Soros on Financial Crisis and Markets

The New Paradigm for Financial Markets is George Soros‘ newest book. Here is an interview with him in May of this year, on PBS, Financial World Shifts Gears Amid Economic Tumult, about the ideas in the book and the current crisis.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you assess the strength of the financial system today?
GEORGE SOROS: I think this is the most serious crisis of our lifetime. It’s not just a housing crisis, but a crisis of the financial system.

GEORGE SOROS: The regulators have failed to regulate, and they really have to — they left it to the market. That was this market fundamentalist philosophy, that markets will take care of themselves.

And I contend that there’s been what I call a super bubble that has been growing over the last 25 years at least, which basically consisted of an extension in credit, increasing use of leverage. That was the trend in reality.

And the misconception that credit is that markets can be left to their own devices. Now, in fact, they are given to excesses, and occasionally they create crises, but each time the authorities intervene and bail out the failing institutions, provide fiscal stimulus, monetary stimulus.

So it seems like the market corrects itself, but it’s actually the intervention of the authorities that saves the market.

Related: Soros on the Financial Market CollapseJim Rogers on the Financial Market MessLeverage, Complex Deals and Mania

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