources, Clinton was in his early years a death penalty opponent who switched positions. During Clinton's term, Arkansas performed its first executions since 1964 (the death penalty was re-enacted on March 23, 1973). As Governor, he oversaw four executions: one by electric chair and three by lethal injection. Later, as president, Clinton was the first President to pardon a death-row inmate since the federal death penalty was reintroduced in 1988.

Democratic presidential primaries of 1988

In 1987, there was media speculation Clinton would enter the race after then-New York Governor Mario Cuomo declined to run and Democratic front-runner Gary Hart withdrew owing to revelations of marital infidelity. Clinton decided to remain as Arkansas governor (following consideration for the potential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton for governor, initially favored – but ultimately vetoed – by the First Lady). For the nomination, Clinton endorsed Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. He gave the nationally televised opening night address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, which at 33 minutes was criticized for being too long. Presenting himself as a moderate and a member of the New Democrat wing of the Democratic Party, he headed the moderate Democratic Leadership Council in 1990 and 1991.

1992 presidential campaign

In the first primary contest, the Iowa caucus, Clinton finished a distant third to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. During the campaign for the New Hampshire primary, reports of an extramarital affair with Gennifer Flowers surfaced. As Clinton fell far behind former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas in the New Hampshire polls, following Super Bowl XXVI, Clinton and his wife Hillary went on ''60 Minutes'' to rebuff the charges. Their television appearance was a calculated risk, but Clinton regained several delegates. He finished second to Tsongas in the New Hampshire primary, but after trailing badly in the polls and coming within single digits of winning, the media viewed it as a victory. News outlets labeled him "The Comeback Kid" for earning a firm second-place finish.

Winning the big prizes of Florida and Texas and many of the Southern primaries on Super Tuesday gave Clinton a sizable delegate lead. However, former California Governor Jerry Brown was scoring victories and Clinton had yet to win a significant contest outside his native South. With no major Southern state remaining, Clinton targeted New York, which had many delegates. He scored a resounding victory in New York City, shedding his image as a regional candidate. Having been transformed into the consensus candidate, he secured the Democratic Party nomination, finishing with a victory in Jerry Brown's home state of California.

During the campaign, questions of conflict of interest regarding state business and the politically powerful Rose Law Firm, at which Hillary Rodham Clinton was a partner, arose. Clinton argued the questions were moot because all transactions with the state had been deducted before determining Hillary's firm pay. Further concern arose when Bill Clinton announced that, with Hillary, voters would be getting two presidents "for the price of one".

While campaigning for U.S. President, the then Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas to see that Ricky Ray Rector would be executed. After killing a police officer and a civilian, Rector shot himself in the head, leading to what his lawyers said was a state where he could still talk but did not understand the idea of death. According to Arkansas state and Federal law, a seriously mentally impaired inmate cannot be executed. The courts disagreed with the allegation of grave mental impairment and allowed the execution. Clinton's return to Arkansas for the execution was framed in a ''The New York Times'' article as a possible political move to counter "soft on crime" accusations.

Because Bush's approval ratings were in the 80% range during the Gulf War, he was described as unbeatable. However, when Bush compromised with Democrats to try to lower Federal deficits, he reneged on his promise not to raise taxes, hurting his approval rating. Clinton repeatedly condemned Bush for making a promise he failed to keep. By election time, the economy was souring and Bush saw his approval rating plummet to just slightly over 40%. Finally, conservatives were previously united by anti-communism, but with the end of the Cold War, the party lacked a uniting issue. When Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson addressed Christian themes at the Republican National Convention – with Bush criticizing Democrats for omitting God from their platform – many moderates were alienated. Clinton then pointed to his moderate, "New Democrat" record as governor of Arkansas, though some on the more liberal side of the party remained suspicious. Many Democrats who had supported Ronald Reagan and Bush in previous elections switched their support to Clinton. Clinton and his running mate, Al Gore, toured the country during the final weeks of the campaign, shoring up support and pledging a "new beginning".

Clinton won the 1992 presidential election (43.0% of the vote) against Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush (37.4% of the vote) and billionaire populist Ross Perot, who ran as an independent (18.9% of the vote) on a platform focusing on domestic issues; a significant part of Clinton's success was Bush's steep decline in public approval. Clinton's election ended twelve years of Republican rule of the White House and twenty of the previous twenty-four years. The election gave Democrats full control of the United States Congress. It was the first time this had occurred since Democrats controlled the 95th United States Congress during the Jimmy Carter presidency in the late 1970s.

Presidency, 1993–2001

During his presidency, Clinton advocated for a wide variety of legislation and programs, much of which was enacted into law or was implemented by the executive branch. Some of his policies, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and welfare reform, have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance, while on other issues his stance was left-of-center. Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, during the last three years of Clinton's presidency. At the end of his presidency, Clinton moved to New York and helped his wife win eleection to the U.S. Senate there.

First term, 1993–1997

Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Shortly after taking office, Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 on February 5, which required large employers to allow employees to take unpaid leave for pregnancy or a serious medical condition. This action had bipartisan support, and proved quite popular with the general public.

On February 15, 1993, Clinton made his first address to the nation, announcing his plan to raise taxes to cap the budget deficit. Two days later, in a nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress, Clinton unveiled his economic plan. The plan focused on reducing the deficit rather than on cutting taxes for the middle class, which had been high on his campaign agenda. Clinton's advisers pressured him to raise taxes on the theory that a smaller federal budget deficit would reduce bond interest rates.

On May 19, 1993, Clinton fired seven employees of the White House Travel Office, causing a controversy even though the Travel Office staff served at the pleasure of the President and could be dismissed without cause. The White House responded to the controversy by claiming the firings were done because of financial improprieties that had been revealed by a brief FBI investigation. Critics contended the firings had been done to allow friends of the Clintons to take over the travel business and that the involvement of the FBI was unwarranted.

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Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 in August of that year, which passed Congress without a Republican vote. It cut taxes for fifteen million low-income families, made tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses, and raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers. Additionally, through the implementation of spending restraints, it mandated the budget be balanced over a number of years.

Clinton made a major speech to Congress regarding a health care reform plan on September 22, 1993, aimed at achieving universal coverage through a national health care plan. This was one of the most prominent items on Clinton's legislative agenda, and resulted from a task force headed by Hillary Clinton. Though at first well received in political circles, it was eventually doomed by well-organized opposition from conservatives, the American Medical Association, and the health insurance industry. However, John F. Harris, a biographer of Clinton's, states the program failed because of a lack of coordination within the White House. Despite the Democratic majority in Congress, the effort to create a national health care system ultimately died when compromise legislation by George J. Mitchell failed to gain a majority of support in August of 1994. It was the first major legislative defeat of Clinton's administration.

In November of 1993, David Hale, the source of criminal allegations against Bill Clinton in the Whitewater affair, alleged that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, pressured him to provide an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, the partner of the Clintons in the Whitewater land deal. A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation did result in convictions against the McDougals for their role in the Whitewater project, but the Clintons themselves were never charged, and Clinton maintains innocence in the affair.

Clinton signed the Brady Bill into law on November 30, 1993, which imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases. He also expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, a subsidy for low-income workers.

In December of that year, allegations by Arkansas state troopers Larry Patterson and Roger Perry were first reported by David Brock in the American Spectator. Later known as Troopergate, the allegations by these men were that they arranged sexual liaisons for Bill Clinton back when he was governor of Arkansas. The story mentioned a woman named ''Paula'', a reference to Paula Jones. Brock later apologized to Clinton, saying the article was politically motivated "bad journalism" and that "the troopers were greedy and had slimy motives."

