Spotlight

Billionaire investor George Soros knows he has “a record of crying wolf,” said Greg Ip in The Wall Street Journal. Since 1987, he has published three books predicting imminent global financial collapse, and so far, his fears have proved overblown. But Soros notes that in the fairy tale, the boy cried wolf three times, and the last time, “the wolf really came.” The main source of Soros’ alarm this time is the housing market. “I think that the decline in housing prices is going to be more precipitous and go further than people currently expect,” he says. As a result, Soros says, it’s “inconceivable” that the U.S. recession will end this year. But he also acknowledges that, so far, the economy has held up better than he expected, in part because a cheap dollar is good for America’s export-oriented industries. Soros, 77, admits that his prophecies of doom could prove wrong yet again. If so, he’s prepared to own up to his mistake. “I’m only rich,” he says, “because I know when I’m wrong.”