Europe has three months to save the euro, billionaire investor George Soros said this weekend amid global pressure to end eurozone turmoil rocking financial markets and creating deep economic uncertainty.
“In my judgement, the authorities have a three months’ window during which they could correct their mistakes and reverse the current trends,” Soros said on Saturday at an economics festival in Trento, Italy, naming those authorities as Germany and the Bundesbank.
“In a crisis, the creditors are in the driver’s seat and nothing can be done without German support,” he said, adding that public opposition to austerity in the eurozone “is likely to grow until the policy is reversed.”
The remarks were posted on his Web site.
Greece is heading to the polls for a second time in six weeks after an inconclusive vote on May 6. With the radical leftist Syriza party — chief opponent of a massive EU-IMF bailout accord — tipped to win this time, the election could lead to Greece quitting the single currency.
“I expect that the Greek public will be sufficiently frightened by the prospect of expulsion from the European Union that it will give a narrow majority of seats to a coalition that is ready to abide by the current agreement,” Soros said, referring to June 17 polls in the debt-stricken state.
The “crisis is liable to come to a climax in the fall” of the year, he said.
“By that time the German economy will also be weakening so that [German] Chancellor [Angela] Merkel will find it even more difficult than today to persuade the German public to accept any additional European responsibilities,” Soros said.
“That is what creates a three months’ window,” he said.
Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist, said austerity measures were having a disastrous effect on the global economy.
“The authorities didn’t understand the nature of the euro crisis; they thought it is a fiscal problem while it is more of a banking problem and a problem of competitiveness,” he added.
“And they applied the wrong remedy: You cannot reduce the debt burden by shrinking the economy, [but] only by growing your way out of it,” he said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last