Consider this an open thread.

Most people know the name George Soros, the mastermind behind…well, a lot of stuff.

This comes via the Daily Beast.

Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.” [Emphasis added]

US Debt: $15.2 Trillion (and rising)

Unfunded liabilities: $117 Trillion (and rising)

Liability per taxpayer: $1,038,838 (and rising)

Bankruptcy: Not if, but when?

Source: U.S. Debt Clock.

Reminder: President Obama’s State of the Union Address starts at 9 pm EST. He is expected to make his re-election pitch in order to “finish the job.”

_________________

“Socialism has no place in the hearts of those who would secure the fight for freedom and preserve democracy.” Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor, 1918

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.com