That same month, Clinton implementing a Department of Defense directive known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", which allowed gay men and women to serve in the armed services provided they kept their sexuality a secret, and forbade the military from inquiring about an individual's sexual orientation. This move garnered criticism from the left (for being too tentative in promoting gay rights) and from the right (who opposed any effort to allow gays to serve). Some gay-rights advocates criticized Clinton for not going far enough and accused him of making his campaign promise to get votes and contributions. Their position was that Clinton should have integrated the military by executive order, noting that President Harry Truman used executive order to racially desegregate the armed forces. Clinton's defenders argue that an executive order might have prompted the Senate to write the exclusion of gays into law, potentially making it harder to integrate the military in the future. Later in his presidency, in 1999, Clinton criticized the way the policy was implemented, saying he did not think any serious person could say it was not "out of whack."

On January 1, 1994, Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law. Througout his first year in office, Clinton consistently supported ratification of the treaty by the U.S. Senate. Clinton and most of his allies in the Democratic Leadership Committee strongly supported free trade measures; there remained, however, strong disagreement within the party. Opposition came chiefly from anti-trade Republicans, protectionist Democrats and supporters of Ross Perot. The bill passed the house with 234 votes against 200 opposed (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favor; 156 Democrats, 43 Republicans, and 1 independent against). The treaty was then ratified by the Senate and signed into law by the President.

Clinton's 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill made many changes to U.S. law, including the expansion of the death penalty to include crimes not resulting in death, such as running a large-scale drug enterprise. During Clinton's re-election campaign he said, "My 1994 crime bill expanded the death penalty for drug kingpins, murderers of federal law enforcement officers, and nearly 60 additional categories of violent felons."

The Clinton administration also launched the first official White House website, whitehouse.gov, on October 21, 1994. It was followed by three more versions, resulting in the final edition launched in 2000. The White House website was part of a wider movement of the Clinton administration toward web-based communication. According to Robert Longley, "Clinton and Gore were responsible for pressing almost all federal agencies, the U.S. court system and the U.S. military onto the Internet, thus opening up America's government to more of America's citizens than ever before. On July 17, 1996, Clinton issued Executive Order 13011 - Federal Information Technology, ordering the heads of all federal agencies to utilize information technology fully to make the information of the agency easily accessible to the public."

After two years of Democratic Party control, the Democrats lost control of Congress in the mid-term elections in 1994, for the first time in forty years.

Law professor Ken Gromley's book ''The Death of American Virtue'' reveals that Clinton escaped a 1996 assassination attempt in the Philippines by terrorists working for Osama bin Laden. During his visit to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Manila in 1996, he was saved shortly before his car was due to drive over a bridge where a bomb had been planted. Gromley said he was told the details of the bomb plot by Louis Merletti, a former director of the Secret Service. Clinton was scheduled to visit a local politician in central Manila, when secret service officers intercepted a message suggesting that an attack was imminent. A transmission used the words "bridge" and "wedding", supposedly a terrorist's code words for assassination. The motorcade was re-routed and the US agents later discovered a bomb planted under the bridge. The report said the subsequent US investigation into the plot "revealed that it was masterminded by a Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden". Gromley said, "It remained top secret except to select members of the US intelligence community. At the time, there were media reports about the discovery of two bombs, one at Manila airport and another at the venue for the leaders' meeting".

The White House FBI files controversy of June 1996 arose concerning improper access by the White House to FBI security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, head of the White House Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background report files without asking permission of the subject individuals; many of these were employees of former Republican administrations. In March 2000, Independent Counsel Robert Ray determined that there was no credible evidence of any crime. Ray's report further stated, "there was no substantial and credible evidence that any senior White House official was involved" in seeking the files.

As part of a 1996 initiative to curb illegal immigration, Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) on September 30, 1996. Appointed by Clinton, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform recommended reducing legal immigration from about 800,000 people a year to about 550,000.

The 1996 United States campaign finance controversy was an alleged effort by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to influence the domestic policies of the United States, before and during the Clinton administration, and involved the fundraising practices of the administration itself. The Chinese government denied all accusations.

Second term, 1997–2001

In the 1996 presidential election, Clinton was re-elected, receiving 49.2% of the popular vote over Republican Bob Dole (40.7% of the popular vote) and Reform candidate Ross Perot (8.4% of the popular vote), becoming the first Democratic incumbent since Lyndon Johnson to be elected to a second term and the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected President more than once. The Republicans lost a few seats in the House and gained a few in the Senate, but retained control of both houses of the 105th United States Congress. Clinton received 379, or over 70% of the Electoral College votes, with Dole receiving 159 electoral votes.

An the January 1997 State of the Union address, Clinton proposed a new initiative to provide coverage to up to five million children. Senators Ted Kennedy – a Democrat – and Orrin Hatch – a Republican – teamed up with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her staff in 1997, and succeeded in passing legislation forming the Children's Health Insurance Program, the largest (successful) health care reform in the years of the Clinton Presidency. That year, Hillary Clinton shepherded through Congress the Adoption and Safe Families Act and two years later she succeeded in helping pass the Foster Care Independence Act.

In a lame-duck session of Congress after the 1998 elections, the House voted to impeach Clinton, based on the results of the Lewinsky scandal. This made Clinton only the second U.S. president to be impeached (the first being Andrew Johnson). Impeachment procedings were based on allegations that Clinton had lied about his relationship with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky in a sworn deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit. After the Starr Report was submitted to the House providing what it termed "substantial and credible information that President Clinton Committed Acts that May Constitute Grounds for an Impeachment", the House began impeachment hearings against Clinton before the mid-term elections. Although the mid-term elections held in November 1998 were at the 6-year point in an 8-year presidency (a time in the electoral cycle where the party holding the White House usually loses Congressional seats), the Democratic Party gained several seats. To hold impeachment proceedings, the Republican leadership called a lame-duck session in December 1998.

While the House Judiciary Committee hearings ended in a straight party-line vote, there was lively debate on the House floor. The two charges passed in the House (largely with Republican support, but with a handful of Democratic votes as well) were for perjury and obstruction of justice. The perjury charge arose from Clinton's testimony about his relationship to Lewinsky during a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. The obstruction charge was based on his actions during the subsequent investigation of that testimony.

The Senate later voted to acquit Clinton on both charges. The Senate refused to meet to hold an impeachment trial before the end of the old term, so the trial was held over until the next Congress. Clinton was represented by Washington law firm Williams & Connolly. The Senate finished a twenty-one-day trial on February 12, 1999, with the vote on both counts falling short of the Constitutional two-thirds majority requirement to convict and remove an officeholder. The final vote was generally along party lines, with no Democrats voting guilty, and only a handful of Republicans voting not guilty.

Clinton controversially issued 141 pardons and 36 commutations on his last day in office on January 20, 2001. Most of the controversy surrounded Marc Rich and allegations that Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, accepted payments in return for influencing the president's decision-making regarding the pardons. Some of Clinton's pardons remain a point of controversy.

Military and foreign events

Many military events occurred during Clinton's presidency. The Battle of Mogadishu also occurred in Somalia in 1993. During the operation, two U.S. helicopters were shot down by rocket-propelled grenade attacks to their tail rotors, trapping soldiers behind enemy lines. This resulted in an urban battle that killed 18 American soldiers, wounded 73 others, and one was taken prisoner. There were many more Somali casualties. Some of the American bodies were dragged through the streets – a spectacle broadcast on television news programs. In response, U.S. forces were withdrawn from Somalia and later conflicts were approached with fewer soldiers on the ground.

