Americans Were "Living in a Fool's Paradise" That's Gone Forever, Soros Says

Posted Apr 09, 2009 09:24am EDT by Aaron Task in Newsmakers, Recession

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If nothing else, the credit crisis of the past 18 months has debunked the notion of financial market being an all-knowing, self-correcting mechanism that perfectly allocates capital. Even Alan Greenspan admitted as much.

As a result of the bursting of that theoretical bubble, Americans' lives have been inexorably changed and "there's no way to go back to where we came from," says George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management.

Americans were "living in a fool's paradise" based on the "false promise" of the "market magic," and the idea debt-fueled consumption was a sustainable and legitimate economic policy, the billionaire speculator says.

Soros delves into what this means for the future in his latest book The Crash of 2008 and What It Means and in the accompanying video, the latest installment from my extensive interview with the famed financier.

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