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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lucretius who wrote (3170)	1/21/1999 7:23:00 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81029

Thursday January 21, 6:34 pm Eastern Time FOCUS-"Asset bubble" threat to world economy-Soros (Adds further quotes from Soros) PARIS, Jan 21 (Reuters) - George Soros, the hedge fund head who made his fortune on the financial markets, said on Thursday that an ''asset bubble'' in countries like the United States was the next major threat to an already shaky world economy. Soros said financial crisis over the past two years had hurt the emerging market economies while bringing major gains such as low commodity and import prices and negligable inflation to the established capitalist economies. ''So far the crisis has affected the periphery of the capitalist system negatively and the centre positively,'' the billionaire Hungarian-American financier said. ''Today American consumers are...spending more than they are earning. This is a wonderful world but it cannot last forever,'' he said via satellite link to a conference on the prospects for the global economy. ''I see the development of an asset bubble as the next major threat to the system,'' he said, pointing to the abrupt collapse in property and asset prices in Japan in the early 1990s, which has left the world's second largest economy fighting to pull out of recession. Soros said that the instability and turmoil which battered economies across Asia over the last two years before striking Russia in August and swirling on to Latin America illustrated the dangers of ''free market fundamentalism.'' The economy had changed dramatically in the past 40 years, with the end of capital controls creating a globalised market which operated without any supra-national political guidance. ''You have political systems which are national and financial markets which are global,'' Soros said. Cross-border financial organisations set up after World War Two, like the International Monetary Fund, were no longer suited to the times and the IMF should be turned from a crisis-fighter into a crisis prevention agency, Soros said. Countries currently turned to the IMF for help when they were already in trouble. The IMF should be allowed to act like an international central bank, with a pre-emptive say on economic policy in those countries which could ultimately turn to it as a lender of last resort, he said. Sound economic policies were fundamental but there were also cases where the balance tipped in favour of lenders and against indebted countries which were in fact pursuing the right economic policy, he said. The free market ideology did not work without guidance. ''Communism was said the have a scientific basis, with Marx. (Free) market fundamentalism also has a supposedly scientific basis. I think it is false,'' he said, adding the belief that markets were perfect was a ''false and dangerous ideology.''

To: Lucretius who wrote (3170)	1/21/1999 7:36:00 PM
From: Zardoz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81029

"no, just the way small minds think" Well if you read more, maybe you puny mind would expand. Let's see {open Taurus brain, inserts an atom} there I just doubled your brain power.... but you still don't have enough to tie your shoes. So let me talk down to your level. Economics are controlled by Greenspan. Markets are controlled buy buyers/sellers. A stock market corretion/crash, can effect the economy, but under greenspan as in 1987/1998, the effect are short term. "The spread between L-T rates and short-term rates should get wider and wider as Easy Al runs the press and tries to paper over all our problems. A situation very bullish for gold." oh my... M2 dropped 5.3 BILLION, guess that blows your comments to pieces? Money being destroyed, guess gold is DEAD now. bog.frb.fed.us