Billionaire investor and economic thinker George Soros told a Frankfurt newspaper that the economy’s downward motion is easing up and that the various stimulus packages are beginning to having their intended effect. According to Reuters, in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily paper, Soros claimed that most countries were on their way up, but that Asia would emerge more quickly than the United States.
“The economic freefall has been stopped, the collapse of the financial system averted,” said Soros. “National economic stimulus programs are starting to take effect. The downward dynamic is easing.”
Soros warned that the recovery efforts would only make up for about half of the losses sustained in the recession, and that stagnation would take effect for a period. He also claimed that the U.S. dollar, having been devalued heavily against the Euro in recent years, would not lose much more value.
Soros reaffirmed that China, whose GDP in 2008 was second worldwide only to that of the United States, would soon be a powerful economic force on the global stage. He predicted that Asian countries on the whole would “find out of the crisis” before the United States managed a full recovery.