"GEORGE SOROS: Europe Is Just Entering 25 Years Of Stagnation"

From Business Insider:

George Soros talked about Ukraine and Europe with Bloomberg TV's Francine Lacqua.

"Japan is just trying to break-out of 25 years of stagnation, where Europe is just entering," he warned. "The European Union is not a nation. It’s an incomplete association of nations and it may not survive 25 years of stagnation"

"You have to go further with the integration," he argued. "You have to solve the banking problem, because Europe is lagging behind the rest of the world in sorting out its banks."
Here's more of the transcript courtesy of Bloomberg TV:

George Soros on what is facing Europe today:

 "What is facing Europe, unless there is a more radical change is a long period of stagnation. Nations can survive in that way. Japan is just trying to break-out of 25 years of stagnation, where Europe is just entering. The European Union is not a nation. It’s an incomplete association of nations and it may not survive 25 years of stagnation.

"The financial crisis as such is over. But now we are facing a political crisis, because the Euro crisis has transformed what was meant to be a voluntary association of equal sovereign states that sacrificed part of their sovereignty for the common good into something radically different. It is now a relationship between creditors and debtors, where the debtors have difficulty in paying and servicing their debt and that puts the creditors in charge. And that divides the Eurozone into two classes – the creditors and debtors. The creditors are in charge and unfortunately the policy that Germany in particular is imposing on Europe is counter-productive and is making the condition of the debtor countries worse and worse. So, right now Europe is already growing a little bit, the Eurozone, but that’s only because Germany is forging ahead and more than let’s say Italy and Spain are falling behind. "

On Central Banks and whether he cares about the weakness we saw in the data and deflation:

"That’s going to be a very tough year for the banks. They are under pressure, because they have to meet the stress test. The banks have an interest in passing the stress test rather than reviving credit to the economy, so the banks have a transmission mechanism for the people’s savings channeling it into the real economy. They are not fulfilling their function."...MORE