Soros rebukes Germany over 'can't do' attitude (by Tim Rostan)

MADRID (MarketWatch) -- George Soros writes in a Financial Times op-ed Monday that the EU's summit late this week in Brussels is at risk of becoming a fiasco that ultimately helps usher Greece out of the euro zone if Germany persists in blocking efforts to spare Italy and Spain the market's current "excessive risk premiums." Even if such a "fatal accident" is averted, the famed global investor and philanthropist writes, an emerging danger is a permanent relegation of Europe's "periphery" to second-class status, with Germany effectively at the center of an empire. Soros concedes German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi are correct that ECB rules prevent the central bank from addressing individual countries' fiscal issues and proposes the creation of a European Fiscal Authority that could in turn establish a debt-reduction fund. While Spain and Italy would be required to undertake structural reforms, the fund would buy and hold the countries' outstanding debt. The main obstacle to such a scheme, in Soros's view: the "can't do" mode in which German politics is "mired."