China could easily emerge as the great winner if the Chinese leaders handle the situation well. On the other hand, they could also turn out to be the biggest losers if they handle it poorly. If the management turns out be wrong, this could lead to a political crisis in China.

I am not well qualified to criticize the theory of rational expectations and the efficient market hypothesis because as a market participant I considered them so unrealistic that I never bothered to study them.

Advocating democracy has, by other people, often been taken as a form of imperialism, and not without some justification. So the important thing in a democracy is that it doesn't necessarily have to agree with what America's interests are, and it doesn't necessarily have to be serving American interests.

Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.

Of course, speculation will always make a crisis worse. If there is a weak point, it will expose it.

We [at Soros Fund Management] use options and more exotic derivatives sparingly. We try to catch new trends early and in later stages we try to catch trend reversals. Therefore, we tend to stabilize rather than destabilize the market. We are not doing this as a public service. It is our style of making money.

Financial markets ... resent any kind of government interference but they hold a belief deep down that if conditions get really rough the authorities will step in.