George Soros In Bangalore - Speaks About The ‘Impending Economic Crisis’
Yesterday, St.John’s Auditorium in Bangalore was honoured by the presence of one of the greatest investors of all times, George Soros. George Soros is most famously remembered for his notoriety in 1992 when he shorted the British pound and made a profit of more than $1 billion in a day.In conversation with Anurag Behar, the VC of Azim Premji University, as a part of the APU Public Lecture Series, George Soros took the audience through an hour long talk about what shaped his life, his views on the current economic situation and the impending economic downturn which would be greater than the 2008 crisis.
According to Soros, the 2008 crisis started taking shape in the 1980’s. “I believed that the bubble would burst in 1997 with the Asian crisis but I was wrong then. It went on building, carried through the dot com burst and after 2005, it had to blow up”, said Soros. A $700 billion rescue effort was required for damage control and a similar euro embryo would be required to combat the crisis in Europe.
“When the Euro was inaugurated, the authors knew that there were holes which needed to be plugged. The situation hasn’t turned out exactly the way it should have. Now, if the European banks fail, the repercussions would be worldwide”, prophesied Soros. He gave an analogy to a skidding car where a driver needs to steer in the same direction of the skid before correcting and elucidated that we’re still in the skid mode. On being asked about the repercussions, Soros said that, “The Crisis will primarily hit the developed world; Europe more so than the United States. The developing world would be less affected”.
Soros has been influenced by the works of Karl Popper and he went on to talk about the theory of reflexivity, the breakdown of which is given below.
Concluding the talk, Soros, a champion of democracy had a few kind words for India, “India is a fascinating country; especially the democracy with all its faults. India is going to be of increasing importance to the world and I’m more positive about India in the longer run compared to the US.”
-Jubin Mehta
