ECONOMIC CRISIS: 'THIS IS A CERTAINTY' Bill Gates warns of another financial crash as bad as the 2008 Great Recession
BILL Gates has warned the United States is headed for another financial meltdown on the scale of the 2008 recession.
The billionaire Microsoft founder, 62, gave the stark prediction during an ‘Ask Me Anything’ Q&A on Reddit last week.When asked if he thought the US would be hit by another major financial crisis he replied: “Yes. It is hard to say when but this is a certainty.”
The 2008 financial crisis was triggered in the US over problems in the country’s subprime property market and then grew into a devastating global recession.
The effects of that are still being felt today with an estimated one in three Americans having not recovered financially a decade on from the recession, according to CNBC.
Although Gates has predicted a similar financial meltdown, he remains fairly optimistic about the ability to recover from any downturn.
At the end of the 'Ask Me Anything' session, Gates said: “Despite this prediction of bumps ahead, I am quite optimistic about how innovation and capitalism will improve the situation for humans everywhere.”
Gates' friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett predicted for Time magazine in January that, in general, “most American children are going to live far better than their parents did”.
He added that “large gains in the living standards of Americans will continue for many generations to come.”
Gates was recently voted at the world’s most admired man in a YouGov poll of 37,000 people.
