George Soros Says Damage From Financial Crisis Has ‘Yet To Be Felt’
Recently, Macleans (Canada) got the chance to speak to billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros about his new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. Here are some notable excerpts from the conversation:
MACLEANS: You’ve come to some grim conclusions about the market in the book. For example, you write that the bottom of the housing market is still “further than people think.”
SOROS: Behind the housing bubble, there’s a super bubble which has been growing for the last 25 years. Every bubble has an element of reality and an element of fantasy, of misinterpretation. The reality has been a trend of ever-increasing use of credit, of credit expansion. The misconception is that markets tend toward equilibrium and can be left to their own devices, to take care of their excesses. In the boom phase, it’s very pleasant because you enjoy credit creation and, with that, comes wealth creation. In the bust phase, it’s very unpleasant because you have credit contraction, a reduction of leverage, a decline in the value of collateral, etc. and that involves wealth destruction. I’m afraid that I am a prophet of doom. I don’t like it and I don’t think I’m predicting anything unconditional because I think that how the situation will evolve depends on how the authorities respond to it. But, unfortunately, we are in that phase of the super bubble.
Later on in the interview, the co-founder of the Quantum Fund with Jim Rogers shed some light on where he thought we were in the financial crisis:
MACLEANS: According to your book, “We are in the midst of a financial crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression” and that “the entire financial system is on the brink of a breakdown.” Can you give me an idea of what that’s going to feel like?
SOROS: I actually think the acute phase is behind us. We had a pretty serious breakdown. The very core of the system was malfunctioning, and it’s still sputtering pretty badly. But the full effect of the damage is yet to be felt, both for the financial institutions and for the real economy. As far as the financial institutions are concerned, they’ve recognized a lot of losses. But they perhaps haven’t fully recognized all the losses they may incur from holding mortgages if the decline in housing prices hasn’t run its course, which I believe is the case. We are probably halfway in the decline and that decline is going to be quite steep—steeper than currently anticipated because housing prices are going to overshoot on the downside as they overshot on the upside. How far they overshoot depends on how the authorities react to the problem, because what causes the overshoot is foreclosures. It unbalances the supply. In my estimation, there could be something like two million foreclosures in the foreseeable future, half of it from subprime sector and half of it from option adjustable rate mortgages. So you need to take steps to try to reduce the number of defaults and the number of foreclosures. It’s possible to do something about it.
MACLEANS: There’s very little discussion about widespread reform of the credit sector. Instead, the authorities seem more inclined to argue about whether or not there’s a recession looming. Is the recession argument a red herring? Is it diverting attention from a more fundamental crisis?
SOROS: No, it’s not a red herring. For the moment, the economy is actually showing considerable resilience and people think the worst is over. I’m afraid that that is not the case; we are heading for a recession, but we are not there yet.
Source:
“The Macleans.ca Interview: George Soros”
Philippe Gohier
Macleans (Canada), June 13, 2008
