George Soros, one of the most successful investors ever, published recently his well-thought opinions about how financial markets work and some clues what needs to be done to prevent similar financial crises in the future. Here are some excerpts from the article that appeared on FT.com:
The efficient market hypothesis holds that financial markets tend towards equilibrium and accurately reflect all available information about the future. Deviations from equilibrium are caused by exogenous shocks and occur in a random manner. The crash of 2008 falsified this hypothesis.
I contend that financial markets always present a distorted picture of reality. Moreover, the mispricing of financial assets can affect the so-called fundamentals that the price of those assets is supposed to reflect. That is the principle of reflexivity.
Instead of a tendency towards equilibrium, financial markets have a tendency to develop bubbles. Bubbles are not irrational: it pays to join the crowd, at least for a while. So regulators cannot count on the market to correct its excesses.
The crash of 2008 was caused by the collapse of a super-bubble that has been growing since 1980. This was composed of smaller bubbles. Each time a financial crisis occurred the authorities intervened, took care of the failing institutions, and applied monetary and fiscal stimulus, inflating the super-bubble even further.
I believe that my analysis of the super-bubble offers clues to the reform that is needed. First, since markets are bubble-prone, financial authorities must accept responsibility for preventing bubbles from growing too big.
Second, to control asset bubbles it is not enough to control the money supply; you must also control credit. The best known means to do so are margin requirements and minimum capital requirements. Currently they are fixed irrespective of the market’s mood because markets are not supposed to have moods. They do, and authorities need to counteract them to prevent asset bubbles growing too large. So they must vary margin and capital requirements. They must also vary the loan-to-value ratio on commercial and residential mortgages to forestall real estate bubbles.
Third, since markets are unstable, there are systemic risks in addition to the risks affecting individual market participants. Participants may ignore these systemic risks, believing they can always sell their positions, but regulators cannot ignore them because if too many participants are on the same side, positions cannot be liquidated without causing a discontinuity or a collapse. That means the positions of all major participants, including hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds, must be monitored to detect imbalances. Certain derivatives, like credit default swaps, are prone to creating hidden imbalances so they must be regulated, restricted or forbidden.
Fourth, financial markets evolve in a one-directional, non-reversible manner. Financial authorities have extended an implicit guarantee to all institutions that are too big to fail. Withdrawing that guarantee is not credible, therefore they must impose regulations to ensure this guarantee will not be invoked. Such institutions must use less leverage and accept restrictions on how they invest depositors’ money.
It is not the right time to enact permanent reforms. The financial system is far from equilibrium. The short-term needs are the opposite of what is needed in the long term. First you must replace the credit that has evaporated by using the only source that remains credible – the state. That means increasing national debt and extending the monetary base. As the economy stabilises you must shrink this base as fast as credit revives – otherwise, deflation will be replaced by inflation.
We are still in the first phase of this delicate manoeuvre. Banks are earning their way out of a hole. To cut their profitability now would be counterproductive. Reform has to await the second phase, when the money supply needs to be brought under control and carefully phased in so as not to disrupt recovery. But we cannot afford to forget about it.
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