Soros Says a Super Tanker Full

Markets:
George Soros needs to be separated from his odious politics and respected for his brilliant financial acumen. He knows markets like no other man on the planet. He is telling us where we are and in doing so smashes what most of us have been taught (our profs were wrong?) about markets. The most telling blow to our heads is that markets absolutely do not move toward equilibrium, something that almost all of us who have traded have suspected for a couple of decades. Markets cannot and do not correct themselves. There are always forces outside the market that distorts them. Our current credit crises has as much to do with "when you run out of people to lend to, what happens?"

``The belief that markets tend towards equilibrium is directly responsible for the current turmoil,'' the billionaire philanthropist writes. ``It encouraged the regulators to abandon their responsibility and rely on the market mechanism to correct its own excesses.''

His solutions, laid out here (his book available on line) in uncluttered prose, range from abandoning some financial instruments to curbing lending to creating an exchange or clearing house for credit-default swaps..... we short-circuit markets with easy money, massive leverage and brain-bending synthetic instruments

If you are even a casual investor, this book looks like a must read. The main thing this election focused "congress" has to do is regulate the seemingly endless derivatives whose contents are now nothing but "your guess is as good as mine."

Bloomberg Link

And HERE'S something you didn't think of. We've all read about homeowners just walking away from homes that are now valued tens of thousands of dollars lower than their actual loan. But LENDERS walking away? Abandoning homes they can't resell and thus costing local governments God only Knows what in taxes? Ruining entire school districts? This has appeared in both Chicago Trib and The Atlantic. Above link is to a summation.