The Guardian view on eurozone reform: correct the mistakes of the past | Editorial
George Soros has made a fortune by exploiting mistakes - even when they are his own. In four decades as a hedge fund manager he averaged a profit of nearly $1bn a year. His success, he said, was that he did not consider errors a source of shame but of pride. "Once we realise that imperfect understanding is the human condition," he remarked, "there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes." It is in that spirit that Mr Soros suggested to an audience in Paris that there was a way out of the current European crisis, but only if the European Union confronted its miscalculations and blunders. Advice from the uber-wealthy is a mixed blessing for the remain cause. To Mr Soros's credit he left his business to back with cash the kind of "open societies" he favours, embodied by the EU's voluntary association of equal states. It has been no quiet retirement: his foundation was chased out of Hungary pursued by antisemitic slurs accusing him of being a malevolent outside meddler.
However, the billionaire philanthropist's analysis is both perspicacious and acute. Mr Soros argues that monetary union radically changed the dynamics of the EU, and the impact of the financial crash brought out into the open hitherto latent governance tensions. The solidarity of nations has been repeatedly tested, and often found wanting. He was right to add that the EU's self-inflicted "addiction to austerity" has been exploited by populist politicians to build Eurosceptic support. They were also quick to exploit fears after the refugee crisis in 2015, when their warnings of terror threats and a breakdown in local public services seemed plausible to many. Migration also illustrates the absurdity of Britain's Brexit obsession to Europeans: while the rest of the continent was fixated on mass migration of refugees from outside, Britain was gripped with the idea of controlling free movement within it by EU citizens.
Continue reading...