DOASKDOTELL BOOK REVIEWof Soros’s The Crisis of Global Capitalism; The New Paradigm for Financial Markets;

Author (or Editor): Soros, George

Title: The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered

Fiction? N

Publisher: Public Affairs

Date: 1994; 1996

ISBN: 1891620274

Series Name:

Physical description: harbound 288 pgs

Relevance to HPPUB capitalism, open society

Review:

Book Review; Soros, George; The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered; New York: Public Affairs, 1998

George Soros is a well-known financier, a self-made man who kept himself out of the Nazi death camps during World War II. He is widely believed to have helped participate the Asian financial crisis in 1997, a claim which he denies.

Soros argues that capitalism, when completely unregulated ("market fundamentalism") tends to swerve out of control, like a car taking a curve too fast. Decisions by markets are "amoral" but not "immoral." Soros believes that capitalism can me effectively mediated by an "open society." He does not define precisely what this means, but he suggests that society needs to be able to experiment with cultural value systems. Standards of "right" and "wrong" may change with technology and with social process; however, the involvement of the state in resolving conflicts, in a democratic society, he sees as inevitable. He is more like a mainstream Democrat than a libertarian or even classical liberal. He does favor replacing criminal penalties for drugs with public health measures. He does not come close to examining the way regulation can severely curtail self-expression, and that moral values regarding self-identification might be better served in voluntary systems.

Soros continues his arguments in the Dec. 2003 Atlantic Monthly with the essay, “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” summarizing a book of the same name to be published by Public Affairs in early 2004.

George Soros: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. New York: Public Affairs, 2008, ISBN 1586486837, 208 pages. Soros explains the Panic of 2008 and the reasons for the end of the Reagan Revolution, and the deficiency of “market fundamentalism” as an ideology, along with the need for pragmatism and the ability to live within one’s means relative to the rest of the world. The buzzword is “reflexivity”. Blogger discussion.

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