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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYk5JK9jvsM8&refer=home [Broken]Soros Sees End of Dollar-Backed Credit Expansion (Update3)
By Edward Evans and Jenny Strasburg
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Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor George Soros said the post-World War II era of easy credit backed by the U.S. dollar will end as the nation's economy slips into an ``almost inevitable'' recession.
``The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom, it's basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency,'' Soros said in a debate today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ``Now the rest of the world is increasingly unwilling to accumulate dollars.''
A U.S. recession is all but certain as lenders and investors stop the flow of credit, while the global economy probably will avoid contraction, Soros, 77, said later in a Bloomberg Television interview.
Soros appears to be predicting doom and gloom though whilst pessimistic about the US he is more optimistic than many other commentators who are predicting a global recession.
Although he sees the $US maintaining it's reserve currency status how realistic is this given it has fallen by 55% against the Euro since GWB came to power in 2001 and given that the dollars share of currency reserves fell to a record low of 63.8% at the end of September, down from 65% three months earlier. Meanwhile the Euro's share rose to 26.4 percent from 25.5 percent.
China are trying to protect the value of their 1.4 trillion $US treasury holdings by using the funds as collateral for Euro denominated purchases in effect liquidating their $US in favour of Euro denominated assets.
So is America in recession or if not is recession inevitable and if so how deep will it be and how long is it likely to last? Will the changeover of the presidency give a boost to the economy and the dollar?
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