In 1995, U.S. and NATO aircraft attacked Bosnian Serb targets to halt attacks on U.N. safe zones and to pressure them into a peace accord. Clinton deployed U.S. peacekeepers to Bosnia in late 1995, to uphold the subsequent Dayton Agreement.

Capturing Osama bin Laden had been an objective of the United States government from the presidency of Bill Clinton until bin Laden's death in 2011. It has been asserted by Mansoor Ijaz that in 1996 while the Clinton Administration had begun pursuit of the policy, the Sudanese government allegedly offered to arrest and extradite Bin Laden as well as to provide the United States detailed intelligence information about growing militant organizations in the region, including Hezbollah and Hamas, and that U.S. authorities allegedly rejected each offer, despite knowing of bin Laden's involvement in bombings on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. However, the 9/11 Commission found that although "former Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel Bin Laden to the United States", "we have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim." In 1998, two years after the warning, the Clinton administration ordered several military missions to capture or kill bin Laden that failed.

In response to the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed a dozen Americans and hundreds of Africans, Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. First was a Sudanese Pharmecutical company suspected of assisting Osama Bin Laden in making chemical weapons. The second was Bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Clinton was subsequently criticized when it turned out that a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan (originally alleged to be a chemical warfare plant) had been destroyed.

To stop the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Albanians by nationalist Serbians in the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's province of Kosovo, Clinton authorized the use of American troops in a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, named Operation Allied Force. General Wesley Clark was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and oversaw the mission. With United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, the bombing campaign ended on June 10, 1999. The resolution placed Kosovo under UN administration and authorized a peacekeeping force. NATO announced that its forces had suffered zero combat deaths, and two deaths from an Apache helicopter crash. Opinions in the popular press criticized pre-war genocide statements by the Clinton administration as greatly exaggerated. A U.N. Court ruled genocide did not take place, but recognized, "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments". The term "ethnic cleansing" was used as an alternative to "genocide" to denote not just ethnically motivated murder but also displacement, though critics charge there is no difference. Slobodan Milošević, the President of Yugoslavia at the time, was eventually charged with the "murders of about 600 individually identified ethnic Albanians" and "crimes against humanity."

In Clinton's 1998 State of the Union Address, he warned Congress of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's possible pursuit of nuclear weapons: }}

To weaken Saddam Hussein's grip of power, Clinton signed H.R. 4655 into law on October 31, 1998, which instituted a policy of "regime change" against Iraq, though it explicitly stated it did not speak to the use of American military forces. The administration then launched a four-day bombing campaign named Operation Desert Fox, lasting from December 16 to December 19, 1998. For the last two years of Clinton's presidency, U.S. aircraft routinely attacked hostile Iraqi anti-air installations inside the Iraqi no-fly zones.

Clinton's November 2000 visit to Vietnam was the first by a U.S. President since the end of the Vietnam War. Clinton remained popular with the public throughout his two terms as President, ending his presidential career with a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-term approval rating of any President since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Further, the Clinton administration signed over 270 trade liberalization pacts with other countries during its tenure. On October 10, 2000, Clinton signed into law the U.S.–China Relations Act of 2000, which granted permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) trade status to People's Republic of China. The president asserted that free trade would gradually open China to democratic reform. Clinton also oversaw a boom of the U.S. economy. Under Clinton, the United States had a projected federal budget surplus for the first time since 1969.

After initial successes such as the Oslo accords of the early 1990s, Clinton attempted to address the Arab-Israeli conflict. Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat together at Camp David. Following the peace talk failures, Clinton stated Arafat "missed the opportunity" to facilitate a "just and lasting peace." In his autobiography, Clinton blames Arafat for the collapse of the summit. The situation broke down completely with the start of the Second Intifada.

Judicial appointments

Clinton appointed the following justices to the Supreme Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg – 1993 Stephen Breyer – 1994

Along with his two Supreme Court appointments, Clinton appointed 66 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 305 judges to the United States district courts. His 373 judicial appointments is second in American history, behind Ronald Reagan's. Clinton also experienced a number of judicial appointment controversies, as 69 nominees to federal judgeships were not processed by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. In all, 84% of his nominees were confirmed.

Public opinion

Clinton's job approval rating fluctuated in the 40s and 50s throughout his first term. In his second term, his rating consistently ranged from the high-50s to the high-60s. After his impeachment proceedings in 1998 and 1999, Clinton's rating reached its highest point. He finished with an approval rating of 68%, which matched those of Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt as the highest ratings for departing presidents in the modern era.

As he was leaving office, a CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup poll revealed 45% said they would miss him. While 55% thought he "would have something worthwhile to contribute and should remain active in public life", 68% thought he would be remembered for his "involvement in personal scandal", and 58% answered "No" to the question "Do you generally think Bill Clinton is honest and trustworthy?". Forty-seven percent of the respondents identified themselves as being Clinton supporters. The same percentage said he would be remembered as either "outstanding" or "above average" as a president, while 22% said he would be remembered as "below average" or "poor".

The Gallup Organization published a poll in February 2007, asking respondents to name the greatest president in U.S. history; Clinton came in fourth place, capturing 13% of the vote. In a 2006 Quinnipiac University poll asking respondents to name the best president since World War II, Clinton ranked 3% behind Ronald Reagan to place second with 25% of the vote. However, in the same poll, when respondents were asked to name the worst president since World War II, Clinton placed 1% behind Richard Nixon and 18% behind George W. Bush to come in third with 16% of the vote.

In May 2006, a CNN poll comparing Clinton's job performance with that of his successor, George W. Bush, found that a strong majority of respondents said Clinton outperformed Bush in six different areas questioned. ABC News characterized public consensus on Clinton as, "You can't trust him, he's got weak morals and ethics and he's done a heck of a good job." Clinton's 66% Gallup Poll approval rating was also the highest Gallup approval rating of any postwar President leaving office, three points ahead of Reagan.

In March 2010, a Newsmax/Zogby poll asking Americans which of the current living former presidents they think is best equipped to deal with the problems the country faces today, found that a wide margin of respondents would pick Bill Clinton. Clinton received 41% of the vote, while former President George W. Bush received 15%, former President George H. W. Bush received 7%, and former President Jimmy Carter received 5%. Although 26% chose "none", and 5% were not sure, Clinton maintained the highest percentage.

Public image

As the first baby boomer president, Clinton was the first president in a half-century not to have been alive during World War II. Authors Martin Walker and Bob Woodward state Clinton's innovative use of sound bite-ready dialogue, personal charisma, and public perception-oriented campaigning was a major factor in his high public approval ratings. When Clinton played the saxophone on ''The Arsenio Hall Show'', he was described by some religious conservatives as "the MTV president." Opponents sometimes referred to him as "Slick Willie", a nickname first applied while he was governor of Arkansas and lasting throughout his presidency. Standing at a height of (1.88 m), Clinton is tied with five others as the fourth-tallest president in the nation's history. His folksy manner led him to be nicknamed "Bubba", especially in the Southern U.S.

Clinton drew strong support from the African American community and made improving race relations a major theme of his presidency. In 1998, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison in The New Yorker called Clinton "the first Black president", saying, "Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas". Noting that Clinton's sex life was scrutinized more than his career accomplishments, Morrison compared this to the stereotyping and double standards that blacks typically endure.

