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February 13, 2012 at 08:23 AM
Billionaire investor George Soros says that despite the passage of new austerity measures by Greece, the European Union could still fall to political tensions arising from weak growth and the pressure on countries struggling under large sovereign debt loads.
In a Thursday CNN interview with Fareed Zacharia that aired Sunday, Soros (left) said, “Right now the European Union and particularly the heavily indebted countries face a lost decade. It might actually be longer than a decade because Japan that had a similar situation with the real estate boom and the banking crisis has had now 25 years of no growth.”
He added, “That will create tensions within the European Union, which could destroy the European Union. And that’s a real danger.”
The hard-won vote of approval over the latest austerity measures, said Soros, is “not necessarily going to work in the long run. But it will certainly buy you another six months of quiet on the Greek front.” He was also critical of the way the EU has responded to Greece’s debt crisis, saying, “Greece is a sick situation [that] will continue to be an irritant and a problem for Europe,” and that the EU “mishandled” the crisis.
