NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire investor George Soros on Tuesday predicted a "stop-go" economy for the United States, saying fears of inflation will drive up interest rates and choke off growth.

Soros, one of the world's most successful hedge fund managers who was speaking at a breakfast hosted by the Wall Street Journal, said borrowing costs are the major headwinds for the economy.

"As markets revive, fear of inflation will drive up interest rates, which will choke off recovery," he said.

Rising U.S. Treasury yields have driven mortgage rates back up, threatening a recovery in the housing market and a refinancing boom that has helped preserve the still-fragile health of recession-weary households and the banks that lend to them.

The rise in bond yields and mortgage rates may also act to check the huge recent rally in global stock markets of the past three months, with the Federal Reserve trying to end an 18-month recession and yet not spur inflation.

Soros went back into retirement earlier this year after leading his self-named firm through the 2008 crisis. He made about $1.1 billion last year, according to Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine.

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Soros, who made his fortune targeting currencies in tightly controlled markets, said international financial

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment rates rose in all the largest U.S. metropolitan areas in May for the fifth straight month, and are likely to keep marching higher this year, a potential obstacle to a hoped-for economic recovery.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that jobless rates in May rose from a year earlier in all 372 metropolitan area it tracks.

The unemployment rate in Kokomo, Ind., jumped to 18.8 percent, up 11.7 percentage points from a year ago, the largest increase of all metro areas. The second-highest increase occurred in Indiana's Elkhart-Goshen, where the rate rose to 17.5 percent. That's up 11.4 percentage points from a year earlier.

Both parts of Indiana have been slammed by layoffs in transportation equipment manufacturing. Elkhart-Goshen has suffered layoffs at RV makers Monaco Coach Corp., Keystone RV Co. and Pilgrim International.

The other metro areas posting large gains were: Bend, Ore., where the jobless rate rose to 15.2 percent, an increase of 8.8 percentage points; and North Carolina's Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton saw its unemployment rate rise to 15.4 percent, a gain of 8.5 percentage points.

A common thread running through most of the regions that have been hard hit is the loss of manufacturing jobs. The collapse of the housing market has especially hurt jobs at factories that produce building materials and household goods, such as carpets, flooring, appliances and furniture. In addition