What is there to say? Risk taking is painful. Either you are willing to bear the pain yourself or you try to pass it on to others. Anyone who is in a… - George Soros

I made two major discoveries in the course of writing: one is a reflexive connection between credit and collateral; the other is a reflexive relationship between regulators and the economies they regulate

Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality — but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.

President Bush inadvertently played right into the hands of bin Laden. The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified. It was President Bush's unintended gift to bin Laden.