Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.
Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.
He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.
“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”
Well, somebody must want the world economy to collapse. First the president and now a far-left supporting “investor.” This is actually starting to get a little weird.
I have to believe Soros is shorting something and will do whatever it takes to be successful, the welfare of the rest of us be d—–. I do not see where he is up to anything other than his own self good and his pet left wing causes.
I agree with Chris. Soros is a sleazy, rich speculator. Just the type of guy that the Democrats in Congress want to punitively tax for being too successful. Have at him.
Volcker I can’t explain, other than he is getting long in the tooth and his powers of economic reasoning may be getting swayed by politicians.
I agree with the assessment of Soros here, but I think he’s probably not too far off the mark on the merits. There’s an ocean of debt out there that needs to clear, and it’s not going to be pretty as it happens. I can see a lot of companies going under, civil unrest and revolution in some places.
Soros made billions fairly. And he doesn’t mind paying taxes because he has a lot of gratitude for the system that allowed him to make billions in the first place. He understands that the billions didn’t appear out of thin air, but could be made due to the existence of currencies and nations to back them up. And nations require taxes.
Fairly – sure, by investing in Halliburton, and also by selling short to devalue the British pound……’fairly’ but with little regard for the rest of his human community, one could argue.
What makes this pronouncement of Soros’ interesting is some context (from Wikipedia):
[i]”Public predictions:
Soros’ 2008 book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, describes a “superbubble” that has built up over the past 25 years and is now ready to collapse. This is the third in a series of books he’s written that have predicted disaster. As he states:
I have a record of crying wolf…. I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998) and now in this book. So it’s three books predicting disaster. (After) the boy cried wolf three times . . . the wolf really came.[16]
He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.
I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong… I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away.”[/i]
I know that there were difficulties in honoring Leviticus 25, but that’s because we’re lying sharp dealers, not because the Lord didn’t have a grip on finance!
I think the panics and crashes we see recurring in the system are a result of open defiance of the Lord’s command to “rest” the land every seven years and to proclaim the Jubilee every seven sevens. Worried about the mountain of debt? Wondering why the US has poured $350 billion – which seems only to move numbers from one set of ledgers to another without constructing anything tangible? It’s simple – we don’t trust the Lord and our system has disengaged finance from productive efforts.
I submit for your consideration that in failing to cooperate with God’s plan, our financial system has blue-screened and we’re getting the Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot it. Better to let that happen than sit frozen with our drives whirring.
Doug, why should there be any expectation that the USA, not in any way in covenant with God, be expected to follow the covenant laws between God and Israel? Of course, even were the USA in a covenant relationship with God, we would not keep our side of the covenant any more than Israel did.
If Soros made all his money fairly, then why was he convicted of insider trading by the French government? Said conviction was also upheld on appeal.
#8 – Jimmy
Correct – I don’t expect the US to act differently. I’m merely commenting about the truth and realism of God’s revealed word in Scripture. We don’t let remit debts – so we build up the stresses until a crash. In other words, the Lord knows about boom-and-bust; we’re just smart enough (deluded enough) to think we can escape the economic cycle.
From:
http://news.silverseek.com/GoldIsMoney/1234993753.php
The collapse of banks, currencies and the markets is not a failure of Biblically sound free market capitalism, because that has never existed. Rather, the collapse is a failure of fraudulent paper money systems based on usury.
Usury is not “excessive” interest. Usury is not “excessive” profits. Usury is any interest on a loan. Any interest on a loan is excessive because of the mathmatical insanity of compounding interest, or exponential growth of even 1% per year.
If you invested an ounce of gold at 1/3 of 1%, 6000 years ago, you’d own all 5 billion ounces of gold in the world, and if you invested it at just over 2%, you’d own about all the atoms in the entire universe, it would all be gold, and it would all belong to you.
That’s why usury systems are mathmatically unsustainable; it has nothing to do with a “faith based religion”, the Bible just makes a mathmatically correct assessment of reality, and turns it into advice; which is, don’t lend at usury (interest) to anyone in your own nation!
That’s why usurious wealth systems that attempt to grow faster than such limiting rates are doomed to decay in spectacular ways and create vicious “economic cycles” that are not random at all, but mathmatically certain to happen.
Usury is mathmatically certain to lead to slavery, and is thus incompatable with freedom, since slavery is the opposite of freedom.
This is why, according to the Bible, all debts must be forgiven, for everyone in society, every 7 years, and all slaves must go free. Free people are just more productive and beneficial to humanity than slaves. God’s way leads to prosperity, and usury systems lead to poverty and slavery.
#7 “Worried about the mountain of debt? Wondering why the US has poured $350 billion – which seems only to move numbers from one set of ledgers to another without constructing anything tangible? It’s simple – we don’t trust the Lord and our system has disengaged finance from productive efforts.”
Exactly. If Joe makes 10,000 a year biking to his job at Sonic, and I lend him an additional 10,000 to get some unspecified “education” to be paid back at 10% interest, that does not mean that Joe is now 110% more productive. If he invested the 10,000 in Art History he is simply 110% poorer due to debt. It is only if I manage to make Joe more productive (for example if I insist he spend the 10,000 getting a one year degree in Welding that permits him to earn 21,000 a year), will I have done him a favor, since his second year will allow him to be more productive, and still debt free.
And that is for so called “good debt” that makes people more productive. If Joe buys a 10,000 car with the money he is still 110% poorer because he would have been better off debt free, biking to Sonic then indebted and crusing to Sonic in style.
It is exactly because finance has completely divorced production that we have a financial system that is crashing.