Soros draws on his past to argue that the global economic crisis is as significant, and unpredictable, as the end of communism. “The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening.” To Soros, the spectacular debunking of the credo of efficient markets—the notion that markets are rational and can regulate themselves to avert disaster—“is comparable to the collapse of Marxism as a political system. The prevailing interpretation has turned out to be very misleading. It assumes perfect knowledge, which is very far removed from reality. We need to move from the Age of Reason to the Age of Fallibility in order to have a proper understanding of the problems.”
Soros is out of the investing game, living now as a full-time philanthropist and sage, while still keeping an eye on the fund company which bears his name and which provides him with a ten-digit income each year. Because he doesn’t have a financial book to talk, because he’s happy being brutally honest, and because he’s giving voice to the plutocrats’ darkest fears, Soros seems to encapsulate Davos 2012 like no one else.
Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.
More than half of international investors say income inequality hampers economic growth, according to a Bloomberg survey published today. The Jan. 23-24 poll of 1,209 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers also found that 31 percent don’t think it’s appropriate for government policy to address the issue. Overall, almost one in three surveyed back radical changes to the capitalist system.
The country with the second-highest number of billionaires registered for the conference is India, with at least 16. Russia will send at least 12, including Oleg Deripaska, chief executive officer of United Co. Rusal (RUALR), the world’s largest aluminum producer, and Viktor Vekselberg, the company’s chairman, who owns about 16 percent along with partners.
Vekselberg, 54, called on Davos’s “unprecedented collective of the world’s influencers” to cooperate amid what he described as a “very somber economic context.”
HEY! .. just remembered!! .. the deluded know-it-all prophet-of-doom-everdayers tell us we don't know how dire the situation is .. that we just don't make connections re the NWO conspiracy ..
That's why we don't stockpile survival rations. GAWD!!!
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