Soros Wants Power Shift From U.S. to China

Since 01-24-08

Soros: market turmoil sign of shifting influence

http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/previousdetail.php?id=125401

Jan 23, 2008

 
London (dpa) - The current turmoil on world markets indicates a "significant shift of power and influence" from the US to emerging economic giants such as China and India, international financier George Soros said Wednesday.

Soros, in a BBC interview at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, said it would be "very difficult to avoid recessions" in the US and in Britain.

However, backing the major US Federal Reserve interest rate cut, Soros said: "You have to rescue markets otherwise you would go into a depression, as you did in the 1930s."

I'm not looking for a worldwide recession. I'm looking for a significant shift of power and influence away from the US in particular and a shift in favour of the developing world, particularly China."

Soros, who made 1 billion US dollars betting on the devaluation of the British pound in 1992, said he expected a recession on both sides of the Atlantic.

"I think credit expansion can't go any further than it has done, when you could effectively borrow 100 per cent with no money down on a house whose value has been inflated by the willingness of the banks to lend so much credit," he said.

Since the 1980s, instead of of imposing regulations and restrictions, markets had been left to their own devices, Soros said.

"The authorities came to rely on the markets to right themselves. They ought to have known better, because they have in the past come to the rescue, so they ought to have known that the markets don't necessarily right themselves."