The warning.
Published: Sunday, 3 Jun 2012 |
7:46 AM ET
Euro-zone governments (click here) have around three months to ensure the survival of the single currency, billionaire investor George Soros said in a speech on Saturday.
“We are at an inflection point. After the expiration of the three months’ window, the markets will continue to demand more but the authorities will not be able to meet their demands,” he warned in a speech at the Festival of Economics in Trento, Italy.
The European Union is “like a bubble” – not a financial bubble but a political bubble -- that could pop as a result of the euro -zone crisis, Soros said....
The distant voice.
Last updated: October 13, 2011 10:41 pm
For 30 years, whenever economic crises hit the world, Jean-Claude Trichet (click here) was at the centre of action. As his career draws to a close – his eight-year term as European Central Bank president ends in three weeks – the former French finance official and Banque de France governor is in the midst of his biggest crisis yet. “It is a historical event of the first magnitude, the worst crisis since the second world war,” he exclaims. “It could have produced a great depression had appropriate decisions not been taken at the appropriate time.”
At its epicentre is Europe’s 17-country eurozone. The bloc’s leaders are scrambling to assemble a rescue package that will finally restore the stability of Europe’s 13-year old monetary union. In an interview with the Financial Times, however, Mr Trichet sees the crisis as broader – as a crisis of the west. “All advanced economies are being x-rayed by the present crisis and revealing their skeletons and the weaknesses in their skeletons. It’s true for all of us – for Japan, for
the US, for Europeans.”...Money monitor: Jean-Claude Trichet this year. 'There are more reasons now for Europe to unite,' he says
A Brave New Path Forward.
BERLIN/PARIS |
(Reuters) - When Jean-Claude Trichet (click here) called last
June for the creation of a European finance ministry
with power over national budgets, the idea seemed fanciful, a distant dream
that would take years or even decades to realize, if it ever came to be.
One year later, with the
euro zone's debt crisis threatening to tear the bloc apart, Germany is
pushing its partners for precisely the kind of giant leap forward in fiscal
integration that the now-departed European Central Bank president had in mind.
After falling short with her
"fiscal compact" on budget discipline, German Chancellor Angela Merkel
is pressing for much more ambitious measures, including a central authority to
manage euro area finances, and major new powers for the European Commission,
European Parliament and European Court of Justice.
She is also seeking a coordinated
European approach to reforming labor markets, social security systems and tax
policies, German officials say….
