George Soros
George Soros
George Sorosis a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, political activist and author who is of Hungarian-Jewish ancestry and holds dual citizenship. He is chairman of Soros Fund Management. He is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds, making him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. Soros is one of the 30 richest people in the world...
NationalityHungarian
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth12 August 1930
CityBudapest, Hungary
The lower interest rates fueled housing and consumption booms in countries such as Spain and Ireland. At the same time, Germany, struggling with the burdens of reunification, tightened its belt and became more competitive. All this led to a wide divergence in economic performance. Europe became divided into creditor and debtor countries.
I admire Chancellor Merkel for her leadership qualities, but she is leading Europe in the wrong direction.
Germany will always do the minimum to preserve the euro. Doing the minimum, though, will perpetuate the situation where the debtor countries in Europe have to pay tremendous premiums to refinance their debt. The result will be a Europe in which Germany is seen as an imperial power that will not be loved and admired by the rest of Europe - but hated and resisted, because it will perceived as an oppressive power.
The bureaucratic method of building an integrated Europe has exhausted its potential.
There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well.
The integration of Europe was very much led by a Germany that was always willing to pay a little bit extra to reach a compromise that everybody accepted, because Germany was so eager to get European support for reunification. That was called the "farsighted vision," which created the European Union.
What works for Germany can't work for the rest of Europe: No country can run a chronic surplus without others running deficits.
No, because I've got the same courts that found me guilty in the first place.
I'm very worried about the supply-demand balance, which is very tight.
It will require, I think, the release of funds and perhaps even an increased package to bring stability, ... Everything that could have been done wrong has been done wrong.
Up to those amounts the countries concerned would be able to access international capital markets at prime rates. Beyond these, the creditors would have to beware.
As the housing boom cools off, there will be a shortfall in demand (which will) affect the global economy.
This asymmetry in the treatment of lenders and borrowers is a major source of instability in the global capitalist system and it needs to be corrected,
Something really is broken in the international financial architecture, ... We're now in the 20th month of financial crisis. Yet this crisis was brewing, it was the most anticipated crisis in recent history.