Sunday, September 14, 2008

A Plug for George Soros

Soros has been dead on in his analysis of this ongoing financial crisis from the start. This interview I read the first time when it came out and feel it's even more timely at the moment. Soros is a genius whose mind I admire, and his books are definitely worth a read. "The Alchemy of Finance" certainly was very influential in how I view the world and monetary process in general.

And if it's an idle morning, and you've got nothing to do but learn a bit over a cup of coffee, you'll find this interesting as well.

It's important to note that central to George Soros' fundamental financial theory is his concept of "reflexivity"--which observes that within semi-conscious systems-such as the financial markets the players are both observers and participants. As observers, their knowledge of necessarily limited and imperfect, and as participants their actions are necessarily imperfect as well--nonetheless this imperfect action creates future reality. The relationship between observer and reality, of participants and systems, is central to most all modern progressive science--in physics, climate science--and as Soros argues, should be much more acounted for in social policy and economics.

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