He can?t be F.A. Hayek?s biggest fan, but big-bucks lefty George Soros has shown some interest in the Austrian School economist, as we learn in the latest Bloomberg Businessweek:

Equally surprising is that Soros, the bane of the Tea Party, has taken an interest in Hayek, the author of the libertarian manifesto The Road to Serfdom. Last year the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which Soros launched in 2009 with a 10-year, $50 million pledge, invited one of the world’s leading Hayek scholars, Bruce Caldwell of Duke University, to speak at its inaugural conference at King’s College, Cambridge. (Caldwell is the editor of the new, definitive edition of The Road to Serfdom.)

Soros clearly doesn’t share Hayek’s politics, though both opposed communism. Still, in a video on the INET website, Soros praises Hayek for understanding that economics, unlike the hard sciences, cannot make strong predictions because its subjects (people) are so elusive. “Somehow, in the last 25 or more years, this has been forgotten, and I think it’s time to remember it,” Soros says.

Caldwell discussed that definitive edition of Road to Serfdom with Carolina Journal Radio in 2007.