George Soros Speech 'Most Important' on the Euro Financial Crisis -- Illustrated

After George Soros, the influential hedge fund manager, posted a speech he gave at an economics conference in Italy last week, the financial blogosphere and the mainstream media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post lit up -- mostly with praise.

Joe Weisenthal, Business Insider's blogger, called it brilliant, dynamo and killer. On Twitter, Tony Fratto, a CNBC contributor and former White House spokesman, wrote that he'd never had anything recommended to him more frequently.

The speech begins with a wonky description of the state of modern economics and then dives deeply into an intriguing analysis of the European financial crisis -- and warns that there are only a few months left to resolve it or the debacle will bring down global economies with it. His assessment is novel: He sees the crisis as a political bubble that began to emerge with the very first steps of European unification; the road to this crisis, Soros says, was paved with the best of geopolitical intentions.

Fascinating material, to be sure. But at over 4,400 words, it's not for the ADD-challenged -- or the rest of us who simply don't have enough time to read the speech.

Which is why International Business Times decided to turn an abridged version of the most essential parts of Soros' speech into a well-paced short video. Artfully illustrated by Pratima Mani, the video below should give anyone who has been following the developments in Europe -- and perhaps, more importantly, even those that haven't -- a much deeper and memorable understanding on what's going on.