Sexual misconduct allegations

Throughout his career, Clinton has been subject to various allegations of sexual misconduct, though he as only admitted extramarital relationships with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers. For alleged misconduct during his governorship, Paula Jones brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton while he was president. The case was initially dismissed, but Jones appealed the dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. During the deposition for the Jones lawsuit, which was held at the White House, Clinton denied having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky a denial that became the basis for the impeachment charge of perjury. On November 18, 1998, Clinton agreed to an out-of-court settlement, and agreed to pay Jones and her attorneys a sum of $850,000.00. Clinton denies ever engaging in a sexual affair with her. Gennifer Flowers, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Sally Perdue, and Dolly Kyle Browning each have reported having adulterous sexual relations with Clinton during or before his service as governor. Gracen later apologized to Hillary Clinton.

His ability to survive multiple scandals and maintain high approval ratings led to a nickname of "Teflon Bill", in imitation of Ronald Reagan's nickname "Teflon Ron".

Post-presidential career

Bill Clinton continues to be active in public life, giving speeches, fundraising, and founding charitable organizations. Altogether, Clinton has spoken at the last six Democratic National Conventions, dating to 1988.

Activities up until 2008 campaign

In 2002, Clinton warned that pre-emptive military action against Iraq would have unwelcome consequences. In 2005, Clinton criticized the Bush administration for its handling of emissions control, while speaking at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Arkansas was dedicated in 2004. Clinton released a best-selling autobiography, ''My Life'' in 2004. In 2007, he released ''Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World'', which also became a bestseller and garnered positive reviews.

In the aftermath of the 2005 Asian tsunami, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Clinton to head a relief effort. After Hurricane Katrina, Clinton joined with fellow former President George H. W. Bush to establish the Bush-Clinton Tsunami Fund in January of 2005, and the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund in October of that year. As part of the tsunami effort, these two ex-presidents appeared in a Super Bowl XXXIX pre-game show, and traveled to the affected areas. They also spoke together at the funeral of Boris Yeltsin in 2007.

Based on his philanthropic worldview, Clinton created the William J. Clinton Foundation to address issues of global importance. This foundation includes the Clinton Foundation HIV and AIDS Initiative (CHAI), which strives to combat that disease, and has worked with the Australian government toward that end. The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), begun by the Clinton Foundation in 2005, attempts to address world problems such as global public health, poverty alleviation and religious and ethnic conflict. In 2005, Clinton announced through his foundation an agreement with manufacturers to stop selling sugared drinks in schools. Clinton's foundation joined with the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group in 2006 to improve cooperation among those cities, and he met with foreign leaders to promote this initiative. The foundation has received donations from a number of governments all over the world, including Asia and the Middle East. In 2008, Foundation director Inder Singh announced that deals to reduce the price of anti-malaria drugs by 30% in developing nations. Clinton also spoke in favor of California Proposition 87 on alternative energy, which was voted down.

2008 presidential election

During the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, Clinton vigorously advocated on behalf of his wife, Hillary Clinton. Through speaking engagements and fundraisers, he was able to raise $10 million toward her campaign. Some worried that as an ex-president, he was too active on the trail, too negative to Clinton rival Barack Obama, and alienating his supporters at home and abroad. Many were especially critical of him following his remarks in the South Carolina primary, which Obama won. Later in the 2008 primaries, there was some infighting between Bill and Hillary's staffs, especially in Pennsylvania. Considering Bill's remarks, many thought that he could not rally Hillary supporters behind Obama after Obama won the primary. Such remarks lead to apprehension that the party would be split to the detriment of Obama's election. Fears were allayed August 27, 2008, when Clinton enthusiastically endorsed Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, saying that all his experience as president assures him that Obama is "ready to lead". After Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was over, Bill Clinton continued to raise funds to help pay off her campaign debt.

After the 2008 election

In 2009, Clinton travelled to North Korea on behalf of two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea. Euna Lee and Laura Ling had been imprisoned for illegally entering the country from China. Jimmy Carter had made a similar visit in 1994. After Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Kim issued a pardon.

Since then, Clinton has been assigned a number of other diplomatic missions. He was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti in 2009. In response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Clinton and George W. Bush would coordinate efforts to raise funds for Haiti's recovery. Clinton continues to visit Haiti to witness the inauguration of refugee villages, and to raise funds for victims of the earthquake. In 2010, Clinton announced support of, and delivered the keynote address for, the inauguration of NTR, Ireland's first ever environmental foundation.

Post-presidential health concerns

In September 2004, Clinton received a quadruple bypass surgery. In March 2005, he underwent surgery for a partially-collapsed lung. On February 11, 2010, he was rushed to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City after complaining of chest pains, and had two coronary stents implanted in his heart. It has been widely reported that Clinton has become a vegan for health reasons, but he still occasionally eats fish.

Honors and accolades

Clinton has received many honorary degrees, including Doctorate of Law degrees from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Tulane University, and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Schools have been named for him, and statues do homage him. The Clinton Presidential Center was opened in Little Rock, Arkansas in his honor on December 5, 2001. He has been honored in various other ways, in countries that include the Czech Republic, New Guinea, Germany, and Kosovo. U.S. states where he has been honored include Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and New York. He was presented with the Medal for Distinguished Public Service by Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in 2001.

In 1993, Clinton was selected as Time magazine's "Man of the Year", and again in 1998, along with Ken Starr. From a poll conducted of the American people in December 1999, Clinton was among eighteen included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century. He has been honored with a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, a J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, a TED Prize (named for the confluence of technology, entertainment and design), and many other awards and honors.

References

Further reading

Primary sources

Clinton, Bill. (with Al Gore). ''Science in the National Interest.'' Washington, D.C.: The White House, August 1994.

--- (with Al Gore). ''The Climate Change Action Plan.'' Washington, D.C.: The White House, October 1993.

Taylor Branch ''The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President.'' (2009) Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9781416543336

''Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, William J. Clinton.'' Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration: For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1994-2002.

S. Daniel Abraham ''Peace is Possible'', foreword by Bill Clinton

Popular books

Peter Baker ''The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton'' (2000) ISBN 0-684-86813-X

James Bovard ''Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years'' (2000) ISBN 0-312-23082-6

Joe Conason and Gene Lyons ''The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton'' (2003) ISBN 0-312-27319-3

Elizabeth Drew ''On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency'' (1994) ISBN 0-671-87147-1

David Gergen ''Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership.'' (2000) ISBN 0-684-82663-1

Nigel Hamilton ''Bill Clinton: An American Journey'' (2003) ISBN 0-375-50610-1

Christopher Hitchens ''No One Left to Lie to: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton'' (1999) ISBN 1-85984-736-6

Michael Isikoff ''Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story'' (1999) ISBN 0-609-60393-0

Mark Katz ''Clinton and Me: A Real-Life Political Comedy'' (2004) ISBN 978-0-7868-6949-7

David Maraniss ''The Clinton Enigma: A Four and a Half Minute Speech Reveals This President's Entire Life'' (1998) ISBN 0-684-86296-4

Dick Morris with Eileen McGann ''Because He Could'' (2004) ISBN 0-06-078415-6

Richard A. Posner ''An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton'' (1999) ISBN 0-674-00080-3

Mark J. Rozell ''The Clinton Scandal and the Future of American Government'' (2000) ISBN 0-87840-777-4

