Billonaire Investor George Soros Questions the Euro’s Future

According to weekend news reports, Germany’s finance ministry has sketched out a plan under which countries using the euro currency will provide between $27 billion and $33.7 billion (20 billion and 25 billion euros) in aid for Greece, which is teetering on the brink of default.

Soros says that “a makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece,” but warns that the growing threats posed by other debt-laden, euro-member countries – particularly Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland – could prove overwhelming.

This isn’t the first time during the ongoing financial crisis that the situation was slated to worsen before it improved. Almost exactly one year ago, while speaking at a Columbia University dinner, Soros warned – correctly — that the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, meaning the end of the economic misery was nowhere in sight.

In fact, Soros actually compared the financial crisis to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and said that the whipsaw effects of the crisis would prove to be more severe than the Great Depression.

“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros told the audience during his February 2009 speech. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”

Soros cemented his reputation as an investing icon with The Quantum Fund, a hedge fund that’s often described as the first real global investment fund, which he and Jim Rogers founded in 1970. Over the next decade, Quantum gained 4,200%, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed about 50%.

Greece’s deficit swelled to 12.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009, way above the European Union’s 3% cap. Greece’s government leaders have pledged to reduce that nation’s budget deficit to 8.7% in 2010, but that goal won’t be easily met.