The Financial Crisis: An Interview with George Soros

May 25th, 2008

I am not an economist (thank God), but have always been fascinated and perplexed by sudden changes in the economy and their secondary effects. I’ve just updated my article on “Current Economics and the Future of Publishing,” using my admittedly limited knowledge to make some modest observations on how the current economic crisis in the United States could impact the short- to mid-term future of publishing.

It’s no doubt more informative to read the observations of one of the world’s acknowledged (although of course, not unbiased) authorities on economics, George Soros, and you have the good fortune that a detailed interview from May, 2008 with Mr. Soros is available on The New York Review of Books website.

One quote from the interview (very much in keeping with my perspective): “…the situation is definitely much worse than is currently recognized. You have had a general disruption of the financial markets, much more pervasive than any we have had so far. And on top of it, you have the housing crisis, which is likely to get a lot worse than currently anticipated because markets do overshoot. They overshot on the upside and now they are going to overshoot on the downside.”

An excellent read…