The First Post
January 22, 2008

Amid collapsing stock prices worldwide, the billionaire investor George Soros has told an Austrian daily, the Standard, that the United States is threatened with recession and the world is facing the worst financial crisis in half a century. “The situation is much more serious than any other financial crisis since the end of World War II,” Soros was quoted as saying.

He said over the past few years politics had been guided by some basic misunderstandings stemming from something that he called “market fundamentalism” - the belief that financial markets tended to act as a balance. “This is the wrong idea,” he said. “We really do have a serious financial crisis now.”

He added he was surprised how little it was understood that a US recession was also a threat to Europe. European shares duly fell nearly six per cent on Monday, their biggest one-day slide since 9/11.

Meanwhile in Mumbai, some market analysts are suggesting Soros shorted the Indian markets last week. Over 15 years after he shorted the British pound in September 1992 and earned one billion dollars, local market sources say one of Soros’s funds may have shorted the Nifty last week.