George Soros the billionaire investor who made a billion pounds betteng against the UK's Bank of England in 1992 and forcing it out of the ERM (exchange rate mechanism), has compared the Eurozone crisis to that of the Soviet Union. George Soros has said in an interview there was a real danger it could break up the European Union.
Open Europe has the detail here but among other things, the man credited with making billions out of betting against the pound, compared the single currency to the Soviet Union. He said to OPen Europe:
"I am terribly concerned about the euro potentially destroying the EU. There is a real danger that the solution to the financial problem creates a really profound political problem.
Germany needs to realise that the policy it imposes on the euro area - the austerity programme - is counter-productive. It cannot actually succeed. At the moment they [the south] is being pushed - unwittingly, not with bad intentions, but the effect is that they are being pushed into a long lasting depression and that is what is happening to Europe. And it may last more than a decade, in fact it could become permanent, until the pain is so big that eventually there may be a rebellion, a rejection of the EU, and that would then be the destruction of the EU, which is a terribly heavy price to maintain to preserve the euro, which is meant to be just a servant of the EU."
"It could last quite a long time, the same way as the Soviet Union, which was a very bad arrangement, lasted for 70 years. However, I think that eventually, it is bound to break up the European Union. The longer it will take, and it may take generations, those will be lost in terms of political freedom and economic prosperity. The solution is to me a terrible tragedy for the EU. And it's happening to the most developed open society in the world. To me it's a terrible tragedy. It doesn't have villains, because I don't think that Germany is doing it with bad intentions but it's happening out of a lack of understanding of very complex problems."
Open Europe
