REUTERS China could spark a crisis as severe as 2008, said George Soros

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Frenzied share selling continued across the world today, sparked by fears over China's slowdown.



The respected billionaire investor warned the global economy is to slip into meltdown amid China's struggle to maintain mammoth growth.



The American financier told an economic forum that today's problems reminds him of the "crisis we had in 2008", which triggered years of depressions and job losses among the world's developed countries.



He added: "China has a major adjustment problem, I would say it amounts to a crisis."



Mr Soros also said the developed world would struggle to return to rising interest rates.



China's stock market automatically closed for the second time this week, after values tumbled by seven per cent.

GETTY George Soros has made a grim prediction for the world economy

The falls led to further panic in global markets.



Britain's FTSE 100 plummeted by around 2.6 per cent at the open this morning, equating to a loss of around £40billion. Oil and commodity companies, which are particularly exposed to China's slowdown, fared worst.

REUTERS Stock markets in London continued to fall on Thursday



The crash has echoes of last year's stock market crash when the FTSE 100 recorded one of the largest one-day losses of the past decade in September, in a trading session dubbed 'Black Monday'. At the time, a former adviser to ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown also warned China would cause worldwide economic carnage on the scale seen in 2008. Damian McBride advised people to prepare for the turmoil by stocking up on bottled water and tinned goods.



The ex-Head of Communications at the Treasury added that financial levers, such as cutting interest rates and Quantitative Easing (QE), which the Government was able to use in 2008, are no longer available.

And it's not the first time Mr Soros has warned about the threat of China's economy. Last year the investor warned Greece was not the biggest threat for econnomies, but instead China. He said: "The major uncertainty is not the euro but China. The growth model responsible for its rise has run out of steam." Mr Soros famously bet against the British pound in 1992 - netting a £690million profit - and became known as 'the man who broke the Bank of England'.