The clean technology wave just got a little bigger. This tends to be a side-effect of interest from billionaire investor George Soros. And, as usual, it's more than just money; it's more than just a return. Soros, yet again, is trying to save the world. Interestingly, the bold move was announced at a meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate – an international association consisting of 430 newspapers from 150 countries (and thus with clear ties to the past, rather than future).

The investor and founder of Soros Fund Management LLC is planning to put $1 billion into clean-tech opportunities using what he calls "rather stringent criteria," which involves being "profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem [i.e., of clean technology adoption and proliferation]." Soros didn't provide any other details on the nature or scope of his investments.

You might say that a key investor, one of the exemplars, is no longer bullish on the pure bulls. Or on the unregulated bulls. Or on the totally free market bulls.

Billionaire investor George Soros told Bloomberg News that the current global financial crisis originated during the deregulation of the 1980s, and signals the end of the free market model that has dominated capitalist countries, and indeed much of the developed world, since the the end of the Cold War with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

One of the world's leading investors is expressing cautious optimism - - underscoring cautious - - regarding the fate of the global financial system.

Billionaire investor George Soros said Monday a pledge by European leaders to guarantee new bank financing is "a positive step" may help stabilize global financial markets, Bloomberg News reported.

Soros: We're finally getting the leadership we need

"In the last 72 hours, I think the European governments got religion and realized that this is a serious problem,'' Soros said at a press conference in Washington, Bloomberg News reported. "People are looking for some leadership and finally they are getting it." Soros is chairman of the $20 billion Fund Management LLC.

Along with actions by the major central banks to increase the supply of dollars in the global money supply, Europe's major industrialized nations announced fiscal policies to back bank-to-bank loans and recapitalize banks, The New York Times reported Monday. Britain said it will invest $73 billion in its banks, Germany is investing up to 500 billion euros or about $680 billion, and France will create an agency to offer state guarantees for banks and to channel money to them.

Further, Soros underscored that the United States government must recapitalize solvent banks, ft.com reported Monday. The U.S. said it intends to do that, but has not yet released details of its plan. Soros would like the U.S. government's recapitalization to take the form of preferred shares, which would dilute existing shareholders, but with private capital given the right to subscribe on the same terms, if private investors are able to put up more money, ft.com reported.

So far, billionaire investor George Soros says he doesn't see a light at the end of the tunnel; at least not yet.

Soros told Reuters Monday the crisis over Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) will not be the last, and that the wider credit crunch will continue to effect the already anemic-growth (or worse) U.S. economy.

On Monday, the U.S. Treasury announced a plan to shore-up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including authorization to buy unlimited stakes in and lend to the companies, aimed at stemming a collapse in confidence, Bloomberg News reported Monday. Soros said the U.S. Treasury's plan, and if need be, the resources of the U.S. Federal Reserve, will keep Fannie and Freddie functioning, but that does not blot-out the main negative: the drag effect of home foreclosures on the U.S. economy, Reuters reported.

'Most serious financial crisis of our lifetime'

Calling the year-long global financial market turmoil "the most serious financial crisis of our lifetime," Soros said the negative impact of foreclosures and the credit crisis is likely to increase, creating a deeper U.S. recession.

Economist Peter Dawson told BloggingStocks that "while Soros provided a candid description of current events, no doubt derived from considerable research, he may have been a little too stark . . . seeing too much of one side of the asset / liability ledger."

Billionaire investor George Soros said speculators are playing a major role in oil's record price rise. He also argued that the sky-high $130 per barrel price looks like a bubble, The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

Soros said "speculation . . . is increasingly affecting the price" and that oil now has "this parabolic shape which is characteristic of bubbles." However, he qualified his remarks by stating that the bubble would not burst "until both the U.S. and Britain were in recession, after which prices could fall dramatically."

Oil fell about $2 to $130.12 per barrel in mid-day Tuesday trading after data showed Americans are cutting back their gasoline consumption amid record-high gasoline prices approaching $4 per gallon in several regions of the country, Bloomberg News reported. U.S. gasoline consumption has fallen for about fourth straight months, on a year-over-year basis, according to U.S. Department of Energy data. Oil is up 100% in the past 12 months, and about 480% since 2002.

