by George Soros
There are two features that I think deserve to be pointed out. One is that the financial system as we know it actually collapsed. After the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, the financial system really ceased to function. It had to be put on artificial life support. At the same time, the financial shock had a tremendous effect on the real economy, and the real economy went into a free fall, and that was global.
The other feature is that the financial system collapsed of its own weight. That contradicted the prevailing view about financial markets, namely that they tend toward equilibrium, and that equilibrium is disturbed by extraneous forces, outside shocks. Those disturbances were supposed to occur in a random fashion. Markets were seen basically as self-correcting. That paradigm has proven to be false. So we are dealing not only with the collapse of a financial system, but also with the collapse of a worldview.
That's the situation that President Obama inherited. He's faced with two objectives. One, he must arrest the collapse and, if possible, reverse it. Second, he has to reconstruct the financial system because it cannot be restored to what it was. This is a new situation. When people see this crisis as being the same as previous financial crises, they're making a mistake.
The interesting thing is that what needs to be done in the short term is almost exactly the opposite of what needs to be done in the long term. Obviously the problem was excessive leverage. But when you have a collapse of credit there's only one source of credit that is still credible, and that's the state: the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. Then you have actually to inject a lot more leverage and money into the economy; you have to print money as fast as you can, expand the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, increase the national debt. And that is, in fact, what has been done, which is the right thing to do. But then once this policy is successful, you have to rein in the money supply as fast as you can.
I would say that policy has generally lagged behind events. We were behind the curve. Now that the free fall is moderating, and the collapse has more or less occurred, I think there is hope that policy will, in fact, catch up with events. The outcome of the stress test of the banks will be important, because that's basically where the policy has been lagging behind—in recapitalizing the banks. And that's where most of the confusion comes from.
