G20 Summit Our Last Chance, says Soros

March 29, 2009

69

George Soros sees the upcoming G20 summit as a "make-or-break occasion."

G20 Summit Our Last Chance, says Soros

Courtesy of StockJockey at 1440 Wall Street

George Soros is famous for lower back pain…and while his son like to tease him about it, his back seem to be a better trading tool than anything developed by rocket scientists on Wall Street. And he is finally explaining why his back tends to ache at inflection points in the market:

…he has psycho-somatic illnesses – backaches and pains – that tip him off to changes in the market. “It’s as if you’re a jungle animal, and you see another animal facing you. You have to make a decision: fight or flight? Your hair stands up and you growl and you decide, ‘Am I going to attack because I’m stronger or am I going to run away because otherwise he’s going to eat me?’ You are very tense. And that’s the tension that gives you the backache.” Times Online

George thinks next week’s G20 summit in London is the last chance for policy makers to pull a rabbit our of their hat and pull us out of this spiral…but he is not holding his breath:

“The odds would favour that it fails because there are such differences of opinion. It’s difficult enough to get it right in your own country let alone with 20 governments coming together, but if it’s a failure I think then the global financial and trading system falls apart.”

If the G20 is nothing but a talking shop then he thinks we are heading for meltdown. “That could push the world into depression. It’s really a make-or-break occasion. That’s why it’s so important.” The chances of a depression are, he says, “quite high” – even if that is averted, the recession will last a long time. “Look, we are not going back to where we came from. In that sense it’s going to last for ever.”

Food for thought for those you you who have been chasing stocks – a big crowd, given that we just posted a two week stretch that was the fiercest rally in 78 years, at least in the U.S.