The man who bought the world

As one might expect from the first "authorized" biography of Soros, "Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire" is flattering to its subject. But it's never fawning, and the psychological portrait it draws is convincing and illuminating.

Soros' life, no matter how you slice it, has been extraordinary. The first several chapters of the biography -- which deal with the teenage Soros' efforts to avoid the depredations of first the Nazis and then the Soviets in his native Hungary -- read like a thriller. As Kaufman notes, this background makes it easy to understand how Soros was able to cope with the pressures involved with high-stakes investing: When your formative experiences include watching friends and colleagues get rounded up and shipped off to Auschwitz in the waning days of World War II, it's likely that little else will ever be able to frighten you.

Soros' early experiences with fascism and totalitarianism also illuminate his motives, later on, in helping Eastern European and Soviet dissidents. Kaufman excels at dissecting and explaining Soros' psychological makeup. As just one data point -- can you imagine a Rockefeller or Carnegie or Gates frankly talking about insights gained from psychoanalysis, if they ever even admitted to seeing a therapist at all?

Kaufman gets Soros to open up -- about his analysis, about his family, about his dreams. A picture emerges of a man who was not only intensely self-critical but also sought out criticism from others. And his obsession with being an actual philosopher, along with his grandiose visions of single-handedly changing the world, make him come off as more than slightly neurotic.

Few neurotics, of course, are able to dispense about a half a billion dollars a year to whomever they choose. Is that really a good thing?

During the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad, accused Soros of destabilizing his country through currency speculation. According to Kaufman, Soros was not involved in currency trading in Malaysia at the time, but his response, at a conference held in Hong Kong that year, is instructive.

"Dr. Mahathir's suggestion yesterday to ban currency trading is so inappropriate that it does not deserve serious consideration. Interfering with the convertibility of capital at a moment like this is a recipe for disaster. Dr. Mahathir is a menace to his own country."

Never mind that the stringent restrictions on currency flow that Malaysia did impose are now widely considered to have worked spectacularly well. What's important isn't whether Soros was wrong or right, but the arrogance implicit in Soros' categorization of Mahathir as a "menace."

If you or I were to think that Mahathir is a neo-authoritarian despot who is fundamentally anti-democratic, that's one thing. But Soros can get peeved at a leader and decide to bankroll a popular movement aimed at destabilizing a government. He's done it before! If I were a Malaysian citizen aware of what Soros had done in Poland and Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union, I'd be a little worried when he started calling my leader bad names. Who could stop him? Who could censure him?

No one.

Soros has stated that he doesn't do philanthropy in countries where he is involved as a trader, and vice versa. He has also noted that he considers his philanthropy moral and his money-management business "amoral." But is it really possible to make such distinctions? If the consequences of a billion-dollar bet on a currency change "anomaly" destabilizes a given country's economy, boosting unemployment and inflation, does that balance out the good karma that accrues from connecting all of Russia's universities to the Internet?

We should all be grateful that deep down, George Soros appears to be a good guy, at least as judged according to liberal Western values. His commitment to "openness" is sincere; his dedication to improving people's lives is unquestionable. He is the ultimate meddling, bleeding-heart liberal do-gooder, and for that, let's give him a cheer.

But at the same time, a guy like George Soros can't be voted out of office if you disagree with him. And when his billions of dollars can affect public policy, not just in his own country but in any country of his choosing, there is good reason to be a little bit nervous. Maybe Prime Minister Mahathir is indeed a menace to his own country. But on a bad day, a grumpy George Soros could be a menace to any country.

• View blog reactions