Jill Treaner: Eurozone Crisis has entered a 'more lethal phase'

George Soros says Europe's financial crisis has taken 'a turn for the worse' and outlines a series of measures to solve it. George Soros has warned that the euro-zone has entered a "more lethal phase" and outlined a series of measures to solve the crisis, including an idea that all countries should be able to refinance their debt at the same interest rate. Soros, known as the man who broke the Bank of England by betting that the UK would be forced to devalue the pound during the 1992 currency crisis, said that "far from abating, the euro crisis has recently taken a turn for a worse". Soros, who is chairman of Soros Fund Management, which in 2011 stopped managing money for outside investors, warned that Europe was facing "a long period of economic stagnation or worse" whether or not the euro endures. He also warned that while countries in Latin America suffered a lost decade after their economic crisis in 1982, the European Union would not survive such an economic malaise. "The deflationary debt trap threatens to destroy a still incomplete political union," he said in an article published in the Financial Times. While the European Central Bank's injections of large sums of cheap funding into the financial markets through its long-term financing operation (LTRO) helped to prevent a credit crunch, it failed to solve the underlying problems of the eaurozone where the gap between the richer countries such as Germany is widening against the indebted nations such as Greece. "the crisis has coincided with a sharp change in the mood on the financial markets since the end of the first quarter, when stock markets in the US enjoyed the strongest performance since first quarter of 1998. Since the start of this week, markets have been more cautious, with bond yields in Spain reaching their highest level in four months on Tuesday, amid concern about the scale of the austerity measures being imposed by the government and fears that the country might need a bailout.