George Soros on the Credit Crunch

I have just started reading George Soros' new book, "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets" which covers the Credit Crunch and what it means.

What is really good is the chapter "Setting the stage" which runs through a timeline of the crisis, from an insider's point of view. It has the awful rhythm of a train crash as one after another supposedly safe financial institutions keep hitting the wall and there is a refrain that underpins it of "that's the end of it" which is shown to be repeatedly wrong, wrong, wrong.

And things are still unravelling (I mistyped that as unrevelling, which is a wonderful description of what we are all doing now), witness the Madoff $50bn Ponzi scheme. Maybe this is the next step in the undoing of the large scale Hedge Funds (see my August post What has driven Credit Crunch). Those returns just aren't possible in the long term.