Warren Buffett's concerns about how bad things are going to get in the U.S. has taken an unpleasant turn.

Speaking of the economy, Reuters quotes Buffett as saying, "But the people are already feeling the effects. It will be deeper and last longer than many think."

Buffett's name gets added to those of people like George Soros who have strong concerns about the next several quarters. The stock market is supporting their views. General Motors (NYSE: GM), General Electric (NYSE: GE), airlines, and many companies in the financial sector now trade at 52-week lows. The Fed has revised down its forecast for GDP. Many economists polled by Reuters see a bad year ahead.

The CEO of Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW) recently stated that inflation and the credit crisis are causing significant changes in consumer behavior. Many of the factors that drove several years of grow in the economy are gone.

Buffett's views may be a little late, but the are, nonetheless, almost certainly true.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Billionaire investor George Soros said Thursday that the boom in commodities is still in a "growth phase" despite the fact that prices for oil, wheat, rice, and gold have risen to records in 2008, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

Soros said the relative stock market slump, combined with favorable, long-commodities demand, has prompted institutions to direct money to commodities, creating a "commodity as asset class" phenomenon, Bloomberg News reported. He added that increasing institutional involvement was creating a generalized commodity bubble.

Relative shortages

Moreover, demand for selected commodities (oil, rice, wheat) is so great, it's creating relative shortages, Soros added, which is only heightening the return on equity potential of commodities, Bloomberg News reported.

Billionaire investor George Soros believes the current financial crisis is the worst since the Great Depression, and said stocks have not bottomed yet, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

Soros said the most recent market bottom "will probably not prove to be the final bottom," adding that the current stock rebound will last six weeks to three months as the United States moves closer to recession, Bloomberg News reported.

Further, Soros, in an op-editorial column in The Financial Times, argued that the cause of the market's current problems is a flawed premise: the belief that markets are self-correcting and tend toward equilibrium. They aren't and don't, Soros argues, and the laissez-faire policy creates bubbles, including the most-recent housing bubble, which, in turn, when it started to burst, led to the current credit crunch.

Soros cites deregulation

Soros added that the market's current troubles originated in 1980 when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher led a laissez-faire movement that reduced/eliminated regulation of banks and financial markets, the FT reported.

Billionaire investor George Soros said a major casualty from the U.S. subprime crisis will be the 60-year reign of the dollar-based credit boom, which he says will come to an end, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.

"The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom, it's basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency,'' Soros said in a debate today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bloomberg reported. "Now the rest of the world is increasingly unwilling to accumulate dollars.''

However, Soros was careful to point out that he believes the dollar is still the most important reserve currency in the world and will remain so, according to Bloomberg.

When financial world's mavens speak - - such as Alan Greenspan, George Soros, Bill Gross - - the markets usually take notice.

And when the mavens speak in unison regarding economic fundamentals, well, a word to the wise: be certain to record those data points before forming your own conclusion regarding the U.S. economy's health.

Soros, in a lecture at New York University, said the U.S. economy was on the verge of "a serious correction."
"I think we are definitely in for a slowdown that I think will be a bigger slowdown than (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben) Bernanke is seeing," Soros said, Reuters reported.

Trying to catch falling knives is a tough and dangerous game. The floor is falling every day in the stock and many times, investors allow their egos to prevent them from making the right decision. But even though that's the case, I sometimes still choose to make the move if I believe it's clear that fear has taken over in the emotions of investors and the stock is clearly undervalued. As the often-quoted Warren Buffett saying goes, "Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful." Often the best types of investments are those made against the crowd, or contrarian.

One such stock is Bon-Ton Stores (NASDAQ: BONT). Plagued by lower outlooks and falling sales figures, the stock has been getting killed recently.

However, I think the stock is a very interesting buy at these levels for a couple reasons. It looks cheap, insiders are buying, and it has an interesting pool of owners, among other things.