S.Korean President, Lee Myung-Bak signs off FTA with US

President Lee Myung-Bak (pictured) on Tuesday signed off on a package of bills needed to implement S.Korea's free trade agreement with the US after it sailed through the US Congress last month. The signing means Seoul is now ready to enter final negotiations with Washington before the FTA takes effect as early as January.

AFP - President Lee Myung-Bak on Tuesday signed off on a package of bills needed to implement South Korea's free trade agreement with the United States after it sailed through the US Congress last month.
The signing, a week after the trade pact and 14 related bills passed through parliament, means Seoul is now ready to enter final negotiations with Washington before the FTA takes effect as early as January.
Business groups have hailed the deal as opening a new era for Asia's fourth-largest economy, but opponents fear damage to domestic businesses.

"The FTA is to open up the US market, the biggest market in the world," Lee said during a signing ceremony at the presidential Blue House.

"Let's take good advantage of the Korea-US FTA when prospects of the economy and exports are dim," he said, according to Yonhap news agency.

Lee also called for measures to help farmers and small businesses expected to be hit by the changes.
The 14 related bills include revisions to copyright, patent, customs and other domestic laws, making them compatible with the trade pact.

Seoul and Washington will enter final talks next month covering the compatibility of any outstanding laws and regulations with the FTA, Yonhap said, with the two sides hoping it will come into effect on
January 1.

South Korea can expect a boost in exports. But analysts say the main gain will be improved investment conditions, making the country more attractive for foreign investment and foreign services providers.
Export-dependent South Korea already has free trade deals with the European Union, India, 10 Southeast Asian nations and several other states
.

Soros: Financial Crisis Stems from super Bubble

George Soros, like me, is no believer in "equilibrium economics". Rather he believes that sometimes we will see an equilibrium, but that it will be short-lived. Like Hyman Minsky, Soros argues that stability will itself sow the seeds of the next instability. Soros says we are in a unique place with our current crisis, experiencing both inflation and a recession at the same time. Hear/read more from Soros on today's NPR Morning Edition, Financial Crisis Stems from Super Bubble:

… Soros blames what he calls a "super-bubble" that started about 25 years ago. That's when a less-is-more philosophy became popular with economic regulators. That allowed Wall Street to invest increasing amounts of money in credit.

"The idea was that regulators always make mistakes, state interference in the markets just messes things up," Soros says. "And that was a false idea .... Regulators are human and bound to make mistakes, but markets are also human and they are also bound to make mistakes. Instead of markets always being right, they're actually always groping at trying to find out what the facts are. But they never get it right." …

Soros says there's a "super-bubble" in the economy that's bigger than just the recent housing crises, and he blames exotic financial instruments for helping cause it.

"The markets have introduced financial instruments with fancy names — CDOs and CLOs and all these strange instruments that are traded in very large volumes. And they were all constructed on the belief deviations are random.

Soros also has a new book out. Here is a snip from the introducion:

A New Paradigm for Financial Markets, Introduction, George Soros: We are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred in the last twenty-five years, but there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process; the current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than twenty-five years.

To understand what is going on we need a new paradigm. The currently prevailing paradigm, namely that financial markets tend towards equilibrium, is both false and misleading; our current troubles can be largely attributed to the fact that the international financial system has been developed on the basis of that paradigm.

The new paradigm I am proposing is not confined to the financial markets. It deals with the relationship between thinking and reality, and it claims that misconceptions and misinterpretations play a major role in shaping the course of history. …

Let me explain briefly how the theory of reflexivity applies to the [current] crisis. Contrary to classical economic theory, which assumes perfect knowledge, neither market participants nor the monetary and fiscal authorities can base their decisions purely on knowledge. Their misjudgments and misconceptions affect market prices, and, more importantly, market prices affect the so-called fundamentals that they are supposed to reflect. Market prices do not deviate from a theoretical equilibrium in a random manner, as the current paradigm holds. Participants' and regulators' views never correspond to the actual state of affairs; that is to say, markets never reach the equilibrium postulated by economic theory. There is a two-way reflexive connection between perception and reality which can give rise to initially self-reinforcing but eventually self-defeating boom-bust processes, or bubbles. Every bubble consists of a trend and a misconception that interact in a reflexive manner. There has been a bubble in the U.S. housing market, but the current crisis is not merely the bursting of the housing bubble. It is bigger than the periodic financial crises we have experienced in our lifetime. All those crises are part of what I call a super-bubble—a long-term reflexive process which has evolved over the last twenty-five years or so. It consists of a prevailing trend, credit expansion, and a prevailing misconception, market fundamentalism (aka laissez-faire in the nineteenth century), which holds that markets should be given free rein. The previous crises served as successful tests which reinforced the prevailing trend and the prevailing misconception. The current crisis constitutes the turning point when both the trend and the misconception have become unsustainable. …

Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous

So! as much as i became so much interested in George Soros, here are some negative views on George Soros.

uman Events’ readers, in an online poll,recently voted billionaire financier George Soros “the single most destructive leftist demagogue in the country.”  Here are the Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous:

1.  Gives billions to left-wing causes:  Soros started the Open Society Institute in 1993 as a way to spread his wealth to progressive causes.  Using Open Society as a conduit, Soros has given more than $7 billion to a who’s who of left-wing groups.  This partial list of recipients of Soros’ money says it all: ACORN, Apollo Alliance, National Council of La Raza, Tides Foundation,Huffington Post, Southern Poverty Law Center, Soujourners, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women.

2.  Influence on U.S. elections:  Soros once said that removing President George W. Bush from office in 2004 was the "central focus of my life."  He put his money where his mouth is, giving $23.58 million to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating Bush.  His early financial support helped jump-start Barack Obama’s political career.  Soros hosted a 2004 fund-raiser for Obama when he was running for the Illinois Senate and gave the maximum-allowed contribution within hours of Obama’s announcement that he was running for President.

3.  Wants to curtail American sovereignty:  Soros would like nothing better than for America to become subservient to international bodies.  He wants more power for groups such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, even while saying the U.S. role in the IMF should be “downsized.”  In 1998, he wrote:  “Insofar as there are collective interests that transcend state boundaries, the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.”

4.  Media Matters:  Soros is a financial backer of Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group that hyperventilates over any conservative view that makes it into the mainstream media.  Now its founder, David Brock, has openly declared war on Fox News, telling Politico that the group was mounting “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” against the cable news channel, and would try to disrupt the commercial interests of owner Rupert Murdoch—an odd mission for a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational foundation that is barred from participating in partisan political activity.

5.  MoveOn.org:  Soros has been a major funder of MoveOn.org, a progressive advocacy group and political action committee that raises millions for liberal candidates.  This is the group that had on its website an ad comparing President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler and ran the infamous “General Betray Us” ad in the New York Times, disparaging the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus.

6.  Center for American Progress:  Headed by John Podesta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton, the Center for American Progress has been instrumental in providing progressive talking points and policy positions for the Obama administration.  There has also been a revolving door between the White House and the Soros-funded think tank, with Obama staffing his administration with many CAP officials.

7.  Environmental extremism:  Former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones and his leftist environmental ideas have been funded by Soros’ money at these groups: the Ella Baker Center, Green For All, the Center for American Progress, and the Apollo Alliance, which was instrumental in getting $110 billion in green initiatives included in Obama’s stimulus package.  Soros also funds the Climate Policy Initiative to address global warming and gave Friends of the Earth money to “integrate a climate equity perspective in the presidential transition.”

8.  America Coming Together:  Soros gave nearly $20 million to this 527 group with the express purpose of defeating President Bush. A massive get-out-the-vote effort, ACT’s door-to-door canvassing teams included numerous felons, its voter registration drives were riddled with fraud, and it handed out incendiary fliers and made misleading taped phone calls to voters.  ACT was fined $775,000 by the Federal Election Commission for violations of various federal campaign finance laws.

9.  Currency manipulation:  A large part of Soros' multibillion-dollar fortune has come from manipulating currencies.  During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused him of bringing down the nation’s currency through his trading activities, and in Thailand he was called an “economic war criminal.”  Known as “The Man who Broke the Bank of England,” Soros initiated a British financial crisis by dumping 10 billion sterling, forcing the devaluation of the currency and gaining a billion-dollar profit.

10.  Delusions:  Soros has repeatedly said that he sees himself as a messianic figure.  Who but a megalomaniac would make these comments?  “I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of my self-importance—to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god” or “I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin.”  If only the loony bin were an option.  As it is, one of the wealthiest men in the world is using his billions to impose a radical agenda on America.