Michael Waldman ''POTUS Speaks: Finding the Words That Defined the Clinton Presidency'' (2000) ISBN 0-7432-0020-9

Ivory Tower Publishing Company. Achievements of the Clinton Administration: the Complete Legislative and Executive. (1995) ISBN 0-88032-748-0

Academic studies

Cohen; Jeffrey E. "The Polls: Change and Stability in Public Assessments of Personal Traits, Bill Clinton, 1993–99" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 31, 2001

Cronin, Thomas E. and Michael A. Genovese; "President Clinton and Character Questions" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' Vol. 28, 1998

Davis; John. "The Evolution of American Grand Strategy and the War on Terrorism: Clinton and Bush Perspectives" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 3, 2003

Edwards; George C. "Bill Clinton and His Crisis of Governance" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly,'' Vol. 28, 1998

Fisher; Patrick. "Clinton's Greatest Legislative Achievement? the Success of the 1993 Budget Reconciliation Bill" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 1, 2001

Glad; Betty. "Evaluating Presidential Character" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 28, 1998

William G. Hyland. ''Clinton's World: Remaking American Foreign Policy'' (1999) ISBN 0-275-96396-9

Jewett, Aubrey W. and Marc D. Turetzky; " Stability and Change in President Clinton's Foreign Policy Beliefs, 1993–96" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 28, 1998

Johnson, Fard. "Politics, Propaganda and Public Opinion: The Influence of Race and Class on the 1993–1994 Health Care Reform Debate", 2004. ISBN 1-4116-6345-4

Laham, Nicholas, ''A Lost Cause: Bill Clinton's Campaign for National Health Insurance'' (1996)

Lanoue, David J. and Craig F. Emmert; "Voting in the Glare of the Spotlight: Representatives' Votes on the Impeachment of President Clinton" ''Polity'', Vol. 32, 1999

Maurer; Paul J. "Media Feeding Frenzies: Press Behavior during Two Clinton Scandals" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly,'' Vol. 29, 1999

Nie; Martin A. It's the Environment, Stupid!': Clinton and the Environment" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 27, 1997

O'Connor; Brendon. "Policies, Principles, and Polls: Bill Clinton's Third Way Welfare Politics 1992–1996" ''The Australian Journal of Politics and History'', Vol. 48, 2002

Poveda; Tony G. "Clinton, Crime, and the Justice Department" ''Social Justice'', Vol. 21, 1994

Renshon; Stanley A. ''The Clinton Presidency: Campaigning, Governing, and the Psychology of Leadership'' Westview Press, 1995

Renshon; Stanley A. "The Polls: The Public's Response to the Clinton Scandals, Part 1: Inconsistent Theories, Contradictory Evidence" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 32, 2002

Rushefsky, Mark E. and Kant Patel. ''Politics, Power & Policy Making: The Case of Health Care Reform in the 1990s'' (1998) ISBN 1-56324-956-1

Schantz, Harvey L. ''Politics in an Era of Divided Government: Elections and Governance in the Second Clinton Administration'' (2001) ISBN 0-8153-3583-0

Wattenberg; Martin P. "The Democrats' Decline in the House during the Clinton Presidency: An Analysis of Partisan Swings" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 29, 1999

Wattier; Mark J. "The Clinton Factor: The Effects of Clinton's Personal Image in 2000 Presidential Primaries and in the General Election" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 4, 2004

Smithers, Luken J. "The Miracle Whip"

External links

;Official

White House biography

Clinton Presidential Materials Project Press releases and speech transcripts from the administration.

Clinton School of Public Service

;Organizations

William J. Clinton Foundation official website

;Books and movies

;Interviews, speeches and statements

Oral History Interview with Bill Clinton from Oral Histories of the American South

President Clinton: The Youtube Interview

Full audio of a number of Clinton speeches via the Miller Center of Public Affairs (UVa)

''The Wanderer'' Profile in ''The New Yorker'', September 2006, the most extensive interview post-presidency

;Media coverage

;Other

Extensive essays on Bill Clinton and shorter essays on each member of his cabinet and First Lady from the Miller Center of Public Affairs

Armigerous American Presidents Series article from the American Heraldry Society.

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Coordinates	56°09′″N40°25′″N
name	Judith Rodin
birth date	September 09, 1944
birth place	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
occupation	President, Rockefeller Foundation; Former President, University of Pennsylvania
spouse	Paul R. Verkuil }}

Judith Rodin (born Judith Seitz; September 9, 1944) was the 7th president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1994 to 2004 and the first permanent female president of an Ivy League university. She has been succeeded in this position by Amy Gutmann. She is currently the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a position she has held since 2005. A University of Pennsylvania alumna, she received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1970.

Rodin expanded and improved the University and created numerous interdisciplinary programs. She led an effort to engage, support and build new relationships with the university's surrounding communities. She encouraged revitalization in University City and West Philadelphia through public safety, Wharton School alliances for small businesses, developing buildings and streetscapes that turned outward to the community, and establishing a university-led partnership school, the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School.

During her tenure at Penn, the University tripled its endowment and rose from 16th to 4th in the ''U.S. News & World Report'' college ranking. Rodin brought Bono, of the rock group U2, to address the university at the 2004 commencement.

At one time, she was the highest-paid university president in the country. In her final year at Penn, Rodin's salary was $986,915.

Professional highlights

Rodin became president of the Rockefeller Foundation in March 2005.

She is on the Board of Directors of Citigroup, AMR Corporation (the parent company of American Airlines), and Comcast Corporation, where she served as the presiding director until 2006. Rodin has also served on the board of corporations, including Aetna, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and BlackRock. She continues to serve as a trustee of the Brookings Institution.

Academic

She was Provost of Yale University from 1992 to 1994, when she moved to University of Pennsylvania. She held various professorial and other positions at Yale from 1972 to 1994, including Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Chair of the Department of Psychology. Rodin has published more than 200 articles and chapters in academic publications and written or co-written 11 books; most recently, ''Public Discourse in America'' (2003).

Commencement speeches and honorary degrees

;2007 Dartmouth College

;2006 University of Pittsburgh Franklin & Marshall Yeshiva University

;2004 New York University University of Pennsylvania Brown University

Awards and honors

In 2003, Rodin received the Philadelphia Award, given to "citizen[s] of the region who [have] done the most to advance the best and largest interest of the community."

Personal

Rodin is married to Paul R. Verkuil, a former president of the College of William and Mary, former dean of the Tulane University Law School and former CEO of the American Automobile Association. Verkuil is a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he served previously as dean. They have three children.

Work at Penn

While Rodin was president, the University of Pennsylvania outsourced a number of services previously run by the university. Building services were contracted out to Trammell Crow, an arrangement that was ended after four years. The move resulted in layoffs that led to protests and a lawsuit by angered students and staff. Another set of protests stemmed from the layoff of Faculty Club employees when the Club was moved and the University contracted with DoubleTree to operate the Club.

During Rodin's presidency, the Penn administration resisted efforts by graduate students to form a labor union. The National Labor Relations Board initially ruled that graduate students were entitled to hold union elections, yet upon appeal, the NLRB reversed the earlier opinion and held that graduate students were not entitled to organize a union. In response, there was a protest by the graduate student group leading the unionization effort on campus when Rodin's 2003 book ''Public Discourse in America'' was released.

In 2003, she was named to the PoliticsPA list of "Pennsylvania's Most Politically Powerful Women".

