The chances of Greece leaving the euro area are now 50-50 and
the country could go “down the drain,” billionaire investor
George Soros said.
“It’s now a lose-lose game and the best that can happen is
actually muddling through,” Soros, 84,
said in a Bloomberg Television interview
due to air Tuesday. “Greece is a long-festering problem that was
mishandled from the beginning by all parties.”
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ government needs to
persuade its creditors to sign off on a package of economic
measures to free up long-withheld aid payments that will keep
the country afloat.
Since his January election victory, he has tried to shape an alternative to the austerity program set out in the nation’s bailout agreement, spurring concern that Greece may be forced out of the euro.
Since his January election victory, he has tried to shape an alternative to the austerity program set out in the nation’s bailout agreement, spurring concern that Greece may be forced out of the euro.
The negotiations between Tsipras’ Syriza government and the
institutions helping finance the Greek economy — the European
Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary
Fund — could result in a “breakdown,” leading to the country
leaving the common currency area, Soros said in the interview at
his London home.
“You can keep on pushing it back indefinitely,” making interest
payments without writing down debt, Soros said. “But in the
meantime there will be no primary surplus because Greece is
going down the drain.”
Soros said in January 2012 that the odds are in the direction of
Greece leaving the euro region.
“Right now we are at the cusp and I can see both possibilities,”
he said in Tuesday’s interview.
Aid Payment
Tsipras is meeting with German lawmakers in Berlin on Tuesday
after Chancellor Angela Merkel encouraged him to follow the path
set out by Greece’s creditors. European Parliament President
Martin Schulz said in an interview with Italian newspaper
Repubblica that he expects a deal by the end of this week that
will allow the release of at least some money.
The start of quantitative easing by the ECB at a time when the
U.S. Federal Reserve is considering raising interest rates
“creates currency fluctuations,” said Soros, one of the world’s
wealthiest men with a $28.7 billion fortune built partly through
multi-billion dollar trades in currency markets, according to
the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“That probably creates some great opportunities for hedge funds
but I’m no longer in that business,” he said. Soros, who was
born in Hungary, said the war in eastern Ukraine between
government forces and rebel militia supported by Russia’s
President Vladimir Putin concerns him the most.
Without more external financial assistance the “new Ukraine”
probably will gradually deteriorate and “become like the old
Ukraine so that the oligarchs come back and assert their power,”
he said. “That fight has actually started in the last week or
so.”