Access Investments-European Union- ROMANIA

Billionaire investor George Soros and French President François Hollande, a Socialist, are in agreement: The world is on the verge of a currency war, and it threatens to destroy Europe. The Europeans should finally enter the fray and do battle with all their might, says Soros, who made some of his fortune by betting against the British pound. "Europe is an outsider," the 82-year-old recently said at the Davos World Economic Forum. He blamed the European Central Bank (ECB), which he called the last representative of an outdated central bank policy. Hollande doesn't put it as clearly, but he means the same thing. "A currency zone must have an exchange rate policy, or it will end up with an exchange rate that doesn't correspond to the actual state of its economy," the Socialist told the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week. These remarks were intended for Mario Draghi, the president of the Frankfurt-based ECB. Hollande's message is that he should protect the euro's exchange rate. The central bank chief is coming under increasing pressure because he can't quite bring himself to embrace the concept of quantitative easing, the latest fashion in the world of finance. It involves central bankers engaging in the large-scale purchase of bonds issued by their governments and other securities, thereby injecting huge sums of money into the financial system. In this way, they hope to stimulate the domestic economy and keep their own currencies cheap, thereby strengthening exports. Soros believes that this is the only way countries can grow out of their large debts. But a country that artificially pushes down its exchange rate is obtaining competitive advantages at the expense of others. And if they manipulate their own currencies, all sides will end up losing out.