Soros Attacks Free-Market Capitalism in USA Today Puff Piece

If you're a believer in the Larry Kudlow creed, that "free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity," then look out, because George Soros is going to make you cringe.

A May 13 USA Today article by David J. Lynch profiled the Hungarian billionaire who said he sees traditional free market theory as "flawed."

"Of course, real life never matches up exactly with the theory's assumptions. But they represent, economists say, a useful way of making sense of a complex world," Lynch wrote.

"To Soros, the conventional approach is rubbish. Instead of a world of near-identical actors, coolly assessing their economic interests and acting with clear-eyed precision, he sees a world (and markets) governed by passion, bias and self-reinforcing errors," Lynch wrote. "Because fallible human beings are both involved in, and trying to make sense of, this world, they inevitably make mistakes. Those mistakes then feed on themselves in ‘reflexive' ways that, when taken to extremes, result in situations such as the now-deflating U.S. housing bubble."

Soros' claim demonstrates he has little confidence in free markets to be self-correcting. He wrote in The New Republic on Sept. 2, 2002, in an article "Busted; Why the markets can't fix themselves," that "stronger government intervention" is required in the marketplace.

However, according to Business & Media Institute advisor Don Luskin, Soros' "Theory of Reflexivity" could be better explained as an effort manipulate economic and political events. He referred to Soros short-selling the British pound in 1992 after England was pressured to devalue its currency. Soros made $1 billion in one day, which caused the pound to suffer even more.

"Simply, ‘reflexivity' says that financial markets can have impacts on the real world," Luskin wrote. "So if you want to move the world, just move the markets."

The story also stated Soros is a target of Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly and conservative Web sites such as freerepublic.com, which "routinely assail him as ‘anti-American.'" However, Soros brings a lot of that on himself for engaging radical left-wing causes

According to a 2003 Cybercast News Service story, Soros has donated to America Coming Together, MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress. But, the Lynch article described these endeavors as a concentration on "philanthropy."