此外，正如我要说明的，美国民主已深陷泥潭。金融危机使得一部分不思面对残酷现实的美国民众陷入了困境。奥巴马总统采用了“鼓舞士气”的做法，声称经济衰退已得到控制。如果经济再次下滑，人们会极易受到各种蛊惑人心的谣言的影响的。如果奥巴马总统下台，那么，下届政府将只能通过制造激烈的事端来转移人们对国内问题的注意力，这将对世界和平构成威胁。

President Obama has the right vision, but he needs to be more far-sighted. He believes in international cooperation rather than the Bush-Cheney idea of might is right. But he is preoccupied with many pressing problems. Reinventing the international financial system is not high on his agenda. Some of his economic advisers still seem to believe that the efficient market hypothesis is valid, except once in a hundred years. The financial institutions that have survived are in a stronger competitive position than ever before and they will resist a systematic overhaul that would curb their powers. What is lacking is a general recognition that the system is broken and needs to be reinvented. That is why it would be so important that the theory of financial markets I have outlined in these lectures should gain wider acceptance.

奥巴马总统的视角是对的，但眼光不够长远。他相信的是国际合作，而不是布什—切尼政府所信奉的强权就是公理的观点。但他的头脑正在被其他很多紧迫的问题所困扰，而重塑国际金融体系在他的议事日程似乎排不上名次。他的一些经济顾问似乎仍然相信绝大多数情况下有效市场假说的正确性，除了百年难遇的情况。那些幸存下来的金融机构比以往更有竞争优势，它们会抵制全面的改革，因为那样会限制它们的权力。现在所缺乏的是一种普遍的共识，即人们应该认识到旧有的体制已经瓦解，需要重建。我今天所讲的关于金融市场的理论受到更广泛接受是很重要的，原因正在于此。