World cools towards Barack Obama

International approval of US President Barack Obama's foreign policy has dropped sharply during his term in office, a Pew Research survey suggests.

Among the 21 countries surveyed, the largest drop in approval - from 57% to 27% - was seen in China, the Global Attitudes Project reveals.

Most respondents in almost all countries opposed US drone strikes.

Despite these numbers, confidence in Mr Obama remains high among US allies, especially in Europe.

"I think where you see the real disappointment is when you deal with specific policies," said Richard Wike, associate director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

He added that the survey showed big gaps between expectation levels and action over Mr Obama's policies on climate change and treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Economic power

According to Mr Wike, confidence in Mr Obama and approval of his international policies has trended downward during the course of his presidency, but has not dropped sharply in a single year.

Besides China, the largest declines in foreign policy approval by 2012 included long-term ally Japan and neighbour Mexico.

Among five European countries surveyed both in 2009 and 2012, approval of Mr Obama's international policies dropped from 78% to 63%. In five Muslim countries surveyed in both years, the approval rate dropped from 34% to 15%. Russia also joined the countries with double-digit declines, from 40% of respondents approving US international policies to 22%, an 18% decrease.

While Mr Obama generally has higher approval ratings than President George W Bush did at the end of his second term, their approval ratings are now matched in Pakistan and Mr Obama's remain only slightly better in Lebanon.

Among the countries surveyed there was widespread opposition to US drone strikes. At least 50% of respondents in 17 countries disapproved of such strikes, with the largest percentages in the Middle East, Mexico and Greece.

In recent weeks, Mr Obama has become more closely associated with the US drone programme, with a New York Times report noting he personally approves each strike, and that the US keeps a "kill list" of potential strikes against militants.

In addition to changes in sentiment towards Mr Obama and his policies, the survey records a shift in the way economic power is perceived.

Majorities in Germany, Britain, France and Spain now regard China as the world's leading economic power, not the US. In the UK, this percentage has doubled since 2008.

Mr Wike told the BBC the US had seen a downward trend in its perceived economic power since the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, despite Mr Obama receiving "reasonably good marks on global economic issues".

However, American "soft power" gets higher marks, especially among young respondents.

The American way of doing business is popular in the Middle East, with more than 50% in Lebanon, Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt saying they like this part of US image.

Majorities or pluralities in 18 of 20 countries admire US science and technology, according to the survey. American ideas about democracy are more popular among respondents under 30 in several countries, including Tunisia and China.

Three Months to Save the Euro: George Soros

By Catherine Boyle / CNBC

Euro-zone governments have around three months to ensure the survival of the single currency, billionaire investor George Soros said in a speech on Saturday.

“We are at an inflection point. After the expiration of the three months’ window, the markets will continue to demand more but the authorities will not be able to meet their demands,” he warned in a speech at the Festival of Economics in Trento, Italy. (Read the text of his speech.) 

The European Union is “like a bubble” – not a financial bubble but a political bubble -- that could pop as a result of the euro -zone crisis, Soros said.

“In the boom phase, the EU was what the psychoanalyst David Tuckett calls a ‘fantastic object’ – unreal but immensely attractive,” he said.

“In retrospect, it is now clear that the main source of trouble is that the member states of the euro have surrendered to the European Central Bank (ECB)  their rights to create fiat money. They did not realize what that entails – and neither did the European authorities,” he said.

The euro zone needs a European deposit insurance scheme for banks, Soros said, as well as direct financing by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) for banks, which “must go hand-in-hand with euro-zone-wide supervision and regulation.”

The “blockage” at the moment is coming from the Bundesbank and the German government, he said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been cautious about increasing Germany’s support for the rest of the euro zone.

Soros believes Germany will eventually do what it takes to keep the euro zone going because of the large losses German banks would suffer if it broke up and the damage to exports which could be caused by a return to the Deutschmark, which would likely be substantially stronger than the euro.
“A German empire with the periphery as the hinterland,” could be the result of the current predicament, he warned.

The ECB has been instrumental throughout the crisis and its liquidity injection via a long-term refinancing operation helped boost European markets earlier this year, giving policy makers some much-needed breathing space.

Soros said that too much blame had been placed on peripheral euro-zone countries such as heavily indebted Greece and Spain, and that creditors like Germany had to share responsibility.

“The “center” is responsible for designing a flawed system, enacting flawed treaties, pursuing flawed policies and always doing too little too late.

“In the 1980s, Latin America suffered a lost decade -- a similar fate now awaits Europe,” he said. “That is the responsibility that Germany and the other creditor countries need to acknowledge.”
Soros argued that the focus on austerity instead of growth had been a mistake by the European authorities.

“The authorities didn’t understand the nature of the euro crisis; they thought it was a fiscal problem, while it is more of a banking problem and a problem of competitiveness. And they applied the wrong remedy: You cannot reduce the debt burden by shrinking the economy -- only by growing your way out of it,” he said.

“The crisis is still growing because of a failure to understand the dynamics of social change; policy measures that could have worked at one point in time were no longer sufficient by the time they were applied,” he said.

These views are echoed by well-known economists including Paul Krugman. An increasing number of politicians in the euro zone are also arguing for less austerity and more promotion of growth. The debate has come to prominence during both the Greek election campaign and the Irish referendum on the EU fiscal pact for euro-zone-wide austerity measures.