Soros Says Greece Now Lose-Lose Game After Being Mishandled

by Tom Beardsworth, Francine Lacqua

8:00 AM EET

March 24, 2015

(Bloomberg) -- The chances of Greece leaving the euro area are now 50-50 and the country could go “down the drain,” billionaire investor George Soros said.

“It’s now a lose-lose game and the best that can happen is actually muddling through,” Soros, 84, said in a Bloomberg Television interview due to air Tuesday. “Greece is a long-festering problem that was mishandled from the beginning by all parties.”

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government needs to persuade its creditors to sign off on a package of economic measures to free up long-withheld aid payments that will keep the country afloat. Since his January election victory, he has tried to shape an alternative to the austerity program set out in the nation’s bailout agreement, spurring concern that Greece may be forced out of the euro.

The negotiations between Tsipras’s Syriza government and the institutions helping finance the Greek economy -- the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund -- could result in a “breakdown,” leading to the country leaving the common currency area, Soros said in the interview at his London home.

“You can keep on pushing it back indefinitely,” making interest payments without writing down debt, Soros said. “But in the meantime there will be no primary surplus because Greece is going down the drain.”

Soros said in January 2012 that the odds are in the direction of Greece leaving the euro region.

“Right now we are at the cusp and I can see both possibilities,” he said in Tuesday’s interview.

Aid Payment

Tsipras is meeting with German lawmakers in Berlin on Tuesday after Chancellor Angela Merkel encouraged him to follow the path set out by Greece’s creditors. European Parliament President Martin Schulz said in an interview with Italian newspaper Repubblica that he expects a deal by the end of this week that will allow the release of at least some money.

The start of quantitative easing by the ECB at a time when the U.S. Federal Reserve is considering raising interest rates “creates currency fluctuations,” said Soros, one of the world’s wealthiest men with a $28.7 billion fortune built partly through multi-billion dollar trades in currency markets, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“That probably creates some great opportunities for hedge funds but I’m no longer in that business,” he said. Soros, who was born in Hungary, said the war in eastern Ukraine between government forces and rebel militia supported by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin concerns him the most.

Without more external financial assistance the “new Ukraine” probably will gradually deteriorate and “become like the old Ukraine so that the oligarchs come back and assert their power,” he said. “That fight has actually started in the last week or so.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Tom Beardsworth in London at tbeardsworth@bloomberg.net; Francine Lacqua in London at flacqua@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net Jana Randow, Leon Mangasarian