Legendary billionaire investor George Soros has predicted the onset of a major global crisis in the near future. Europe will face the imminent threat, he said.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris, Soros said on May 29 that rising anti-European Union sentiment, the disruption to the Iran deal, a soaring dollar and investors taking money out of emerging markets are adding up to bad news for the global economy, according to CNN Money.
“We may be heading for another major financial crisis,” he said.
Soros said that the rise of populism in Europe is a significant problem.
Soros argued that the refugee crisis in Europe, “territorial disintegrations as exemplified by Brexit” and austerity are the three biggest challenges facing Europe. He warned that the Brexit “divorce will be a long process, probably taking more than five years.”
But Soros is also worried about the fact that there is a growing divide between Europe and the United States with regards to Iran.
Soros said President Trump's decision to unilaterally withdraw from the nuclear arms treaty with Iran is “effectively destroying the transatlantic alliance.”
Soros predicts that the termination of the deal with Iran “is bound to have a negative effect on the European economy and cause other dislocations” and noted that "the strength of the dollar is already precipitating a flight from emerging market currencies.
But Soros held out some hope that another global market and economic calamity could be avoided.
For example, he called for the EU, as opposed to just individual nations, to borrow more money to fund a “Marshall Plan” for Africa to deal with the refugee problem. Under the original Marshall Plan, the United States provided assistance to Europe to rebuild after World War II.
And he continued to stress that “the economic case for remaining a member of the EU is strong, but it will take time for it to sink in” and added that the EU “needs to transform itself into an association that countries like Britain would want to join.”