See also

List of Ivy League university presidents

References

External links

Other biographical summaries

Biography from the Rockefeller Foundation

Profile at Sourcewatch.org

Reviews of Rodin's tenure at Penn

"Rodin legacy" at Penn

Critical Review of Rodin's Tenure at Penn

Daily Pennsylvanian editorial board Evaluation of Rodin's era

{{s-ttl|title=President of the University of Pennsylvania |years=1994–2004}}

Category:Rockefeller Foundation Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:Columbia University alumni Category:American psychologists Category:American educators Category:Presidents of the University of Pennsylvania Category:1944 births Category:Living people Category:Yale University faculty Category:American Airlines

fr:Judith Rodin

Coordinates	56°09′″N40°25′″N
name	George Soros
birth date	August 12, 1930
birth place	Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary
alma mater	London School of Economics
occupation	Entrepreneur, currency trader, investor, philanthropist
networth	$14.5 billion (2011)
spouse	Twice divorced (Annaliese Witschak and Susan Weber Soros)
children	Robert, Andrea, Jonathan, Alexander, Gregory
nationality	Hungarian
website	georgesoros.com
footnotes	}}

George Soros (; or , ; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American financier, businessman, and notable philanthropist focused on supporting liberal ideals and causes. He became known as "the Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises. Soros correctly speculated that the British government would have to devalue the pound sterling.

Soros is Chairman of the Soros Fund Management. In July 2011, Soros announced that he was returning outside investment money (valued at $1 billion) and will only invest his own $24.5 billion family fortune because of new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules. Soros is also the chairman of the Open Society Institute and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89) and provided Europe's largest-ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest. Later, the Open Society Institute's programs in Georgia were considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial in the success of the Rose Revolution. In the United States, he is known for donating large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. In 2010, he donated $1 million in support of Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana in the state of California. He was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress, and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations. The Open Society Institute has active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year.

In 2003, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword of Soros' book ''The Alchemy of Finance'':

George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,' open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but – more important – tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.

Family

Soros was born in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, the son of the Esperantist writer Tivadar Soros and Elizabeth Soros. Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a Hungarian Jew, who was a prisoner of war during and after World War I and eventually escaped from Russia to rejoin his family in Budapest.

The family changed its name from Schwartz to Soros in 1936, in response to growing anti-semitism with the rise of fascism. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and because of its meaning. Although the specific meaning is left unstated in Kaufman's biography, in Hungarian, ''soros'' means ''next in line'', or ''designated successor''; and, in Esperanto, it means "will soar". Tivadar taught George to speak Esperanto from birth. Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.

Married and divorced twice, Soros has three children with Annaliese Witschak (Robert, Andrea, Jonathan) and two with Susan Weber Soros (Alexander and Gregory). His elder brother, Paul Soros, also a private investor and philanthropist, is an engineer, who headed Soros Associates and established the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for Young Americans. Soros' nephew Peter Soros, a son of Paul Soros, married the former Flora Fraser – a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Sir Hugh Fraser and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. Fraser and Soros separated in 2009.

His son Alexander Soros is also gaining prominence for his donations to social and political causes. Alexander led the list of student political donors in the 2010 election cycle.

Early life

Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary. Soros took a job with the Jewish Council, which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary to carry out Nazi and Hungarian government anti-Jewish measures. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:

The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper...It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 am...And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported."

Later that year, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. On one occasion, the official was ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country. Rather than leave the young Soros alone in the city, the official brought him along. The following year, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city.

Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and, as an impoverished student, lived with his uncle, an Orthodox Jew. His uncle paid his living expenses while he attended the London School of Economics, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy in 1952. While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, Soros worked as a railway porter and as a waiter. A University tutor requested aid for Soros, and he received £40 from a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) charity. He eventually secured an entry-level position with London merchant bank Singer & Friedlander.

Emigration

In 1956, Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader with F. M. Mayer (1956–59) and as an analyst with Wertheim & Co. (1959–63). Throughout this time, Soros developed a philosophy of ''reflexivity'' based on the ideas of Karl Popper. Reflexivity, as used by Soros, is the belief that the action of beholding the valuation of any market, by its participants, affects said valuation of the market in a procyclical "virtuous or vicious" circle.

Soros realized, however, that he would not make any money from the concept of reflexivity until he went into investing on his own. He began to investigate how to deal in investments. From 1963 to 1973, he worked at Arnhold and S. Bleichroder, where he attained the position of Vice-President. Soros finally concluded that he was a better investor than he was a philosopher or an executive. In 1967, he persuaded the company to set up First Eagle, an offshore investment fund for him to run; and, in 1969, it founded the Double Eagle hedge fund for him.

In 1973, when investment regulations restricted his ability to run the funds as he wished, he resigned his position and established a private investment company, which evolved into the Quantum Fund. He has stated that his intent was to earn enough money on Wall Street to support himself as an author and philosopher – he calculated that $500,000 after five years would be possible and adequate.

He also once had a small stake in the Carlyle Group.

Business

In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management with Jim Rogers. In 1973, he left Arnhold and S. Bleichroder to set up his own hedge fund with $12 million from investors. Christoper Ink was also involved, and other partners have included Victor Niederhoffer and Stanley Druckenmiller. Rogers retired from the fund in 1980.

Initially called the Soros Fund, it was eventually renamed the Quantum Fund. In 2000, the Quantum Group of Funds was reorganized, and the flagship Quantum Endowment Fund was established. Soros Fund Management LLC is the principal advisor to the Quantum Endowment Fund. Soros is the Chairman of Soros Fund Management. The firm's day-to-day operations are managed by Soros's two elder sons and the firm's Chief Investment Officer Keith Anderson. The fund has assets of approximately $27 billion. Recent investments include the 2010 purchase of a 20% stake in BNK Petroleum.

In 2007, the Quantum Fund returned almost 32%, netting Soros $2.9 billion.

In August 2010, Soros bought a 4 per cent stake in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for about $35 million. Soros’s Quantum hedge fund bought the stake from Dubai Financial, a part of the state-run Dubai Holdings, for an estimated Rs. 380 per share. Over 5,000 companies are listed on the exchange.

In July 2011, Soros closed his Quantum hedge fund to outside investment, running the hedge fund as an investment vehicle for his family's fortune.

Currency speculation

On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, Soros's fund sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds, profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.

Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound sterling, earning Soros an estimated $1.1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England". In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.

On Monday, October 26, 1992, ''The Times'' quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."

Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. "Soros' contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position."

In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Following on a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge") and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir met with Soros and afterwards stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis. In 1998's ''The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered'' Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:

The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity.... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai Baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline – we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)

The nominal U.S. dollar GDP of the ASEAN fell by $9.2 billion in 1997 and $218.2 billion (31.7%) in 1998.

''New York Times'' columnist Paul Krugman is critical of Soros's effect on financial markets.

"[N]obody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is 'Soroi.'"

Public predictions

Soros' book, ''The New Paradigm for Financial Markets'' (May 2008), described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he has written that have predicted disaster. As he states:

He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.

In February 2009, Soros said the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis. "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system[...]It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."

Insider trading conviction

In 1988, he was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid but later bought a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989, and in 2002 a French court ruled that it was insider trading, a felony conviction as defined under French securities laws, and fined him $2.3 million, which was the amount that he made using the insider information.

Punitive damages were not sought because of the delay in bringing the case to trial. Soros denied any wrongdoing and said news of the takeover was public knowledge.