The new paradigm for financial markets by GEORGE SOROS

The new paradigm for financial markets: the credit crisis for 2008 and what it mean BY GEORGE SOROS


This is the book i'm going for my IB book report, and im actually enjoying reading it.
he's got some interesting points.
maybe you wanna check it out as well! :)


Soros Explains The Credit Crisis

The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 And What It Means by George Soros ($23, Public Affairs, 2008).
With his near real-time critique of the credit crisis, George Soros has saved financial historians a lot of work. If he's right, the summer of 2007 and all of 2008 will be the topic of many an academic paper, much like how Ben Bernanke made a career out of studying the Great Depression. Soros sees this as a monumental time. It's not just a bursting housing bubble, he says. It's the end of a quarter-century of credit-driven economic expansion. We're in a whole new world.
Up until August 2007, Soros had mostly farmed out management of his hedge fund to outsiders so that he could devote his time to philanthropy, philosophy and politics. The first troubles in subprime spurred Soros back into the markets. This time his goal wasn't so much to find the next billion-dollar trade but to preserve the wealth of his foundations.
This market has been so tough that it's vexed even Soros. His book offers a broad trading diary from January 2008 through the end of March, when The New Paradigm went to the printer. Soros' investment plan was to "short U.S. and European stocks, U.S. 10-year government bonds and the U.S. dollar; long Chinese, Indian and Gulf States stocks and non-U.S. currencies."
On March 10, he noted that commodities were stronger than he thought they'd be, that the Federal Reserve acted more aggressively than he'd anticipated and that the Indian and Chinese stock markets, not quite decoupled from the U.S. economy, took major hits. On March 16, he observed that "The panic is palpable," and bought into ailing Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ), expecting some return on a Federal Reserve brokered auction of the company. He got burned admitting that, "We forgot to take into account that Bear is disliked by the establishment, and the Fed would use the occasion to deal with a moral hazard by punishing shareholders."
For those who might be confused by Soros' analysis there, Bill Miller, manager of the Legg Mason Value Trust explains: "Bear had been very aggressive in seizing the capital of Askin Capital in 1994 and precipitating its failure. In 1998 it opted out of rescuing Long Term Capital Management. That's the kind of thing where, if you're Merrill, Citigroup or the Fed, you remember." Miller also bought shares in Bear, for the same reasons Soros did.
The trading diary ends with Soros losing money. While he wishes he could have reached a more triumphant ending, he notes that the result "may be more appropriate for the purposes of the book."
Indeed, it is. While Soros is investing actively again, he's really using the market as a laboratory where he can test his philosophical ideas, especially the notion of reflexivity--that no market participant can ever have perfect knowledge because their beliefs, and the beliefs of others, effect and distort the markets. Because investors tend to herd--they buy things that are going up and sell things that are going down--markets are constantly beset by bubbles. Irrationality reigns supreme.
Soros was once a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, who spent most of his time studying science. Popper came to the conclusion that all scientific statements must be falsifiable and that no scientific theory is ever absolutely true. They are just able to withstand people's attempts to prove them wrong. So long as a theory isn't falsified, it's as good as true. But we're 100% certain about nothing.
The turmoils we see in the markets reflect the turmoils of human thought. The implications of this go far beyond investing. It means that market fundamentalism, the idea that markets are always self-correcting and don't need regulation, is just wrong. Markets are flawed because they reflect human delusions of certainty. Banks make money by issuing loans. If they want to make more money, they need to issue more loans. Absent regulation to stop them, the banks will issue new loans in new ways. They rationalize the risk away by building models based on past experience. The risk models say that the loans are safe. The flaw? All of these new loans fuel an unprecedented housing bubble that the risk models, which are backward looking, can't account for. All of these new loans also create new levels of debt, also unprecedented in history. So the risk models, once again, miss them.
It's time, says Soros, to bring back some of the regulations that were put in place after the Great Depression and then eroded in the decades that followed. Leverage and credit creation, he says, need to be reigned in. Regulators need to start looking to control asset bubbles as they manage the economy for the more usual goals of full employment and price stability.
Soros sees a new economy, indeed a new world order emerging. If the U.S. leaves its fate to the whims of flawed markets, it will lose much of its worldwide influence. Without the dollar as the reserve currency of first choice, the U.S. really has nothing but military supremacy in order to defend its position in the world, and even that, says Soros, has been undermined by the debacle in Iraq.
Soros' message for citizens, investors, politicians and regulators is to approach this new economy and new political order with humility. Be flexible and never dogmatic. Strive to find truth while realizing it's unattainable. It's false certainty that trips us up, in both investing and life.