Thursday, February 23, 2012

Soros blames Merkel

Soros Sees Merkel Shoving Europe Into Harsh ‘Deflationary Spiral’: Books
George Soros  is usually thought of as the man whose hedge fund broke the Bank of England with a $10 billion bet that the pound would lose its peg to other European currencies.
These days, the billionaire investor is seeking to save a currency union, not bury it. In “Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States,” he laments that the euro has become an“existential crisis” for Europe and places much of the blame on one person: Angela Merkel.
The German chancellor’s insistence on fiscal discipline amid high unemployment threatens to hurl the euro region into“a vicious deflationary debt trap,” he writes in this collection of previously published essays. His warning brings a timely reminder that Greece’s latest bailout won’t quell the economic and political forces pulling the Old World apart.
“Germany cannot be blamed for wanting a strong currency and a balanced budget,” Soros says. “But it can be blamed for imposing its predilection on other countries that have different needs and preferences -- like Procrustes, who forced other people to lie in his bed and stretched them or cut off their legs to make them fit.”
The articles gathered here were written mostly for the Financial Times and the New York Review of Books. Taken together, they constitute what Soros calls “a real-time experiment,” his attempt over the past four years to influence policies on the fly. The authorities didn’t follow his advice, he says, though he surely helped shape the debate.
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Comment: Soros is frustrated because apparantly he couldn't get his insiders into the Bundesbank and only partly into the ECB which makes a difference when it comes to making money with knowledge from the BoE and the Fed. Let's not forget that Soros can't put his foot on French soil without the risk of being put into jail.

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