His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June 14, 2006. In December 2006, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing.

Sports

In 2005, Soros was a minority partner in a group that tried to buy the Washington Nationals, a Major League baseball team. Some Republican lawmakers suggested that they might move to revoke baseball's antitrust exemption if Soros bought the team. In 2008, Soros' name was associated with AS Roma, an Italian football team but the club was not sold. Soros was also a financial backer of Washington Soccer L.P., the group that owned the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United when the league was founded in 1995, but the group lost these rights in 2000.

Philanthropy

Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa, and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain.

Soros' philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Institute (OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland). As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion. The OSI says it has spent about $500 million annually in recent years.

''Time'' magazine in 2007 cited two specific projects – $100 million toward Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities; and $50 million for the Millennium Promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa – while noting that Soros has given $742 million to projects in the U.S., and given away a total of more than $7 billion.

Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU). The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his microfinance bank Grameen Bank received support from the OSI.

According to ''National Review'' the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who has defended alleged terrorists in court and was sentenced to 2⅓ years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support."

In September 2006 Soros pledged $50 million to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs to provide educational, agricultural, and medical aid to help villages in Africa enduring poverty. The New York Times termed this endeavor a "departure" for Soros whose philanthropic focus had been on fostering democracy and good government, but Soros noted that most poverty resulted from bad governance.

He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Corvinus University of Budapest, and Yale University in 1991. Soros also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in 2000 as well as the Laurea Honoris Causa, the highest honor of the University of Bologna in 1995.

Political donations and activism

United States

In an interview with ''The Washington Post'' on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it." Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: ''Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush'' delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as "factcheck.com" in the Vice Presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros's site. Asked in 2006 about his statement in ''The Age of Fallibility'' that "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States", Soros responded that "it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that's rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a 'war on terror' after September 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world. [...] when you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims."

Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the 2004 presidential election, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003–2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527.

After Bush's re-election, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance, which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America.

In August 2009, Soros donated $35 million to the state of New York to be ear-marked for under-privileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at the rate of $200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified. An additional $140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act.

On October 26, 2010, Soros donated $1 million, the largest donation in the campaign, to the Drug Policy Alliance to fund Proposition 19, that would have legalized marijuana in the state of California if it had passed in the November 2, 2010 elections.

Eastern Europe

According to Neil Clark in the ''New Statesman'', Soros's role was crucial in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. From 1979, as an advocate of 'open societies', Soros financially supported dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union donating $3 million a year according to Clark. In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros' funding has continued to play an important role in the former Soviet sphere. His funding of pro-democratic programs in of Georgia was considered by Russian and Western observers to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution, although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated." Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2,500,000.

Former Georgian Foreign Minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like the Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratisation and that all the NGOs which gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.

Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey, said in an interview that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs...Last year Russia passed a special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well." In 1997, Soros had to close his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations". According to ''The New York Times'', the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control the Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society".

In June 2009, Soros donated $100m to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the economic crisis on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations.

Africa

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa is a Soros-affiliated organization. Its director for Zimbabwe is Godfrey Kanyenze, who also directs the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which was the main force behind the founding of the Movement for Democratic Change, the principal indigenous organization promoting regime change in Zimbabwe.

Drug policy reform

Soros has funded worldwide efforts to promote drug policy reform. In 2008, Soros donated $400,000 to help fund a successful ballot measure in Massachusetts known as the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative which decriminalized possession of less than 1 oz (28g) of marijuana in the state. Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine. Among the drug decriminalization groups that have received funding from Soros are the Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation. Soros donated $1.4 million to publicity efforts to support California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed ballot measure that would have expanded drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for persons convicted of non-violent drug-related offenses.

In October 2010, Soros donated $1 million to support California's Proposition 19.

According to remarks in an interview in October 2009, it is Soros's opinion that marijuana is less addictive but not appropriate for use by children and students. He himself has not used marijuana for years.

Death and dying

The Project on Death in America, active from 2001 to 2003, was one of the Open Society Institute's projects, which sought to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement." In 1994, Soros delivered a speech in which he reported that he had offered to help his mother, a member of the Hemlock Society, commit suicide. In the same speech, he also endorsed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, the campaign which he helped fund.

Philosophy

Education and beliefs

His philosophical outlook is influenced by Karl Popper, under whom he studied at the London School of Economics (LSE). His Open Society Institute is named after Popper's two volume work, ''The Open Society and Its Enemies'', and Soros's ongoing philosophical commitment to the principle of fallibilism (that anything he believes may in fact be wrong, and is therefore to be questioned and improved) stems from Popper's philosophy.

Reflexivity, financial markets, and economic theory

Soros' writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals enter into market transactions, potentially changing the perception of fundamentals of the economy. Soros argues that such transitions in the perceptions of fundamentals of the economy are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the 'efficient market hypothesis') does not apply in these situations. Soros has popularized the concepts of ''dynamic disequilibrium'', ''static disequilibrium'', and ''near-equilibrium'' conditions.

Reflexivity is based on three main ideas: # Reflexivity is best observed under special conditions where investor bias grows and spreads throughout the investment arena. Examples of factors that may give rise to this bias include (a) equity leveraging or (b) the trend-following habits of speculators. # Reflexivity appears intermittently since it is most likely to be revealed under certain conditions; i.e., the character of the equilibrium process is best considered in terms of probabilities. # Investors' observation of and participation in the capital markets may at times influence valuations ''and'' fundamental conditions or outcomes.

A current example of reflexivity in modern financial markets is that of the debt and equity of housing markets. Lenders began to make more money available to more people in the 1990s to buy houses. More people bought houses with this larger amount of money, thus increasing the prices of these houses. Lenders looked at their balance sheets which not only showed that they had made more loans, but that their equity backing the loans – the value of the houses, had gone up (because more money was chasing the same amount of housing, relatively). Thus they lent out more money because their balance sheets looked good, they were guaranteed by the Federal Government, and prices went up more.

This was further amplified by public policy. Many governments see home ownership as a positive outcome and so first home owners grant and other financial subsidies – or influences to buy a home such as the exemption of a primary residence from capital gains taxation – mean that house purchases were seen as a good thing. Prices increased rapidly, and lending standards were relaxed. The salient issue regarding reflexivity is that it explains why markets gyrate over time, and do not just stick to equilibrium – they tend to overshoot or undershoot.

View of potential problems in the free market system

Despite working as an investor and currency speculator, he argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. Soros blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism. His opposition to many aspects of globalization has made him a controversial figure.

Victor Niederhoffer said of Soros: "Most of all, George believed even then in a mixed economy, one with a strong central international government to correct for the excesses of self-interest."

Soros claims to draw a distinction between being a participant in the market and working to change the rules that market participants must follow. According to Mahathir bin Mohamed, Prime Minister of Malaysia from July 1981 to October 2003, Soros – as the hedge fund chief of Quantum – may have been partially responsible for the economic crash in 1997 of East Asian markets when the Thai currency relinquished its peg to the US dollar. According to Mahathir, in the three years leading to the crash, Soros invested in short-term speculative investment in East Asian stock markets and real estate, then divested with "indecent haste" at the first signs of currency devaluation. Soros replied, saying that Mahathir was using him "as a scapegoat for his own mistakes", that Mahathir's promises to ban currency trading (which Malaysian finance officials hastily retracted) were "a recipe for disaster" and that Mahathir "is a menace to his own country".

