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The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means |  | Author: George Soros
Publisher: PublicAffairs
List Price: $22.95
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Seller: smeikalbooks_london
Rating:  87 reviews
Sales Rank: 19721
Media: Hardcover
Edition: illustrated edition
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 1586486837
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.0973
EAN: 9781586486839
ASIN: 1586486837
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In the midst of the most serious financial upheaval since the Great Depression, legendary financier George Soros explores the origins of the crisis and its implications for the future. Soros, whose breadth of experience in financial markets is unrivaled, places the current crisis in the context of decades of study of how individuals and institutions handle the boom and bust cycles that now dominate global economic activity. “This is the worst financial crisis since the 1930s,” writes Soros in characterizing the scale of financial distress spreading across Wall Street and other financial centers around the world. In a concise essay that combines practical insight with philosophical depth, Soros makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the great credit crisis and its implications for our nation and the world. |
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 87
 If Soros likes mathematics September 23, 2009
Kwong Chung Ping (Hong Kong)
I do not know if Mr. Soros would present his theory of reflexivity in a different way if he likes mathematics a little more. Last year after reading this then latest publication, I put some efforts trying to do a simple mathematical analysis of his model based on the work of Professors Birshtein and Borsevici and sent the result to Mr. Soros for comments. Only very recently I received the reply from his secretary, saying that he was too busy on other things and had no time to review my work. In any case, the paper was documented in arxiv for interested readers [...]
Equiligrium Theory is Linear, Soros makes it Calculus July 12, 2009
J. T. Schultz (china)
By focusing on the living economy in which we are always returning to the equilibrium - never at equilibrium - this book details two bubbles (housing and global credit) that the author believes have now simultaneously imploded. A humble if repetitive and ultimately vague exposition of "reflexivity". It is interesting to see Soros misjudgement of BRIC decoupling, but also the continued contraction in the housing market which he fortold in the book's conclusion.
 Soros' Theory of Reflexivity Isn't a Theory At All June 7, 2009
B. Nielson
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Book Summary - One Good Point
Save your money and I summarize the one valuable nugget to be mined from this book: It's impossible to predict financial markets using scientific statistical based theories (as all financial experts try to do) because those theories are part of what you're trying to predict. (i.e. they are reflexive in that they refer to themselves.) Thus financial markets are inherently unpredictable.
Other authors, I have Taleb's "The Black Swan" in mind here, have covered this same territory much deeper. But I don't want to discount Soros' modest contributions here. Soros gives examples that, at least for financial markets, are more intuitive then Taleb's. For example, you can't necessarily base financial decisions on "fundamentals" because if you are in a credit bubble, like we were previous to 2008, you have essentially ghost earnings and earnings growth. Thus there is no way (at least in the short term, I haven't entirely discounted Shiller's P/E10) to tell what the value of a company is worth.
Unfortunately Soros' takes 50 to 75 pages to say what I just said in two paragraphs because, to be blunt, he doesn't really understand his own "theory." Lacking any clarity for his vague ideas, he slogs along giving example after example and quoting philosopher after philosopher. Worse yet, he misunderstands the implications of his own "theory" in dangerous ways.
Soros' Misunderstandings of His Own "Theory"
For example, Soros insists that one implication of Reflexivity is that we need to regulate markets more. But if we actually follow Reflexivity to its logical end (which Soros never does) this isn't necessarily the case.
Reflexivity, if true, actually suggests that regulation is as likely to cause problems as fix them because regulation is also a manipulative function. A free markets proponent (which I am not) will notice this gap in reason immediately and, I'd imagine, claim that actually it's a bit of regulation known as the Fed that created the bubble in the first place and that if we just let markets to themselves we'd avoid superbubbles altogether. My point here is not that this is true (I have no idea and no one else does either) but that Soros never even anticipates this obvious objection nor notices that both explanations are equally suggested by Reflexivity. (Or in other words, Reflexivity suggests and denies neither course of action.)
Likewise, consider this gem (check your irony detector here) of a statement from the book: "In large part the excesses in the financial markets are due to the regulators' failure to exercise proper control. Some of the newly introduced financial instruments and methods were based on false premises."
But wait! How did Soros, our "Theory of Reflexivity" guru, miss the fact that Reflexivity states you can't know the underlying premises of the market with certainty? In other words, Reflexivity predicts that regulators can't know which financial instruments are based on false premises until after they bust. Then it's obvious. (Or maybe not even then.) So please tell me how to logically reconcile those two sentences above. They are meaningless from a Reflexivity word view.
Then Soros goes on to insist that Reflexivity predicts that it's not true markets naturally seek equilibrium. Huh? Why would reflexivity say something as ridiculous as that? If markets don't seek equilibrium (which they do) we could boom forever so who is worried? But our bust is proof that markets do indeed naturally seek equilibrium.
What Reflexivity actually suggests is that it may take decades before a market seeks natural equilibrium, long enough for us to forget what equilibrium actually looked like and mistake a bubble for equilibrium, complete with seeming "fundamentals" changes to back up the illusion. Thus (Soros gets this part right) markets are not a random walk from equilibrium, they boom and bust all over the place and over long periods of time. (Shiller likens this to microphone feedback that lasts for decades.)
While this is scary, it's not the same as what Soros insists upon and it's not clear at all what regulations could fix the problem, if at all, nor how Reflexivity helps us pick good regulation to avoid future problems. After all, the Bush administration actually had more regulation than any previous administration (Sarbanes Oxley anyone?) but the super bubble still happened. We don't need more regulation per se, we need regulations that forsee what's going to go wrong next. In other words we need regulators with ESP so that they can regulate *before* the market Reflexivly seeks a new way to boom falsely in some currently unregulated area.
Soros Makes No Meaningful Recommendations
Soros' final chapter on policy recommendations literally starts with an excuse for why he isn't going to make any recommendations, so it seems Soros himself realizes Reflexivity doesn't help us out with policy making. He makes a single good recommendation in that chapter: We should admit that large companies will always be bailed out by the government if their size will take down the system, so we tax them differently.
Conclusion - Reflexivity Isn't a Theory at All
Which brings me to my real problem with the book: the "theory of reflexivity" isn't a theory at all, it's only a *theory spoiler*. To use an analogy, if Soros were living at the time of the black plague he just (correctly) discovered that putting leaches on your body doesn't actually cure the plague. So he's replacement theory is to NOT put leaches on your body. It's correct but has no practical value, at least not by itself.
 Excellent book May 25, 2009
Maria Chaderina (US)
Amazing! This book manages to speak about complicated things like credit derivatives and bubbles in prices in a fairy simple way. Chapters on philosophical concepts are interesting but not that clear.
In any case, no matter what your background is, if you are interested in reading something meaningful about current crisis - that is your first choice!
 I have read them all May 23, 2009
Minsky (New York, NY)
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have read all of the latest books on the financial crisis. I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the worst of them all. It generates literally no insights into the crisis. It is the work of a wanna be philosopher who"s money making ability over the years has generated a market for his pseudo-philosophical assessments of the world.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 87
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