rss

Roubini sounds alarm on bond market 'vigilantes'

The United States may fall victim to bond “vigilantes” targeting indebted nations from the United Kingdom to Japan in a potential second stage of the financial crisis, New York University professor Nouriel Roubini said.

“Bond market vigilantes have already woken up in Greece, in Spain, in Portugal, in Ireland, in Iceland, and soon enough they could wake up in the UK, in Japan, in the United States, if we keep on running very large fiscal deficits,” Roubini said at an event at the London School of Economics. “The chances are, they are going to wake up in the United States in the next three years and say, ‘this is unsustainable.'”

The euro has touched a four-year low against the dollar on concern nations with the largest budget deficits will struggle to meet the European Union’s austerity requirements. Roubini, speaking in a lecture hall packed with students who then queued to meet him at a book-signing, suggested that the public debt burden incurred after the banking panic of 2008 may now cause the financial crisis to metamorphose.

“There is now a massive re-leveraging of the public sector, with budget deficits on the order of 10 percent” of gross domestic product “in a number of countries,” Roubini said. “History would suggest that maybe this crisis is not really over. We just finished the first stage and there’s a risk of ending up in the second stage of this financial crisis.”

The US posted its largest April budget deficit on record as the excess of spending over revenue rose to $82.7 billion. The federal debt is currently projected to reach 90 percent of the economy by 2020.

Roubini, who predicted in 2006 that a financial crisis was imminent, said that the record US budget deficit may persist amid a stalemate in Congress between Republicans blocking tax increases and Democrats who oppose cuts in spending.

“In many advanced economies, the political will to do the right thing is constrained,” he said.

Roubini reiterated that the euro region faces the threat of a breakup after the Greek budget crisis. The European Union said on Tuesday it transferred the first instalment of emergency loans to Greece, one day before 8.5 billion euros ($10.4 billion) of bonds come due.

“Even today there is a risk of a breakup of the monetary union, the euro zone as well,” Roubini said.

“A double dip recession in the euro zone” is “something that’s not unlikely, given what’s happening.”

Oracle-George Soros

George Soros
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
“Soros” redirects here. For other uses, see Soros (disambiguation).
George Soros
George Soros at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010
Born August 12, 1930 (1930-08-12) (age 80)
Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary
Alma mater London School of Economics
Occupation Entrepreneur, currency trader, investor, philosopher, philanthropist, political activist
Net worth ▲ $14.2 billion (Forbes)[1]
Religion None; Atheist[2]
Spouse Twice divorced (Annaliese Witschak and Susan Weber Soros)
Children Robert, Andrea, Jonathan, Alexander, Gregory
Website
www.georgesoros.com
George Soros (Hungarian: Soros György) (pronounced /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/,;[3] HungarianIPA: [ˈʃoroʃ]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American currency speculator, stock investor, businessman, philanthropist, and liberal political activist.[4] He became known as “the Man Who Broke the Bank of England” after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises.[5][6]
Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from Communism to Capitalism in Hungary (1984–89),[6] and provided Europe’s largest ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest.[7] Later, his funding and organization of Georgia’s Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial to its success. In the United States, he is known for donating large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush’s bid for re-election in 2004. He helped found the Center for American Progress.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in 2003 in the foreword of Soros’ book The Alchemy of Finance:
George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become ‘open societies,’ open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.
Family
Soros was born in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, the son of the Esperantist writer Tivadar Soros. Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a Hungarian Jew, who was a prisoner of war during and after World War I and eventually escaped from Russia to rejoin his family in Budapest.[8][9]
The family changed its name in 1936 from Schwartz to Soros, in response to growing anti-semitism with the rise of Fascism. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and because it has a meaning. Although the specific meaning is left unstated in Kaufmann’s biography, in Hungarian, soros means “next in line, or designated successor and in Esperanto, it means “will soar”.[10] His son George was taught to speak Esperanto from birth and is a native Esperanto speaker. George Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home, and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.[11]
George Soros has been married and divorced twice, to Annaliese Witschak, and to Susan Weber Soros. He has five children: Robert, Andrea, Jonathan (with his first wife, Annaliese); Alexander, Gregory (with his second wife, Susan). His elder brother, Paul Soros, a private investor and philanthropist, is a retired engineer, who headed Soros Associates, an international engineering firm based in New York, and established the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for Young Americans.[12][13] George Soros’ nephew Peter Soros, a son of Paul Soros, is married to the former Flora Fraser, a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Sir Hugh Fraser, and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter.[14]
[edit] Early life (more…)

Hedge Fund Legends with Their Humble Beginnings

While the hedge fund industry may be mostly comprised of professionals from privileged upbringings, some of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers actually come from more humble beginnings. 
Hedge fund legends such as George Soros, Ray Dalio, and sibling duo Marc Lasry and Sonia Gardner are just some of the recognizable names in the industry from middle-class backgrounds who worked their way up the corporate ladder to become some of the most successful leaders in the financial world.
According to Soros’ official biography, the Hungary native and founder of New York-based Soros Fund Management, immigrated to England when he was 17 to attend the London School of Economics. His uncle paid his living expenses while he attended the business school. 
Nowdays, Soros, also known to many in the industry as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” for his $1 billion investment profit for his bet during the 1992 currency crisis that struck the United Kingdom, is one of the richest people in the world. He came in at No. 15 in this year Forbes’ 400 List of Richest Americans with a net worth of about $19 billion.
Bridgewater Associates founder Dalio runs one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in the world, but the Queens native grew up in the middle-class neighborhood of Jackson Heights. He also spent part of his childhood years catering to the needs of rich businessmen. 
According to Maneet Ahuja’s The Alpha Masters, Dalio, the son of a jazz musician and a homemaker, began caddying at the age of 12 at a Long Island golf club to make extra money.  (more…)

Go to top