In an interview regarding the late-2000s recession, Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been "some kind of an ideological excess". In Soros' view, the markets' moods – a "mood" of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which the markets look at reality – "actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles".

In reaction to the late-2000s recession, he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think tank composed of international economic, business and financial experts, mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organising the international economic and financial system.

Views on antisemitism

At a Jewish forum in New York City, November 5, 2003, Soros partially attributed a recent resurgence of antisemitism to the policies of Israel and the United States, and the role of wealthy and influential individuals:

There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies... If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. I can't see how one could confront it directly... I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world... As an unintended consequence of my actions... I also contribute to that image.

In a subsequent article for ''The New York Review of Books'', Soros emphasized that

I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.

Views on China

Soros has expressed concern about the growth of Chinese economic and political power. "China has risen very rapidly by looking out for its own interests ... They have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well." Regarding the political gridlock in America, he said, "Today China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States".

Wealth

In 2010, ''Forbes'' lists Soros as the Forbes list of billionaires 35th richest person in the world, and the 14th richest person in America, with a net worth estimated at $14.2 billion. Soros has given away $7 billion to various causes since 1979.

Relation to Hungarian politics

In the 1980s Viktor Orbán, Chairman of Fidesz (1994–2000, 2000–) and Prime Minister (1998–2002, 2010–) and László Kövér, Chairman of Fidesz (2000), Secret Service Minister (1998–2002) and Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary (2010–), were Soros scholarship recipients. Furthermore the Orban cabinet's Deputy Prime Minister István Stumpf – now member of the Constitutional Court – was a member of the Soros Foundation's Board of Trustees between 1994 and 2002.

See also

George Soros conspiracy theories

Books

Authored or co-authored

''The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means'' (PublicAffairs, 2008). ISBN 1-58648-683-7

''The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror'' (PublicAffairs, 2006) ISBN 1-58648-359-5

''The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power'' (PublicAffairs, 2003) ISBN 1-58648-217-3 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1-58648-292-0)

''George Soros on Globalization'' (PublicAffairs, 2002) ISBN 1-58648-125-8 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2005; ISBN 1-52648-278-5)

''Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism'' (PublicAffairs, 2001) ISBN 1-58648-039-7

With Mark Amadeus Notturno, ''Science and the Open Society: The Future of Karl Popper's Philosophy'' (Central European University Press, 2000) ISBN 963-9116-69-6 (paperback: Central European University Press, 2000; ISBN 943-9116-70-X)

''The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered'' (PublicAffairs, 1998) ISBN 1-891220-27-4

''Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve'' (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 0-471-12014-6 (paperback; Wiley, 1995; ISBN 0-371-11977-6)

''Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise and Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe'' (Free Press, 1991) ISBN 0-02-930285-4 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1-58948-227-0)

''Opening the Soviet System'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990) ISBN 0-297-82155-9 (paperback: Perseus Books, 1996; ISBN 0-8133-1205-1)

''The Alchemy of Finance'' (Simon & Schuster, 1988) ISBN 0-671-66338-4 (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ISBN 0-471-44549-5)

Biographies

''Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire'' by Michael T. Kaufman (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) ISBN 0-375-40585-2

''Soros: The World's Most Influential Investor'' by Robert Slater (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009) ISBN 978-0-07-160844-2

Journalism

Authored

George Soros, "Why I support legal marijuana", ''The Wall Street Journal'', October 26, 2010.

George Soros, "The Crisis and the Euro", ''The New York Review of Books'', August 19, 2010.

George Soros, "On Israel, America and AIPAC", ''The New York Review of Books'', April 12, 2007.

George Soros, "The Bubble of American Supremacy", ''The Atlantic'', December 2003.

George Soros, ''The Bubble of American Supremacy'', audio recording of ''The Atlantic'' article via ''Assistive Media'', read by Grover Gardner, 18 minutes.

George Soros, "Soros on Brazil", ''Financial Times'', August 13, 2002.

George Soros, "Bitter Thoughts with Faith in Russia", ''Moskovskiye Novosti'' (''Moscow News''), translated from the Russian by Olga Kryazheva, February 27, 2000.

George Soros, "The Capitalist Threat", ''The Atlantic Monthly'', February 1997.

George Soros, "Paulson Cannot be Allowed a Blank Cheque", ''Financial Times'', September 24, 2008

About

Stephen Adams "Furious George" on Citizen – Family Issues in Policy and Culture

John Authors, Book Review, "A successful prophet of the markets," Financial Times, May 19, 2008.

Laura Blumenfeld, ''Billionaire Soros Takes On Bush'', MSNBC, November 11, 2003

Connie Bruck, Abstract of New Yorker profile of Soros "The World According to Soros", The New Yorker, January 23, 1995

Neil Clark Analysis of Soros' role in Eastern Europe from "New Statesman"

Malcolm Gladwell, "Blowing Up," The New Yorker, April 22 & 29, 2002, at gladwell.com.

John Horvath The Soros Effect on Central and Eastern Europe

Matt Welch, ''Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a Socialist, Self-hating Jew'' Reason magazine, December 8, 2003

Martin Peretz, "Tyran-a-Soros: The Madness of King George," The New Republic, February 12, 2007.

TIME's 25 Most Influential Americans, TIME Magazine April 21, 1997. Accessed May 21, 2007.

The TIME 100, The Power Givers, George Soros, TIME Magazine May 14, 2007 accessed May 21, 2007.

Scholarly perspectives

Speeches

Testimony of George Soros to a congressional sub-committee, Sept. 15, 1998

The Theory of Reflexivity Delivered April 26, 1994 to the MIT Department of Economics World Economy

"The Differences Between Natural and Social Science: Implications of Fallibility" at IISc Bangalore, January 5, 2007

Testimony before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Oversight Hearing on FTC Advanced Rulemaking and Oil Market Manipulation

Interviews

Fareed Zakaria discussing economic crisis with George Soros on GPS

The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC) – Audio Archive: "George Soros on Freedom"

frontline: the crash: interviews: george soros

George Soros Interview On 60 Minutes

Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE . TV Program | PBS

Challenge: The international financial crisis – International ...

NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. David Brancaccio interviews ...

Booknotes with Brian Lamb. Transcript and streaming video.

Rocketboom: The Age of Fallibility (Video, 2006)

Google Video: Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google interviews George Soros (Video, 2006)

Fox News Interview with Neil Cavuto, October 11, 2006 Video and text, accessed May 25, 2007.

Interview with George Soros, September 5, 2000

Notes

External links

Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network

Institute for New Economic Thinking

Column archives at Project Syndicate

Column archives at ''The New York Review of Books''

Soros Fund Management 13F filing and Portfolio Activities

List of articles and speeches by and about George Soros

George Soros' Political Campaign Contributions

Forbes.com: Forbes 400 Richest in America

George Soros in SEC Filings

The Money Man – New Yorker

In depth review of The New Paradigm

Why Does Soros Bite Hand That Feeds Him? in Investor's Business Daily

Category:1930 births Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics Category:American billionaires Category:American investors Category:American money managers Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Category:American philanthropists Category:Central European University Category:Drug policy reform activists Category:Framing theorists Category:Hedge fund managers Category:Hungarian emigrants to the United States Category:Hungarian people of Jewish descent Category:Living people Category:Native Esperanto speakers Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People convicted of insider trading Category:People from Budapest Category:Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 1st Class Category:Stock and commodity market managers Category:Stock traders Category:Currency traders

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