Soros on Eurozone: Inflation or Bust

It is not everyday that you discover that George Soros is making the same argument as you.  And on something as complex as the Eurozone crisis.

Credit Bloomberg

According to the BBC, Soros will give a speech today in Germany and he will recommend that Eurozone countries should have a new growth target of 5 percent. In an article published two days ago in the New York Times Review of Books he contends that to do this, they should give up the austerity idea (what I called, after Krugman, internal devaluation) and should accept a higher inflation rate.

Since Germany is the biggest stumbling bloc in that respect, apparently, Soros is planning to suggest hat Germany should either accept this solution or exit the Euro. Or as he puts it,

In my judgment the best course of action is to persuade Germany to choose between becoming a more benevolent hegemon, or leading nation, or leaving the euro. In other words, Germany must lead or leave.

Indeed, Europe has a German problem.

Incidentally, Soros believes, as I do, that a German (or Finnish, as predicted by Roubini) exit would be less problematical than a Greek exit, as this latter would almost certainly trigger a domino effect.

It would be interesting to see if anyone would pay attention to Soros' recommendations. In the past, many institutions paid a heavy price for ignoring him. He has an exceptionally sharp understanding of major trends (he sensed the 2008 crisis and took control of his Quantum fund just in time to post a series of very high returns when everyone else was losing substantial sums) and if I were Merkel, I would listen to him carefully.