Should Greece have a large part of its debt waived? Absolutely, says George Soros, otherwise the country will never recover. The billionaire investor also warns about the rise of extremist parties if Germany does not change its policies towards Europe….
If German Chancellor Angela Merkel does not change her policies towards Europe, Soros said, her victory in last month’s election would be a mere “Pyrrhic victory”.
He added: “The situation that emerged from the crisis is neither tolerable nor stable…. The current situation is not the result of an evil German plot. But Germany cannot escape the responsibilities and liabilities that go with that role. Germany must learn to act as a benign hegemon. Doing so would earn Germany the lasting gratitude of the other countries that are currently subordinated to it, just as the United States earned the lasting alliance of Europe with the Marshall Plan.” Failure to do so, he warned, would lead to the disintegration and eventual breakdown of the European Union.
“Many nations have lived through nightmares and survived. However, the European Union is not a nation; it is an incomplete association of sovereign states that will not survive a decade or more of stagnation. That is not in Germany’s interest. It would leave Europe worse off than it was when it embarked on the European Union.”
Soros, who, with an estimated fortune of $20 billion (€14.7 billion), is one of the world’s richest people, is rather more optimistic about the current political crisis in Washington. “The government shutdown and the threat of default is an elaborate political theater but markets can anticipate the outcome: no default and a defeat for extremists in the Republican party. That said, changes in U.S. monetary policy have far-reaching effects on the developing world.”
Source: Spiegel Online, October 7
