Soros thinks U.S. is far from recovery while it effectively ruins itself

According to George Soros’ forecast the U.S. economy is not to recover in a short time with a possibility of a situation that could be observed in Japan, in other words a long period of low recovery. Speaking to Reuter Financial Television Soros stressed that the government’s efforts aimed at rescuing financial institutions could have unprogramed implications effectively turning them into “zombies” that would suck the lifeblood out of the economy instead of stimulating it.

"I don't expect the U.S. economy to recover in the third or fourth quarter so I think we are in for a pretty lasting slowdown," Soros said, adding that in 2010 there might be "something" in terms of U.S. growth.

While majority of U.S. analysts expect the economy to show signs of recovery at late 2009 and early 2010 Soros has quite opposite view. He said that the recovery will look like like "an inverted square root sign," Soros said. "You hit bottom and you automatically rebound some, but then you don't come out of it in a V-shape recovery or anything like that. You settle down—step down."

In Soros’ view rescuing the banking and housing markets lead to more crucial aftermaths as long as financial institutions will likely care for themselves and eventually the only motive to drive them would be self-preservative considerations which means that they would pull the blanket to cover themselves in lieu of boosting the economy growth.

"What we have created now is a situation where the banks who will be able to earn their way out of a hole, but by doing that, they are going to weigh on the economy," he said. "Instead of stimulating the economy, they will draw the lifeblood, so to speak, of profits away from the real economy in order to keep themselves alive. This is the zombie bank situation." 

He also touched upon the issue of dollar renunciation pointing to that the green currency is vulnerable and the U.S. should treat it seriously.

"I think the dollar is now under question and I think the system will need to be reformed, so that the United States will be subject to the same discipline as is imposed on other countries," said Soros, whose famous bet against the British pound earned his Quantum Fund $1 billion in 1992. "Being the main issuer of international currency, we have been exempt and we have abused that because we have effectively consumed 6.5 percent more than we have produced. That is now coming to an end." 

Soros underlined that China will be the first to recover from the crisis which is unsurprising taking into account a large scale of manufacturing the country expanded over the past years supplying its cheap products to every point across the globe. The U.S. in turn was getting more and more absorbed into the financial games. As someone fairly noticed the U.S. had better stop printing money and playing at the financial markets and start increasing its manufacturing volumes while reducing its consumption.