Risk-taking, in the form of huge and often highly leveraged bets, had been a major factor in his financial success. (These gambles, he admitted, had at times made him so dizzy from the stress that he could barely walk.) Now, he said, he felt impelled to risk his reputation in the Presidential campaign, because he thought that inaction was more dangerous.
SNIP
Soros’s son Robert has joked that his father simply buys when he’s feeling good, and sells when his back hurts. Stanley Druckenmiller, his former partner at Quantum, was even more blunt. “The ugly way to describe it would be ‘balls,’” he told Soros’s biographer.
By the time Soros was fifty, he had exceeded his most extravagant financial goals, but he was miserable, for he felt his life lacked a greater “meaning.” He decided to set up a foundation devoted to promoting Popper’s ideal of open societies. It didn’t hurt that a provision in the American tax code offered a significant tax incentive to individuals who formed “charitable lead trusts.” During our lunch, Soros beamed when he told me that, upon launching his foundation, he had exploited this provision to pass on to his heirs hundreds of millions of dollars—and, in the process, saved untold millions in taxes.