Soros abstains

Keystone

When George Soros speculates the rest of the world stands up and takes notice – so the Swiss National Bank (SNB) will be relieved to know that he won’t be betting against its SFr1.20 ceiling against the euro.

Why not? For one thing, the billionaire wheeler dealer who made his name by breaking the British pound in 1992, has retired from the hedge fund industry.

Soros was speaking on day one of the WEF meeting.

But he also advises the current crop of financial whizz kids against staking their shirts on the SNB losing an arm wrestle over the franc.

“I would not speculate against the franc because the SNB is in a position to print as many Swiss francs as necessary,” he told journalists in Davos. “[The SNB ceiling] was a very clever manoeuvre.”

Not such good tidings for the highly indebted eurozone, however. Soros poured scorn on the efforts of the European Central Bank and Germany to bring order to the mountainous debts of Greece, Italy etc.

“What lies ahead?” he asked rhetorically. “Economic deterioration and a process of political and social disintegration will mutually reinforce each other.”

He even went so far as to suggest a sort of ‘European Spring’ (my catchphrase) social uprising unless the euro and the European Union undergoes urgent reforms.