In the midst of the most serious financial upheaval in decades, financier George Soros explores the origins of the crisis and its implications for the future. Soros places the current crisis in the context of decades of study of how individuals and institutions handle the boom and bust cycles that dominate global economic activity. The prevailing paradigm for financial markets - that markets tend toward equilibrium and deviations from it are random - is both false and misleading, he argues, and only by exploring a new conceptual framework for how markets really work can we avoid disaster and economic ruin. In a concise essay that combines practical insight with philosophical depth, Soros makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the great credit crisis and its implications for our nation and the global economy.