Soros: GOP hurting economy to win election?

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/11/soros-republicans-hurting-economy-to-win-election/

February 11th, 2012

05:40 PM ET

Fareed Zakaria: George, what is your prognosis of the American economy right now? It does seem to be doing better than the Eurozone, than Japan. How do you read it?

George Soros: It definitely shows some signs of revival, very important is the emergence of shale gas and shale oil as a cheap source of energy, which has made manufacturing more competitive. Also the fact that you now had several years of no wage growth. So wage disparities have been reduced. And so all this is bringing a very welcome relief.

I'm worried that the politics of the election are going to interfere and put a lid on this –because the Republicans don't want to face elections where Obama can claim to have sort of seen the economy recover. So they will continue to push for austerity, no new taxes, and therefore cutting of services, which will depress economic activity and employment.

After the elections, if the Republicans win, actually they’ll undergo a miraculous transformation where they discover that actually it wouldn’t be so bad if maybe we can afford to have some stimulus.